The Classic R.E.M. Hit That Came Together in Just Five Minutes

In January 1980, when a young Peter Buck and Michael Stipe chanced to meet one day in a Wuxtry Records store in Athens, Georgia, neither could have known they would one day be part of one of the most successful bands of their time.

Buck and Stipe were students at the time at the University of Georgia, as were bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry, who would soon round out the group. With Buck on guitar and Stipe as lead singer, R.E.M. would go on to sell millions of records and influence generations to come. Their distinctive sound didn't fit into the then fashionable genres of spiky post-punk, synth driven New Wave, or bouncy pop. R.E.M. crafted music that was highly melodic yet at the same time possessed of depth, nuance, and no little artistry.

THE HIT R.E.M. WROTE IN FIVE MINUTES

Out of all the band's hits, it is perhaps their classic, sad-hearted, and emotionally powerful "Losing My Religion" that arguably best defines them. Like the band itself, the song is quirky, inventive, a little hard to pin down, and instantly arresting. The track first appeared on the group's 1991 album, Out of Time. By then, they were six albums into their career and globally famous.

As Stipe recalled in a 2005 interview with Uncut magazine, the band was in need of a change following heavy work promoting their previous album, Green: “We toured that record for a year, which turned out to be the culmination of ten years of being constantly on the road. We were sick to death of touring. Peter was sick of being a pop star, the guitar god, and so he decided to teach himself other instruments. Among the instruments that he picked up was the mandolin.”

With a tape recorder running, Buck began practicing random licks on his new instrument.

Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2016, he explained: "So I’d play and tape it and play and tape it, and somewhere in the middle of that tape is most of 'Losing My Religion.' I showed the core of it to Mike and Michael the next day, and we all just fell in. It sounded exactly like the record, and Michael, in a couple of days, would be singing it.”

'WHAT WOULD JOHN MCVIE OF FLEETWOOD MAC DO?'

There was just one problem, as bassist Mike Mills reflected: "I couldn’t come up with a bass line that I thought was simple enough and yet powerful enough to anchor the mandolin. I was getting kind of frustrated with myself, and I said, ‘All right, what would John McVie [of Fleetwood Mac] do here?’ And within five minutes I had the bass line, so I owe John for that one.”

Released as a single, "Losing My Religion" reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100, and breached the top ten in France, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

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