No two songs are ever written the same. By the time you’re belting out the lyrics of your new favorite song, there’s a possibility that they’re vastly different from what the artist originally wrote. That was the case with one of the most iconic R.E.M. songs of all time.
LISTEN: Michael Stipe talks with Rick Rubin on Broken Record
R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe was the latest guest on the Broken Record podcast as he told host Rick Rubin that a lyric we all know so well to the song “Losing My Religion” was once different.
Rubin began by asking Stipe if he knew the song was special when he was writing it, to which Stipe quickly responded with an emphatic “no.”
“We released it as a first single thinking it was going to set up the next song,” Stipe said. “It’s such a weird song, we had no idea it was going to resonate the way that it did.”
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Rubin then asked for Stipe’s memories of writing the track, which is where the change of lyrics comes into play. “I changed one lyric,” Stipe said. “‘That’s me in the corner / That’s me in the kitchen’, what I was pulling from was being the shy wallflower who hangs back at the party or at the dance and doesn’t go up to the person that you’re madly in love with and say ‘I’ve kind of got a crush on you, how do you feel about me?’”
“There’s this whole relationship that’s happening only in the person’s mind and he doesn’t know whether he’s said too much or hasn’t said enough,” he continued. “He’s like, in the corner of the dance floor watching everyone dance and watching the love of his life on the dance floor dancing with everyone cause that’s the most exciting person. Or, he’s in the kitchen behind the refrigerator.”
The big change? One word, which went on to have a pretty profound impact. “I changed ‘kitchen’ to ‘spotlight’ and instantly of course the song became about me, which it never was,” Stipe said.
“I don’t think, I mean, I’m pretty self-aware.”
Listen to R.E.M. Radio, now on Audacy
Before sharing the story of how he changed that one lyric in “Losing My Religion,” Stipe spoke about how the song launched R.E.M.’s popularity into another stratosphere.
“‘Losing My Religion’ was when I went from being someone that was recognized by people in my age group who loved a certain type of music to being universally, wildly, insanely famous,” he said. “The one thing, if I ever had an ambition, it might be to have a song of the summer and ‘Losing My Religion’ became R.E.M.’s song of the summer. That was thrilling.”
Listen to Stipe’s full interview on Broken Record above, check out more episodes of the podcast here, and be sure to listen to Audacy’s R.E.M. Radio where we’re playing the band’s biggest hits, the deep cuts, and all the artists they inspired.
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