“Losing My Religion” by R.E.M., Monday, October 24, 2022 (partial repost)

Listening to Michael Stripe and Peter Buck talk, I couldn't place R.E.M. as southerners from Georgia. The Netflix Song Exploder's episode on "Losing My Religion" wasn't the first time I had heard R.E.M. talk about their music; however, I was both intrigued and put off by Michael Stripe in the extended interview. He is perhaps one of the most articulate rock stars I've ever heard speak; however, I picked up on an underlying arrogance when he talked about this song. According to most accounts, the band recorded Out of Time using the mandolin as kind of a throw-away record before they returned to more conventional writing approaches. The band chose "Losing My Religion" as the lead single, thinking that it wouldn't chart or that it would just be a minor hit. The band would quickly record more material and go on charting in the lower regions of the Rock Charts. However, "Losing My Religion," despite its unconventionality became a number 4  Hot 100 hit, a number 1 rock chart hit, and it went to number one in several countries. Michael Stripe seems smug when he talks about the band's underdog success. Occasionally, the music charts reflect effort and poetry and musical effort. Occasionally, the band who all the bands are drawing inspiration from also becomes popular. And that time was 1991. 

I'M CHOOSING MY CONFESSIONS. Michael Stripe was raised in a religious background in the Methodist tradition. Borrowing a Southern cliché, "Losing My Religion," brilliantly dances around the actually meaning in the lyrics. Stripe said that it's about the awkwardness one feels around someone they love. However, the imagery in the music video and some of the lyrics in the song evoke existential meanings, often bating the devout as the lyrics pick apart problems with devotion. One of the reasons that the song was so successful internationally was the response to the sex scandals in the Catholic church around the world. In some contexts, the song is a protest against religion. In a somewhat of counter-argument, the alternative Christian rock culture in the 2000s also "lost their religion." The mantra many bands and radio stations said was, "It's not about religion, it's about a relationship." Multi-platinum CCM crossover artist Lauren Daigle blithely touted this new cliché on her 2018 album Look Up Child, titling a track "Losing My Religion." This song was not a cover of R.E.M.'s hit, but rather a song about "losing [her] religion, in order to find you." The listener can fill in the blank, but it's pretty obvious from Daigle's context that it's about God.

THAT'S ME IN THE  CORNER, THAT'S ME ON THE STAGE. But "Losing My Religion" also has served as a rejection of faith or a reshaping of it. In the last decade, a trend emerged in Christianity in which once prominent leaders and followers, mostly in evangelical persuasions, began to ask questions about what faith meant in the 21st century. When confronted with certain questions, especially regarding gender roles, politics, race, homosexuality, gender identity, and whether or not the scriptures were meant to be taken literally today. The deconstructionists, as they are called, didn't find the traditional answers in mainstream Christianity satisfactory. Of course mainstream Christianity pushes back and often proves itself the culprit the deconstructionists rail against. For me, growing up being taught that I belonged to only true religion and that all the other religions lied to manipulate their followers, "losing my religion" was a scary notion. It was 2014 in the middle of my missionary days when I decided to finish watching Ryan Murphy's Glee. The show often tackled religion, mainly Christianity. Religion is one point of identity for the characters in the small Ohio town. One episode in Season 2, "Grilled Cheesus," dealt with religious idolatry, the prosperity gospel, atheism, and crisis. Finn (Cory Monteith) sings the song "Losing My Religion," and this is the episode's catharsis. It was campy, and I thought it was sacrilegious, but it raised a question that was too often ignored in my religion: how should we deal with homosexuality? The show depicts real gay people in ways I'd never seen them on TV or in real life, and it bothered me that Christianity had made gay people seem like imaginary, sinful beings that could easily "pray away the gay" and change. It wasn't just a theoretical English major debate from university, though. There was something more to this question.

 Read the lyrics on Genius.

R.E.M.

Glee Version: