REM - "Losing My Religion"

By the way, what on earth has happened to Michael Stipe's voice? It's clearly lost a lot of range. Listen to the start of "I'll Take The Rain." Yuck.

cigarettes, almost certainly.

As for Losing My Religion.. it's by far their best single, and the one that will probably be remembered best fifty years from now, but I never feel the need to listen to it these days.

Country Feedback on the other hand..

The video looks so absurd now.

This Chapman idea is intriguing though.

Bad Day sounds exactly like "end of the world", scarily so.

I've been wondering the same thing. Did you see their second MTV Unplugged performance? It was really kinda sad.

Clop! Clop! Clop! Clop! Clop! Clop! Clop! Clop! Clop!
[sound of Georgians' feet on hardwood floor...]

The "Losing My Religion" video is one of the many things I adored in the early '90s that forces me to say "Hey, I was only a damn kid...what was AMERICA'S excuse?"

I think the Chapman comparison was one made in It Crawled From the South. It was really just the author's interpretation and nothing more. All the band has ever said about the song's meaning is that it's an "obsessive love song", which could be taken to mean it's about a whole lot of different things. Stipe has insisted that it has nothing to do with him or about being in the public eye which is a bit hard to swallow given the lines "that's me in the spotlight" and "I thought that I heard you singing". Plus, there's that whole video thing that just screams MEMEMEMEMEME. This song just really fucks with peoples heads on so many levels though which is why it's one of the best things ever.

Who would have thought a poignant song about going insane could ever top the charts [and no, Paul Davis' "I Go Crazy" doesn't count, I said poignant!]. The video also made it's mark, as has been referenced, how many videos followed that looked identical? Many. Is that a good thing? Probably not, but it was certainly as influential as it gets...

It would make me very happy if they still did all those things.

I heard this song on the hold music for a business I was calling, it was some kindof stripped down version...and it struck me what a truly awful, whiny song this is. Really defiles them, I think. But then I guess it's not as bad as "stand in the place where you work" and all that shit. I don't really give a fuck about whatever came after Document anyway.

Major scale, anyone?

http://vimeo.com/24939206

Hmmmmm ... it turns it into a slow version of "I Believe," apparently.

Now he should do "Shiny Happy People" in minor.

this is hilarious

There are a few of these things. Nothing Else Matters is particularly insipid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7FzLX0Ql8M

http://vimeo.com/24939393

^^^ Really really horrible.

Ha, that's great. I used to do this on the guitar all the time growing up. LMR kind of sounds like a doped up Feelies track.

'Smells Like Teen Spirit' would sound amazing.

jesus christ these are fucking hysterical

These are great. The Doors one results in some lovely little chord changes (e.g. at "Dog without a bone..." 00:57-1:01) that I am gonna steal.

LMR is improved greatly! I think there is a thread in the archives for cover versions that change the key from major to minor (or the reverse)... allow me to search.

Major key Losing My Religion actually sounds sadder, for reasons I can't put my finger on.

RFI: Cover songs that change the key from minor to major
RFI: Cover songs that change the key from major to minor

(xpost) I thought it sounded more melancholy too! Which is weird in a major key?

It's the same vocals (in a minor key), maybe they seem more melancholy transposed over the major-key music.

Sorry, "Major Scaled #2 : REM - "Recovering My Religion"" was deleted at 12:01:56 Thu Jan 17, 2013.

;_;

Sorry, "Major Scaled #2 : REM - "Recovering My Religion"" was deleted at 12:01:56 Thu Jan 17, 2013.
We have no more information about it on our mainframe or elsewhere.

BAH

http://vidaru.com/major-scaled-2-rem-quotrecover-ing-my-religionquot/53738208

also taken down.

I used to love doing things like this when I was studying music... not so much digitally but definitely on guitar or piano. Sometimes it'd result in some very happy musical accident where you'd go "actually I quite like that", and steal it.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/361633/audio/Major_Scaled-Recovering_My_Religion.mp3

sweet, thanks! Sounds awesome from what my internet's managed to pull down so far.

http://vimeo.com/57685359

i dont actually know what a major key is

I think this is a pretty good cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iph3VJw-DiY

the Song Exploder (Netflix) episode was really pretty good. Nice to hear/see Bill Berry again

I found it disappointing, too much about "and the song was a big hit and here's people talking about it" and less (though there was some!) about the actual composition and the sonic construction of the recording

You guys may have Rip Van Winkled thru the lengthy discussion over at REM: Classic or dud?!

Over 1 billion YouTube views... "one of only about a dozen songs from the decade to hit the milestone."

I didn't realize it had that kind of mojo, but cool to see.

Me neither! I guess it helps that the video is so distinctive.

Was just talking about this with a friend, about how remarkable it was that this song, of all songs, at this time, was the band's big commercial breakthrough. Also came across this recently:

‘Losing My Religion’ doesn’t have a single rhyme in the whole song. I sort of knew this but just did a deep dive to confirm. That’s all, carry on.

— rosanne cash (@rosannecash) July 21, 2022

(lots of discussions of assonance, slant rhymes, etc, in the comments)

Okay there’s been a lot of pile-on about that last tweet. ‘Much’ and ‘enough’ are indeed a soft rhyme. But I can’t go so far as to say that ‘confession’ and ‘religion’ rhyme. Come on, people. https://t.co/HnTP8U6hEx

— rosanne cash (@rosannecash) July 21, 2022

What about, like, “century” and “knees”?

(…and “fantasies”)

Try, cry, why try

One of my colleagues posted in our work chat last week: "That's me with the COVID".

I followed up with...

That's me with the COVID
That's me in my sickbed
Calling my physician

One of the few R.E.M. songs in rotation on our local Jack FM station. “The One I Love” comes on sometimes too, and I think that’s about it.

Also I’d argue that “The One I Love” was the real commercial breakthrough, it went top 10. So did “Stand” from the next album. But LMR was their pop peak, for sure.

I watched the Song Exploder on this song against last night ... on Netflix. It's really good. Watch it if you haven't.

Find myself listening to this now and am being hit with the surely deeply unoriginal thought that while R.E.M.s' relative...not disappearance but a legacy that seems to just settle into time is one thing, I kinda wonder how much this song and what they were doing all around this time and the following was central to the resultant codification of 'Americana' as anything else.

I have a moderate respect for REM, but I just don’t vibe with this song, sorry.

It’s better than “shiny happy people” maybe.

Come to think of it, they have some pretty lame singles.

it's pretty far from their best but also pretty far from their worst

The album rules, though, especially the second side.

100% no, literally the only album of theirs I refuse to own or listen to.

that's a pretty bizarre take considering they also made reveal and around the sun

but i think it's probably their worst before berry quit? though i haven't listened to it in ages tbh & there's still some good material, i just remember it being pretty disjointed

well that was hyperbole, those two albums are lame but I don’t dislike them as intensely. And there are a couple tracks on OOT I can get behind, “Country Feedback” the most obvious.

Green is their worst before Berry quit.

definitely not ranking the album high but "Texarkana" -> "Country Feedback" -> "Me in Honey" might be there best 123 sequencing run.

yeah the second half is perfect and “low” is so good

definitely not ranking the album high but "Texarkana" -> "Country Feedback" -> "Me in Honey" might be there best 123 sequencing run.

― Western® with Bacon Flavor,

Add "Half a World Away."

I like the album quite a bit. It's pretty uneven, but I find even the misfires enjoyable. I almost want to compare it to the Beatles' White Album in that way, where the quality feels all over the place but somehow that's part of the charm.

Following "Low" with "Endgame" was clutch.

Green is their worst before Berry quit.

Alfred, I cannot fathom this opinion!

It's not the album I listen to most but "Me In Honey" is one of their best songs -- actually, looking at this tracklisting, why DON'T I listen to this more? "Low," "Endgame, "Belong" represent a whoel direction they decided never really to pursue but which is super-great. Perhaps my like for this album is related to the fact that, seemingly unlike most R.E.M. fans, I really like both "Radio Song" and "Shiny Happy People," certainly more than "Losing My Religion," which is fine but their least good big song that's not on Automatic For the People.

Green, of course, is an unimpeachable classic.

I find plenty to peach!

Papa Don’t Peach

Gonna go out to the country feedback, gonna eat me a lotta peaches

I thought Monster was pretty well regarded as their worst album: https://www.popmatters.com/117936-strange-currency-one-staff-writers-seven-year-journey-to-sell-the-mo-2496142640.html

I quite like it though. I don't even mind the indie cred desparation of guest appearances from Thurston Moore and Lou Barlow.

Lou Barlow? I wish!

I enjoy Monster too, but it mostly works for me as a great-sounding record. Like it's something I like to crank up and have on in the background, but it feels like a pretty thin record with more engaged listening.

Monster>>Green>>>>>>>>>>>>>OOT

Monster is the best album ever.

Green is their second best album

Monster is sexy as fuck

I love all of the albums people are mentioning - except Monster, which I still really like a lot

Anyway Out of Time, the first seven or songs are where it is consciously scattershot/clattery/half-formed (which I LOVE) and then there's the final four songs where the album sort of takes a few steps down and out to somewhere a bit more coherent and more contemplative (which I LOVE)

i think monster ending up in countless used bins is less a reflection on the album's quality than the fact that it lacked mandolins

ppl just weren't prepared for four guys in a room making punk rock

The Monster thread revived in 2019 for the reissue has More Thoughts.

anyway 'losing my religion' is probably my least favorite song on this album (if not as cringeworthy as the krs-one feature)

Thing about Monster which no one mentions anywhere: the linking tremolo jam between Bang and Blame and I Took Your Name. It's like on the first couple of albums and surely intentionally so.

2019 iirc was when I made up my mind about Monster, a bit before the reissue was released. I find it hard to pin down the album and its place in the band's arc/in 1994 etc. but I feel like I've thought about it more than almost any other album ever

Lou Barlow? I wish!

― "Cool ranch dressing!" (morrisp)

Huh? Loobie appears on Bang and Blame.

Wow! If true, I was never aware of that (despite being a huge fan of both). Is he credited in the booklet(?)

Ah, he’s the “Lou” under “Additional Players”? How did you even know that? I’ve never seen it come up.

Yep! He's credited simply as "Lou".

Lou Kregl is credited on the Wikipedia page, he's an artist in Athens, GA.
I looked it up and that was their last top 40 single, by the way!

Dunno when I first read about it. Brain can't remember back to the 90s or early 2000s when i got really into both too! I remember being stoked though because I love Sebadoh and Dino Jr (and SY re: Thurston).

I do see a few websites listing that credit, forgive me if I’m skeptical… I’ve never heard of any connection between those guys, and I don’t know why Lou would’ve been around one of those particular studios at the time. I guess it’s possible!

A friend had a cassette copy of Out of Time. I was in 7th grade and had heard “Losing…” which I liked and “Shiny Happy People” which was intolerable. Listening to that cassette with my friend really opened things up for me. I was obsessed with “Belong.” I became a fan and Automatic sealed the deal, after that I hunted down all the b-sides and bootlegs I could find. Dead Letter Office led me to the Velvets AND Roger Miller! I became a music freak and here I am.

Replacing “Radio Song” and “Shiny…” would improve the album immensely. They give it a
scattershot quality. Was “Fretless” from around this time? That would have fit nicely. Radio & Shiny would be killer, tucked away b-sides but as album tracks on this album, total dud.

'belong' was my initial favorite

Near Wild Heaven is my favourite R.E.M. song.

Another incongruent thought: does anyone get mild Cure flavours from Texarkana? I guess it's like a fast All I Want with jangle BUT where I'm actually getting it from is the strings, which are like KMMKMKM synths in my ears. I don't expect to ever convince anyone.

Huh! I can certainly imagine Robert Smith singing it, especially the chorus.

it's only a vague resemblance (those strings do sound like synth strings in places to the point that i could believe there's a mix of both on the track) but i hear what you mean

The strings on this album amaze me.

I agree with Alfred, I love Out of Time and find Green a bit stodgy.

I love all the records up till Monster but Out of Time is the only one that still really moves me 20-30 years on. A couple of years ago I was listening to Half The World Away while driving, started spontaneously tearing up and had to pull over.

I don’t know if this is still an area worth fighting over but I’ve always thought Radio Song and Shjny Happy People were terrific. Love the KRS-One bit. The melody and the strings during the “everything to hide” bit is magical.

Come to think of it, I probably love driving to this record because, when I was a kid, my dad would always turn the cassette off during “Low”

i truly have no idea what they were going for with "radio song" but i'm glad they kinda reused the chorus melody for "nightswimming"

Always assumed it was some along the lines of, “Peter Buck heard Been Caught Stealing in a crowded room”

I have to check again but I think Out of the Time was the first time R.E.M. used strings? I heard that album and Automatic for the People (even better use of strings) first, so it never occurred to me how "new" that was for them. In retrospect, it seems like every time they spent more on production (hiring a session instrumentalist or an orchestra, more studio trickery, etc.), the results ended up great, as if doing those things was natural to them in terms of vision and execution. That's kind of impressive - like it never feels like it's too cluttered, overproduced, or forced on to the music. "Shiny Happy People" may not be a great song, but the way the strings and Kate Pierson are heard on the record feels very organic and it does enhance it musically.

I think Green is their least interesting record before Berry left, but it's still a commendable record. The most enjoyable stuff tends to be slight though.

I'll say this for Out Of Time -- there's nothing the least bit awkward about any of it. In a way, that's why I always had trouble connecting with it (apart from "Near Wild Heaven," probably my fave track on it). They obviously wanted a break from the four-people-on-stage dynamic -- they'd just played 131 shows, and understandably wanted/needed a new approach. But the result was so pristine, careful, and meticulously deliberate that it ultimately came across as dull and lifeless. There was no danger, actual or perceived, of anyone bumping into each other.

Green feels similarly calculated, but there are at least faint echoes of their past -- surging dynamics, elastic tension -- that can be glimpsed in its most effective songs ("Get Up," mainly...or possibly only). And if "Inside-Out" felt like a transparent bid to firmly establish them on FM rock radio; whether or not that was the plan, I couldn't say, but I did hear it on the local FM station hourly in 1989.

"Inside Out" is another stab at "Finest Worksong."

And one that's just as good if not better imo

The backwards-y swooshes are a wonderful bit of accent colouring just like the snare track in World Leader Pretend. They make it feel 'bigger' and dizzier.

No criticism intended. It's the best on the second side.

I Remember California's my favourite - but better yet is this live version which is astoundingly good and electric and menacing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28nEUxp5RgU

It’s weird to hear Green slighted like this – to me, it’s so clearly the band at the height of their powers (or at least the second of their twin career peaks)… but this doesn’t feel like the right thread to discuss it.

Fables of the Reconstruction is my least favorite between 1983 and 1996, and while Green has sentimental value for being my first R.E.M. album (won in a radio station giveaway!) I skip around the second side. I love the experiments with nursery rhymes and kids songs, though ("Stand," "Get Up"), and "You ARe the Everything" accompanied a moving scene in Beverly Hills 90210 where Dylan McKay, curled up in a fetal position, remembers the dad from The Hogan Family promising him as a little boy that he'd never let him down.

there's like a string quartet on "Feeling Gravity's Pull." not sure whose idea that was, but to me it suggests they were open to adding extra color and texture from a pretty early point. IOW agreed with your take, birdistheword!

Yeah each album throughout their 80s run increases the instrumental palette

I have to check again but I think _Out of the Time_ was the first time R.E.M. used strings?

sorry xxp

but to me it suggests they were open to adding extra color and texture from a pretty early point.

Also the horns on "Can't Get There From Here." They really backed off of the Rickenbacker jangle on Fables, only to lean back into it on Pageant, which is the last R.E.M. album without additional musicians. It feels like Pageant was a reining-in of whatever ambitions they were exploring on Fables, though to be fair, they've mostly talked about Fables being a kind of fraught experience. And yet, Fables had longer tentacles, now seeming like a dry run for ideas they'd later work out on Out Of Time and Automatic (though I personally vastly prefer Fables to either of those).

The main new thing with LRP is Underneath the Bunker being their most un-REM song yet on album, which I do feel is pretty significant given the sax/dulcimer/Fairlight* on Document tracks and the expressed intention to 'not write typical R.E.M. songs' on Green.

*which I can't really hear

True about "Underneath," though it always struck me as a goof, like a "Baby Song" or a b-side (which I think Rolling Stone complained about in its review at the time).

And I can't hear the Fairlight on Document either.

Yeah Underneath is like a Dead Letter Office track, but that's why I think it's significant it's on the album, as it points the way to the more informal or very atypical things they started putting on later albums.

It's funny the range of reactions people have to specific R.E.M. records. I'm sure there are lots of reasons for that, but the order and timing of when people encountered them I'm sure plays a role. As someone on board from pretty much the beginning, I wasn't sure what to make of Fables when it came out and definitely preferred Lifes Rich Pageant — I was 15 and that was what I wanted R.E.M. to sound like. I like Document and Green both fine but think of them as second-tier with some great songs.

I loved Out of Time when it came out, it felt in tune with its moment — didn't hurt that it was my senior year of college, it had a combination of anxiety and buoyancy that felt familiar. "Losing My Religion" has that post-adolescent confusion and uncertainty about finding a place in the world. I still think it's a good album, I like its confidence and I agree the second side is dynamite. (It turns out that 15-year-old me was right about my R.E.M. preferences tho. I like Fables more now than I did then, but LRP is still my favorite.)

Marcello's review:

The “Memory Side” is a lot more straightforward but provides the necessary balancing warmth, which isn’t always evident on their consequent series of number one albums. “Shiny Happy People” is pop and proud of it – and the appearance of Kate Pierson indicates a final and long-awaited union between the two great pop bands of Athens, Georgia (OK - three if you count Pylon, but I’ll be getting back to the latter in due course). One hardly notices that the lyric is a less-than-literal translation of the propaganda espoused by the Chinese government at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The waltz orchestra cuts into the song like an interrupted radio broadcast (major acknowledgments, by the way, to Mark Bingham, whose string arrangements throughout this album are never less than inspired and necessary). Among the Georgians dancing with the band in the song’s video is Alton Brown, a future chef of renown, who had previously acted as director of photography for the video to “The One I Love.”

“Belong” has Stipe’s first recorded narrative recital of a lyric; once again, the world is collapsing, or at least the world of the woman who is the song’s protagonist, but she sees the collapse as an opportunity to escape, to break free, to change. “Half A World Away” is melancholy but, again, not drained of optimism; its music is warm and welcoming. We are not with Harold Biffen and his bottles of pills on Putney Heath at dusk – far from it. “Texarkana” stares at the universe of stars and is moved and energised by what it sees. “Country Feedback” is mostly ad-libbed by Stipe, and could serve as a sequel to “World Leader Pretend” with its subject recast from paranoid dictator to rootless would-be lover. Again and again the singer nibbles on “It’s crazy what you could have had,” as though scolding the world.

The side, and therefore the album, ends with the upbeat – I will avoid the adjective “anthemic” for now – “Me In Honey,” a fully-fledged duet with Kate Pierson and a direct response to the 10,000 Maniacs song “Eat For Two”; both are songs about pregnancy, and respectively depict the male and female response to the latter (Natalie Merchant and Stipe were lovers for a time, and almost uniquely in rock have remained close friends since). “Me In Honey” thrives on a bass-led drone – Joy Division! – which the group ride triumphantly. His perspective alters from mild outrage (“What [love is] doing to me”) to the dawning realisation that what is going to happen is part of him (“What about me?”). A new world will come into existence regardless.

One hardly notices that the lyric is a less-than-literal translation of the propaganda espoused by the Chinese government at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

FWIW, this is likely not true:

Oh yeah, about the Tiananmen Square massacre – it’s long been purported by fans that “Shiny Happy People” was written about the propagandistic aftermath of China’s Tiananmen Square massacre. However, there’s not a verified quote from Stipe or any other R.E.M. member that supports this theory.
Kate Pierson: It’s interesting because our mutual friend, April Chapman, is a schoolteacher in Athens and her students created the backdrop to the music video. The video was really fun and joyful. All of these friends and Athens people were there dancing and having a joyous time. Not stressful like most music videos tend to be. It was a shiny, happy kind of video. So I can’t imagine that R.E.M. was thinking at the time, Oh, we want this song to be about Chinese government propaganda. It was supposed to be shiny and happy. It was a positive thing all-around. Maybe the band was astonished that this positivity became sort of a signature for them. (Laughs.)

I sometimes wonder what Kate thinks about the band publicly hating the song.

Do they hate it? This is what Stipe said back in 2011:

MS: I was always at peace with it. It's just a little bit embarrassing that it became as big a hit as it did!

What did you want it to be?

MS: Exactly what it is. Which is a really fruity, kind of bubblegum song. But to have it on the Best Of is right because it shows a different side of us. Many people's idea of R.E.M, and me in particular, is very serious, with me being a very serious kind of poet. But I'm also actually quite funny – hey, my bandmates think so, my family thinks so, my boyfriend thinks so, so I must be – but that doesn't always come through in the music! People have this idea of who I am probably because when I talk on camera, I'm working so hard to articulate my thoughts that I come across as very intense. But I'm in 'Shiny Happy People', 'Stand', 'Pop Song 89', 'Get Up', too. Our fruitloop songs!

I don't know about your hometown radio stations, but "Shiny Happy People" didn't garner enough airplay for me to ever get sick of it. And it's weird for a bubblegum song -- those string breaks!

I've always liked it myself (and never really understood the antipathy it generates)

They've recanted on the song a bit but they spent much of the 90s and 00s hating on it in interviews

But yeah I love the song and also don't get *why* it's such a laughing stock to some. The riff is gorgeous as are the sad waltz parts.

I remember a reviewer (Christgau? not sure) calling "Shiny Happy People" a sort of defiant AIDS-era anthem, asserting joy in the face of death etc. That makes sense to me, it feels like it's reacting to an implied darkness offscreen.

The Genius annotations claim SHP is a critique of Maoism

The title derives from a Chinese propaganda poster from the Mao era, which read, “Shiny happy people holding hands”.

a Genius annotation can tell you, but it can't tell you much

You should see the poster that read, "I don't wanna be Iggy Pop, but if that's what it takes, yeah"

Circling back to "LMR" – Pitchfork gets this wrong (Buck plays mandolin on three Green tracks):

Grown entirely from a single riff on the mandolin, an instrument that was completely new to guitarist Peter Buck at the time

It's funny how these little false ideas about R.E.M. have built up over time...

oof

I was about to say that Buck played mandolin on "I Will Dare" for the Replacements three years earlier, but in checking I see that Paul actually played that, and Buck played the guitar solo. With Buck's name on the track, I just always assumed it was him on mandolin.

It's funny how these little false ideas about R.E.M. have built up out of over time...

― "Cool ranch dressing!" (morrisp)

Fixed.

_Monster_>>_Green_>>>>>>>>>>>>>_OOT_

otm

I've told this story before, but a friend of mine who used to do a lot of sessions and jingles knew this one mandolin ace who got a *ton* of work after "Losing My Religion" from people that didn't know mandolins from mandolines. One session this guy was in the booth tuning and warming up, and then, out of nowhere, a voice interrupted and said "OK, we got it!" They'd been recording, and his warm up noodling made the final cut.

You are out of your mind my dude

I always loved Stipe's contributions to the Golden Palominos' Visions of Excess, but I hadn't listened to their 1991 album Drunk With Passion until I heard about Anton Fier's death. I don't know that this cavernous production does the song any favours, and I'm sure that Stipe used this same vocal melody elsewhere, but it's an interesting alternate look at the more open-hearted style he had developed by Out of Time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GfOy5miUf4

The production's fine. I don't notice it.

I'd admit it's more typical of 1991 "adult alternative" than Out of Time.

On the Green tour Stipe would recite something like “I did not invent this world, all my words a string of pearls” or something like that. Was that Golden Palominos? I always wanted to check them out but never got around to it.

That Green era concert vhs was AWESOME

Tourfilm… yep

That's a line from "Future Forties", by Syd Straw, ex-Palominos singer, which was the only good song on her album and was a duet with Stipe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdpDVOrKQG8

I haven't thought about that album in a minute -- a hot 1989 college radio artyfact.

an interesting alternate look at the more open-hearted style he had developed by Out of Time

He starts singing this way on Document, I think. By New Adventures, he's sort of drifted into the falsetto and/or speak-singing style that carries all the way to Collpase Into Now. It's definitely gone by Up. It kind of slots him into the early 90s "big voice" pop style.

I don't like the Litt remix of Monster, but it's great hearing Stipe's vocals upfront. I think, in a weird way, he's considered a great frontman but might be a bit underrated for his vocals? No one else has really sung or sings like him. Similar timbre in Gene Clark and Gord Downie, but obviously their singing styles are totally different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00fy4Gc397c

just realised that "stand" is basically on the same wavelength as they might be giants

The video for "Stand” always reminds me of The Adventures of Pete and Pete, though I can’t really articulate why.

That Syd Straw video would be a good candidate for an "In Every 120 Minutes Video Ever” thread (pre-grunge era, at least). Grainy black and white to suggest 8mm, shots of small town Americana / wide open spaces, some retro 50s styling...

The video for "Stand” always reminds me of The Adventures of Pete and Pete, though I can’t really articulate why.

Same director.

I bought a mandolin approximately eleven years ago. Did I learn "Losing My Religion"? Yes, I did. I memorized it, recorded it (playing every instrument), then promptly forgot it.

I was born in 1971, so I was 20 when this song came out and 40 when I learned how to play the mandolin part. I am now 50mumble. When I am at acoustic gigs or open mics, every once in a while someone will see me holding a mandolin and ask if I know "Losing My Religion." In a sense I do (as in, it's totally in my wheelhouse and I could get through it if needed) but I also don't (as in, I don't want to play it and probably won't).

Sometimes just to fuck with people I will play "You Are the Everything" instead.

You Are Everything is a much better song!

Yeah it is

Do The Wrong Child

Pete & Pete had very strong late 80s/early 90s college/alternative rock energy, with their jangley theme and additional songs by Polaris, and numerous guest stars from that whole universe: Marshall Crenshaw, Gordon Gano, Kate Pierson, Juliana Hatfield, and, uh, Patty Hearst. Stipe himself had a memorable appearance as unpleasant ice-cream salesman Captain Scrummy.

Honestly "You Are the Everything and "Losing My Religion" are both good songs; I just feel like LMR is overexposed. Many years ago I did a tolerable (to me) instrumental arrangement of "Find the River." The one I really want to do (but haven't) is "Nightswimming." Now I just need to learn the oboe...

Man Nightswimming is so good too

They were a pretty god rock band, but in an alternate universe they focused instead on inventing a new approach to acoustic folk that made everyone happier and more chill during the years 1987-1995

*good, argh

LMR to me is the paradigmatic example of overexposure. I think I (would) really like it but it's impossible to evaluate, it's like wallpaper to me.

"You Are the Everything" is better for sure though. That one goes up against "Half a World Away" in my mind because of the similar melodies, and only recently has my preference started to tilt towards the former

Oh I also love "Half a World Away," though it is lyrically more slight.

Like, an acoustic-centric REM PO1 would be very difficult for me. POX is doable.

I was thinking about this last night— OOT sounds more explicitly queer to me than some previous albums, at least lyrically. It’s always been one of the records that I’ve emotionally connected to moreso than others. Could just be me, but there might be something there

I don’t feel like I qualify to opine on queerness, but Monster has always seemed to me like the pinnacle of that element in their work. A major part of its charm and power, for me.

They were a pretty god rock band, but in an alternate universe they focused instead on inventing a new approach to acoustic folk that made everyone happier and more chill during the years 1987-1995

― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin)

I thought they did?

I'd say table and matttkkk are both right, especially if you include AFTP's odes to young male performers and a song as naked -- in every sense -- as "Nightswimming."

I was thinking about this last night— OOT sounds more explicitly queer to me than some previous albums, at least lyrically. It’s always been one of the records that I’ve emotionally connected to moreso than others. Could just be me, but there might be something there

For sure. . . it's definitely their most "emotional" record up to that point

Circling back to "LMR" – Pitchfork gets this wrong (Buck plays mandolin on three Green tracks):

Grown entirely from a single riff on the mandolin, an instrument that was completely new to guitarist Peter Buck at the time
It's funny how these little false ideas about R.E.M. have built up over time...

***

“Losing My Religion” *was* the first song Buck wrote on his new mandolin in 1987/88. It was written before the three Green mandolin songs, two of which Bill Berry actually wrote. But it was consciously held back from Green and saved for the next album because Buck recognized its commercial potential.

Driver 8, take a break.

That’s interesting! It should’ve said “at the time it was written,” then (as it sure sounds like it’s talking about the time it was recorded). The sentence goes on to talk about what the song “captures” from the band (not Buck’s riff), and the next sentence says more about the other three guys’ performances on the track.

LMR was written in 1987/88, before any of the other Green mandolin songs. Much like Pretty Persuasion was passed over for both Chronic Town and Murmur before being dusted off and recorded for Reckoning. Rock bands don’t write eleven brand new songs for every new album.

I get it, but no one without that context would glean the timeline from the blurb.

(I guess this isn’t the Pitchfork Suxx thread though, so who cares)

(I’m also not sure you’re right? Here’s Buck saying he wrote the song after the Green Tour)

“Losing My Religion” is one of my karaoke songs and it never fails to make the crowd go “why this song, my dude”

this remix rules so hard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOAEP9nZ4Gc