Losing My Religion

The lead single from Out of Time was released by Warner Bros. on February 19, 1991. It was recorded in September and October 1990 at Bearsville, in John Keane's Athens studio and at Soundscape in Atlanta, with strings arranged by Mark Bingham and played in part by members of the Atlanta Symphony. Buck played mandolin and electric guitar, Mills played bass and keyboards and wrote a string arrangement, and Peter Holsapple played acoustic guitar. Stipe described it as a song about romantic expression and unrequited love, a classic obsession pop song in the vein of The Police's Every Breath You Take.

It reached No. 4 on the Hot 100 after 21 weeks, spent eight weeks at No. 1 on Modern Rock, and went to No. 19 in Britain, No. 11 in Australia and No. 3 in France. It was No. 1 in Belgium (Flanders) and the Netherlands. Tarsem Singh directed the video, which won Video of the Year and five other awards at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. At the 1992 Grammys it won Best Short Form Music Video and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, and it was nominated for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2017, and in September 2020 became the first R.E.M. video to pass a billion views on YouTube.

Buck wrote the main riff and chorus on a mandolin he had just bought, recording as he practiced in front of the television, and said the riff was inspired by the theme from the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. A July 1990 demo made in Athens had the working title Sugar Cane and used banjo and Hammond organ. Mills wrote a bassline inspired by John McVie of Fleetwood Mac, and Holsapple was brought in on acoustic guitar because the track lacked midrange. Stipe sang his vocal in a single take. The title is a Southern expression for losing one's temper or feeling frustrated and desperate. Warner Bros. was wary of choosing so unconventional a track as the lead single.

Unlike earlier R.E.M. videos, the clip has Stipe lip-syncing. Tarsem Singh recreated a scene from Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, drew on a Garcia Marquez story and on Caravaggio, and filled the clip with religious imagery. The song placed second in the 1991 Pazz & Jop video poll, and Rolling Stone ranked it No. 169 in 2004 and No. 112 in 2024. Mills later said that without it Out of Time would have sold two or three million copies instead of about ten.

Live and covers

On November 10, 1991, the band played it with members of the Atlanta Symphony for MTV's tenth anniversary at the Madison Morgan Cultural Centre in Madison, Georgia. A live version from the Capital Plaza Theater in Charleston, West Virginia, on April 28, 1992, was a single B-side. Setlist.fm counts 532 performances. Cory Monteith sang it as Finn Hudson on Glee in 2010, reaching No. 60 on the Hot 100, and Trivium and Dan Mangan have recorded it too.