"Losing My Religion" - R.E.M.
On Interpretations
Is “Losing My Religion” a song about reconciling religious beliefs alongside unrequited queer love? Well, no. But also, of course it is.
The R.E.M. hit “Losing My Religion” had a stranglehold on pop culture in 1991 with its mandolin-laden minor chords and chest-piercing lyrics. Were the lyrics about losing faith in God? Certainly some media outlets in Ireland thought so as they promptly banned the song as sacrilegious. Meanwhile, queer R.E.M. fans heard the lyrics as a veiled commentary on the turmoil of coming out. Art is in the eye of the beholder.
For his part, lead singer Michael Stipe dismissed both interpretations.
Like so many in pop music’s canon, “Losing My Religion” began as just another song about having a crush. "I love the idea of writing a song about unrequited love," Stipe told Top 2000 a gogo. "The thing for me that is most thrilling is you don't know if the person I'm reaching out for is aware of me. If they even know I exist.”
If you’re from the South, like Stipe, there’s a fitting expression: . “You’re gonna make me lose my religion!” It means that tempers are on the brink and composure hangs by a thread.
Every whisper
Of every waking hour
I'm choosing my confessions
Consider this the hint of the century
Consider this the slip that brought me to my knees
For queer fans who interpreted “Losing My Religion” to be about the turmoil of coming out, these lines are frequently cited as evidence. “Losing religion” feels familiar to any queer person who’s been forsaken by the church. And in the early ‘90s, that was all of us. Stipe had refused to address his sexuality, so when “Losing My Religion” came out, people assumed that Stipe had as well. Stipe has never acknowledged this interpretation. In fact, he’s said he doesn't write narrowly biographical songs.
When Stipe came out three years later, the queerness and religious context of the music video that accompanied “Losing My Religion” affirmed people’s suspicions.
Up until this point, Stipe had directed most of the band's music videos or had entrusted them to visionaries rooted in the art world like Robert Longo and James Herbert. For “Losing My Religion,” Warner Brothers hired Tarsem Singh to direct. Singh said he was inspired by religious imagery, Caravaggio, and queer photography.
“I told him (Stipe) there’s a story by Gabriel García Márquez called A Very Old Man With Wings in which this freak angel arrives and nobody knows quite what to do with it,” Singh told Rolling Stone. “So it’s that story, told abstractly through the style of these guys called Pierre et Gilles, who are these iconic gay photographers that take how Indians do their gods and goddesses, then they do that to the Western gods.”
All of Singh’s references to Christian iconography are obvious. Caravaggio’s portrait of St. Thomas doubting the validity of Jesus’ resurrection is blatantly depicted throughout the video. Except in Singh’s version, Jesus is replaced with the angel from A Very Old Man With Wings who fell to Earth and is mocked by humans. The video’s mocking might’ve struck a nerve with bullied or ostracized queer teens, even if this version of the art wasn’t supposed to be about them either.
Singh speaks to them again, though, by mixing queer and religious iconography in the style of photographers Pierre et Gilles, as he depicts androgynous angels and a very feminized version of Saint Sebastian.
The story of Saint Sebastian is itself decidedly queer. As a Christian, Sebastian was sentenced to death by a Roman archer firing squad. The image of him tied to a tree, his body pierced by arrows, has become iconic in art history — but also in queer history. Queer people have long interpreted Sebastian's persecution as a coming-out narrative, in which the martyr reveals his truth and is punished by mainstream society. In 1976, queer artist Derek Jarman interpreted the story of Saint Sebastian through a homoerotic lens in his film Sebastiane. British painter Keith Vaughan similarly depicted Sebastian.
One of the most famous paintings of St. Sebastian was by Guido Reni in the 17th century. In 1877, Oscar Wilde visited the Palazzo Rosso to see the painting.
Wilde later wrote in “The Grave of Keats,” “The youngest of the martyrs here is in lain / Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.” Wilde would liken himself to Sebastian as a countercultural figure, even changing his own name to Sebastian Melmoth when he was imprisoned and then exiled for being queer.
Then there’s the fact that Sebastian is also known as the protector against plague, which felt in the ‘90s like another of the music video’s nods to the queer community fighting the AIDS pandemic.
Whether the music video’s interpretation for “Losing My Religion” had Michael Stipe’s papal blessing for being about religion, queerness and the reconciliation between the two, is irrelevant. Art is always subject to interpretation. Closeted people might think the song is about coming out. People having a crisis of faith might think the lyrics sing their pain. When realizing the context of the song being written by a closeted queer man, the interpretations aren’t so far-fetched.
“Losing My Religion” became R.E.M.'s biggest hit in the U.S., peaking at No. 4 on the Hot 100. It won two Grammys and is included on The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. The music video won six MTV Music Awards, including Best Direction and Video of the Year.
In 1994 when Stipe officially came out, he told Billboard, “Any long-standing R.E.M. fan who had not figured out I was queer before that point wasn’t looking very hard.”
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This is such a great write-up! Thank you for posting this. "Losing My Religion" has been part of the soundtrack of my life and its ability to be interpreted as a coming-out metaphor helped me on my own coming-out journey.
Having lived in Athens during the release of this album and witnessing its cultural reverberations, I read this and realized it is as if the song took on a life of its own in pop culture history. I took "losing my religion" first in its southern expression as in I'm about to blow a gasket. Great examples of the symbolism and iconography associated with this song.