Losing My Religion (R.E.M.) Guitar Lesson with TAB

In this guitar lesson, we look at TAB for how Losing My Religion can be played on one acoustic guitar, incorporating all melodies!

Losing My Religion | TAB

Losing My Religion’s chords don’t break any harmonic rules, and most of them are in the open position so this should be pretty easy.

If we include the extensions, the various melodies will pop out. There is one caveat here and that is how we strum it, you must use TAB to see what strings to hit to make the melodies sound right.

Let’s look at each section and you’ll soon see what I’m trying to say. Here’s the intro.

A few things here are important to point out. The notation saying x means a muted strum, these fall on the 2 and 4, where the snare drum goes.

You must play all strums with a pendulum up and down movement of 8th notes. For the first chord, this means that the last note is played with an upstroke which may feel odd at first as it’s a low string.

Start practicing this section very slowly, it will feel natural if you give it time.

Here’s Losing My Religion’s verse in TAB.

The strumming for the first line is the same twice. With a bass note starting it, there is no alternating bass line as that would make it sound country.

On the second line, alternating bass works, notice how the second Dm/A is later in the bar. We don’t play alternating bass in the last bar.

Here’s another way to strum that first line of the verse.

Do aim to play both ways exactly as described in the TAB. Then, when it feels natural, just let it happen, you may blend them without even noticing.

Here’s the bridge, it’s the same chords as the intro, but played differently.

Again, make sure you strum the Dsus2 with an upstroke on the last note. The Am – Am/B etc is again different and there are no muted strums on the F chord.

Here’s the instrumental section. You must play this as written for that mandolin melody to pop out.

Notice how the second line is almost the same but with different bass notes apart from the last 8th note of bars 1 and 4. The first time we changed it to reach the Am/G bass, the second time we didn’t have to change it.

Finally, here’s the outro. When you can play all sections comfortably, play along with R.E.M.

Losing My Religion TAB | Related Pages

Losing My Religion | Chords + Lyrics

You can learn to play Losing My Religion by R.E.M. using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, and the original recording.

| Am | Am | Em | Em |
Oh, life is bigger, it’s bigger than you and you are not me…

Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics

When you can play Losing My Religion's chords, try these five tunes from the songbook.

R.E.M. tunes

Formed in 1980, R.E.M. spent a decade on the road honing their craft before they took over the world with the album Out Of Time.

Their best tunes include The One I Love, Shiny Happy People, Losing My Religion, Drive, Man On The Moon, and Everybody Hurts.

R.E.M on the web

About me | Dan Lundholm

Dan Lundholm wrote this guitar lesson and TAB for Losing My Religion.

This guitar lesson by Dan Lundholm features TAB and covers Losing My Religion. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.

Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.