DEEP! | Losing My Religion - R.E.M. (Reaction)

[@lindakinninger5500]

The phrase,losing my religion,is a southern saying for losing your sh*t….

[@patrickbousum]

JM, out of all the reactors out there I appreciate yours the most. Great insight and solid conclusions. Keep it up!

[@dianasheart]

Yours is the best response I have heard to this video.

[@JMBOYTV]

Thanks!

[@lauraallen55]

The main instrument is a mandolin. It was very unique for its time in that the main instrument was a mandolin, it had no chorus and was 5 minutes long. Yes, it's about losing one's faith in a relationship, but also about being frustrated with it, and about romantic expression in general (the last according to Michael Stipe, the vocalist and songwriter).

[@waynehaddon7404]

Best reactor by far. Not constantly pausing. Really enjoy watching music videos with you 👌👍

[@leisastalnaker3790]

A mandolin driven song. Perfect , just perfect.❤❤❤❤❤

[@megdelaney3677]

Song and video are masterpieces!

[@marcialivingston-nq8xk]

This song helped me for a family members addiction for 10 years.

[@AliasMark69]

R.E.M. were MTV darlings back in their time. A lot of material on the channel.

[@AliasMark69]

My favorite song from this unique group. Good One... again

[@PeterOConnell-pq6io]

Combination of music and visual imagination invested in this video make it special. Did it say too much, or not enough?

[@ChristinaMorris-v8q]

The mandolin is tuned the same as a violin. No wonder that it sounds like a violin at times.

[@bugvswindshield]

REM was pretty big back in the day. Good hits

[@lauraallen55]

Good deep cuts too, especially in the 10 years before this song came out.

[@jenniferewing4504]

Great job. Thank you

[@marie-christinescutt7888]

This is what I call the best of British top class band thank you for whomever asked you to play this JM love your reaction btw. You know I have watched that video at least a 1000 times and I am glad to say there are little things I hadn't noticed till now.

[@dafunkala]

Confused, he is american singing about a phrase in parts of the south of the usa.

[@kittenbrave1003]

They're from Athens, Georgia... I'm an Atlantan born and raised...proud of R.E.M.

[@RicoCosta317]

Wow, what a great song and video, an all-time classic. And as per usual, J, you nailed the meaning, without getting hung up on the religion part. To me, losing my religion in this context means losing your faith in a long-held belief, in this case that all you have to do to build a relationship is to keep trying to please the other person, even if means losing your own needs in the process. Two other great REM songs/videos that you should do are Drive and Everybody Hurts, which are classics in their own right.

[@uptownjay]

“Losing my religion” means losing one’s temper. Not religious or about faith at all.

[@RicoCosta317]

@@uptownjay Obviously not about religion. But other reactors want to read a religious meaning into it. It doesn't just mean losing your temper, it's being desperate and being at the end of your rope so much so you lose all of your faith, metaphorically speaking. Like "that child is making me lose my religion, he doesn't act right". My mother is black born and raised in Alabama and me and my brothers heard it all the time in between whoopings 😂

[@uptownjay]

@@RicoCosta317 in fact, it does! It’s an expression!

[@lauraallen55]

They are correct, too, you know. Sheesh@@uptownjay

[@PML78]

Huge song... Mtv, Vh1,radio and shows played this like crazy

[@WyattIamrolling]

I second that last comment. Dude, you are KILLING it. Keep doing EXACTLY what you're doing. Don't. Change. A. Thing.😂

[@lauraallen55]

Impossible to know what 'that last comment' was lol! But yes, he's doing a great job. :)

[@WyattIamrolling]

Seriously, he is doing a great job. Unlike SO MANY OF THE OTHERS who just like to hear themselves yammer, he plays the whole damn song and absorbs every detail of the music. Dude is my new fav.

[@lauraallen55]

Most reactors don't, that's true, but there are a few out there. :)@@WyattIamrolling

[@kathyrizzi8754]

I love this song,used to play on my Pontoon boat & fun dancing to it. Thank you, JMBoy!👍👏👏👏🩵🦋🩵

[@donnakubiski5572]

This is the song that introduced all of us to R.E.M. The Out Of Time album does not have a bad track on it. My favorite song on the album is "Texarkana". The lead singer on it is bass player Mike Mills. It's not one of their hits, but a deep cut on the album. I really think you would like it.

[@lauraallen55]

Some of us already knew and loved them before this song, so this wasn't the song that introduced all of us to them!. They had lots of good stuff before this in the 80s. Orange Crush was in the top 40 two years before this song came out. Oh, It's the End of the World As We Know It came out in 1987.

[@donnakubiski5572]

​@@lauraallen55You are right. I should have not stated "all", but it did introduce a huge portion to the group, myself included. I was not listening to this type of music until my radio station turned to alternative music at the beginning of the 90's.

[@lauraallen55]

no problem. No idea what the entire group of people who will watch this video know of REMs or not though, so you never know ;)@@donnakubiski5572

[@lauraallen55]

REM had a lot of really great songs in the 80s and many many of them are worth looking into., Unless you just want their big 90s hits everyone else talks about. Just saying they have a big catalog before their 90s mainstream fame.

[@Kate-hu5uz]

"Losing my religion" means losing yourself in a relationship with a toxic person, to the point where you're questioning your own sanity. Truth, reality and perspective become obscured because they relate in an alternate universe.

[@dannycasson1551]

I WANT MY MTV!!

[@kevinhodgins1811]

Keep doing your thing!

[@lauraallen55]

Radio Free Europe from their first album, Murmur in 1983, long before this came out is a suggestion for you. Some others would be Harborcoat or So. Central Rain from their second album, Reckining. Another couple are Orange Crush or Stand from their 1989 album, Green. I hope you hear some of those before doing singles from their 90s albums, although they have some good one then, too. They just werre not mainstream at all until this song, but they were very good! :)

[@gold98gtp]

Other good R.E.M. tunes - Man on the Moon, The One I Love, Everybody Hurts, What's The Frequency Kenneth.

[@lorih2249]

This song was written about T.S. Elliott and his wife. It’s about the poem “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”. T.S. Elliott’s wife wrote most of Elliotts literary works and he took credit for them - when the truth was going to come out about it he had her locked into a mental asylum - when she was quite young- and he never let her out. The ending notes of this song are actually musical version of the ending of the poem and stand for: ‘til human voices wake us then we drown. REM were extremely talented in so many ways.

[@hudahekizzy8402]

Michael Stipe said this is about a relationship but to me it sure seems like the situation the band was in as it had just got into a major label deal with Warner Brothers after being indie darlings for about 5 albums. As in talking to his audience. Transitioning to the 'big time'. Maybe it's both. He's a smart fellow. Beautiful song whatever the case. Thanks for the reaction.

[@AliasMark69]

Mandolin.... I have both.

[@lauraallen55]

You have both what?

[@AliasMark69]

@@lauraallen55 JM thought it was a Ukulele, 4 strings.... Mandolin has 8 strings.

[@TheRussian3]

Great insight.

[@danieldoesdumbstuff]

I really like how you actually listen to the full song and then give your review. I don’t like when reactors pause every 5 seconds

[@lynnieiapichino1121]

☮️💙💙💙🔥🔥😎

[@leisastalnaker3790]

A southern phrase, losing your faith, faith in a person etc…

[@MariaClaraMD]

❤

[@Stogdad1]

This is the best rock video of all time. The song makes a bit more sense when you grasp the gay subtext.

[@lauraallen55]

What gay subtext? Michael Stipe has said the song is about romantic expression. That would apply to any romantic expression not specifically to gay romantic expression

[@Stogdad1]

@@lauraallen55 Answer: Through all of the classic gay iconography replete in the video. So many items to choose, but let me just settle on one easy, in-your-face example: the imagry of St Sebastian. He's the early Christian martyr revered by gay men from Yukio Mishima to Oscar Wilde to Derek Jarman. He's the figure you see, largely naked, with an arrow in his chest. Feel free to Goggle information on gay men and that 3rd century Roman martyr, and prepare yourself to go down a rabbit hole. However, just to show that the LGBT content isn't limited to a single example, but without examining every instance, there's also the 1920s Soviet-era parts of the video, as well, those harkening back to the cinema of Sergei Eisenstein, a brillant auteur whose major film was the masterpiece Battleship Potemkin (1925). That film's opening sequence of the naked Russian sailors asleep in their beds, the camera lovingly lingering over their bodies was but a subtle clue that slipped through the Soviet censors at the time but is obvious to us today. Like Michael Stipe at the time of this video (1991), Eisenstein was forced to work in the closet, although years later Stipe came out as bisexual, married to a man. Living in the first half of the 20th century, Eisenstein wasn't so lucky, living as he did in a nation where homosexuality meant prison. Yet, when he briefly left the Soviet Union for a filming stint in Mexico to make what became ¡Que viva Mexico! (1932), he felt more liberated to be himself, offering a number of gay images. These two examples are meant to get the ball rolling -- there's certainly many more. But, yes, this song does contain core content that appeals to ALL people who have longed for someone unreachable, but realize that in this case it's told from a gay syntax, just as Jane Austen's romances appeal to anyone who's ever been in love, but expressed through a heterosexual one.

[@lauraallen55]

If you had said the 'video', I wouldn't have said anything, but you said the 'song'. This song and video appeals to me gay or not gay just as much as anything by Jane Austen would/does. I don't think the song uses gay 'syntax' either to be honest. I really would have understood if you had said video, but thanks for the all the information provided. I know what Michael Stipe said about the song, and that was that it's about romantic expression. He didn't say it was about gay romantic expression. I don't know if all the symbolic choices for the video were his,. but it's certainly possible. :)@@Stogdad1

[@diverdown631]

Mandolin not a ukulele

[@judyjetson9418]

[@jenniferewing4504]

Black bird Paul McCarthy

[@deborahsage768]

I'm not a recommend heart Magic man Dog and butterfly Heartless Barracuda Two sisters see and hard rock except for dog and butterfly

[@pennynolan7597]

Love the hypnotic melody, but thumbs down on the video