Shinier, happier people.

January 17, 2013 7:30 AM

Major scaled is a Vimeo user who digitally transposes sad songs into a major key. Here's their cheerful rendition of REM's Losing My Religion.

Also:
Metallica - Nothing Else Matters
The Doors - Riders of the Storm
Django Reinhardt - Minor Swing

posted by schmod (110 comments total)

Fantastic! Much as I love sad songs, I got a great deal of pleasure from listening to this.
posted by Nick Jordan at 7:33 AM on January 17, 2013

I quite like this!
posted by cooker girl at 7:34 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Huh. This only puts the exclamation point on the claim of me being tone deaf. I hear a difference from the originals, but I don't I'm not hearing a difference in the emotion of the song.
posted by NoMich at 7:36 AM on January 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

This is wonderful.
posted by DWRoelands at 7:46 AM on January 17, 2013

NoMich: I don't think the difference in REM hits very hard, at least to me. It is interesting to hear it be a little less sad.
posted by montag2k at 7:49 AM on January 17, 2013

I really get that unsettling "something's not quite right" vibe from these. On their own, they're pretty good. But, having become so familiar with the originals, I keep getting thrown-off by their relentless cheerfulness.

It's pretty impressive work, though.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:50 AM on January 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I had a friend in high school who would do this- you'd ask for a song and he'd play it on the piano, but switching between major and minor. When he did it then, it seemed funny and playful, but there's something really strangely unpleasant about it in the linked examples. I can't listen to more than a minute of any of them. Maybe I've just changed as a music listener?

As an aside, this friend went on to kick ass on Jeopardy! and eventually win the Tournament of Champions.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:51 AM on January 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

This is really cool. Thanks for posting.
posted by cribcage at 7:52 AM on January 17, 2013

THIS IS FASCINATING!
posted by wittgenstein at 7:53 AM on January 17, 2013

Do Elliot Smith next!
posted by DigDoug at 7:53 AM on January 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I love this! At long last, Mr. Mojo Risin' finally sounds like the lounge act he was destined to become.
posted by the painkiller at 7:54 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Wow. I feel like I'm being pulled in so many different directions. Songs I grew up with, where I have them almost imprinted in my being, and they're radically altered. 9/10 WOULD LISTEN AGAIN
posted by resurrexit at 7:57 AM on January 17, 2013

It's even better the other way around!

I spent a hilarious Christmas eve one time with some friends playing and singing happy 'major' key Christmas Carols as haunting, minor dirges. Jingle Bells, as I recall, was a real winner when played like that.

I want to see these people apply the reverse of their algorithms to something irrepressibly up, say, "Walking on Sunshine".
posted by dirtdirt at 7:59 AM on January 17, 2013 [7 favorites]

I've heard this done the other way - namely a cheerful birthday song redone in a minor key for a funeral, and it's haunting.

This is equally surreal (especially Losing My Religion since I've heard it so many times in the original - Out of Time being one of my favorite albums)... what's the opposite of haunting? Eerie, but happy - what's the word for that? Eepy?
posted by sonika at 8:01 AM on January 17, 2013

The REM one didn't seem to greatly affect the feel of the song that much, but the Metallica one turns it into (almost) an uplifting anthem. It ... confuses me.
posted by jferg at 8:02 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is like the uncanny valley of music.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:03 AM on January 17, 2013 [13 favorites]

Huh. This only puts the exclamation point on the claim of me being tone deaf. I hear a difference from the originals, but I don't I'm not hearing a difference in the emotion of the song.

Exactly this. It's the exact same emotional tone but the music is different.
posted by DU at 8:07 AM on January 17, 2013

dirtdirt: "I want to see these people apply the reverse of their algorithms to something irrepressibly up, say, "Walking on Sunshine"."

Type 0 Negative - Summer Breeze
posted by brokkr at 8:07 AM on January 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

I guess the obvious way to do this would be to use Melodyne on stems from Rock Band or wherever ... which is why I'm confused about why the bass in Losing My Religion is so screwed up leading into the "I thought that I heard ..." bits (listen at about 1:30 or so).

Unless they just snapped to the major scale and pitch corrected, harmony be damned.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:08 AM on January 17, 2013

This is great. (And Major Scaled's Vimeo avatar is perfect -- like correcting an accidental.)

Imagine doing the opposite to (or for, really) "Call Me Maybe". Or swap out the harmony entirely for something else, like when the church organist does a semi-proggy variation for verse 3 of a hymn.
posted by kurumi at 8:09 AM on January 17, 2013

There was a button on my old MIDI keyboard that would flip the keys in to a mirror image of a keyboard, such that left to right was now highest to lowest, and the actual note middle C was played by the E above it. Playing what looked like a C-major chord would produce A-minor instead. Mozart's K545 (normally in C major) played in this way sounded fantastic.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 8:12 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I like to do this in the other direction. My Gregorian Chant versions of "1999" and "My girl likes to party all the time" are big hits (in my own mind)
posted by zippy at 8:13 AM on January 17, 2013

The keyboard solo around 3 minutes in to Riders on the Storm is just amazing. It's like a cheerful jingle, a little bit of filler music for a sit-com.
posted by Nelson at 8:15 AM on January 17, 2013

Has the reverse of this that you're all talking about ever been a MetaFilterMusic challenge?
posted by LionIndex at 8:16 AM on January 17, 2013

Interesting. I like the defiant feel of "Nothing Else Matters" and the bubbliness of "Minor Swing" but "Losing My Religion" just sounds too strange to my ears, and "Riders on the Storm" was creeping me out to the point I couldn't finish it.
posted by EvaDestruction at 8:17 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

good lord, the intro to Nothing Else Matters suddenly sounds like a late-career Beatles single.
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 8:18 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

How strange the change from minor to major.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:22 AM on January 17, 2013 [7 favorites]

I'd forgotten just how damn trite The Doors movie was.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:27 AM on January 17, 2013

I like the defiant feel of "Nothing Else Matters" and the bubbliness of "Minor Swing" but "Losing My Religion" just sounds too strange to my ears, and "Riders on the Storm" was creeping me out to the point I couldn't finish it

I guess it's all a matter of perspective, because I felt that "Nothing Else Matters" stops being a good song when you move into the major scale, whereas "Losing My Religion" and Django's swing remain great in either key.

At least we can agree on "Riders On The Storm." That's just awkward and unpleasant.
posted by snottydick at 8:28 AM on January 17, 2013

Wow, "Riders On the Storm" is easily my favorite of the bunch here. The casual cheeriness as Jim Morrison sings the "killer on the road" verse is like comedy crack to me. It's going to get me in trouble at work.
posted by invitapriore at 8:31 AM on January 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

"... the vocal part is the exact same from the REM version...all the instruments are just playing in A Major instead of F# Minor. literally every chord is replaced by its relative major/minor chord, so instead of F#m to C#m for the main part, it's A Maj E Maj." vimeo.com/24938649
posted by hank at 8:32 AM on January 17, 2013

Hm, I don't know why I didn't catch that the first time through. The turnarounds still sound all wrong to me, though.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:37 AM on January 17, 2013

Thanks for filling out my 50th birthday party playlist.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:38 AM on January 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

The turnarounds still sound all wrong to me, though.

Maybe because of the V♭9? It doesn't really sound idiomatic to me either, and it's preceded by a major IV, which is a little jarring.
posted by invitapriore at 8:47 AM on January 17, 2013

I love this version of Losing My Religion. Haven't listened to that song in a while, but this post reminded me how much I still like REM. Time for some New Adventures in Hi-Fi...
posted by oulipian at 8:48 AM on January 17, 2013

1. I want to put these on a CD or something and play them around my friends, like on road trips or whatever, and see if anyone notices that something's off.

2. For all of them, but especially Losing My Religion, there is a bizarre cognitive dissonance where my brain knows exactly what it should be hearing, but it isn't, and it keeps trying to push the music into the box of its expectations, but it can't. I expected that to wear off quickly but it kept going, and now my head feels a little funny like I was staring at one of those optical illusions that looks like it's moving but isn't. The best way I can explain this is that it's the sound equivalent of when you pick up a glass of what you believe is Coke, but it's really root beer, and for the first couple of seconds it does not taste like either Coke or root beer. Except that only last a few seconds, and this lasted for the entire song, and it was weird.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 8:48 AM on January 17, 2013 [7 favorites]

I felt that "Nothing Else Matters" stops being a good song when you move into the major scale, whereas "Losing My Religion" and Django's swing remain great in either key.

It's not a comment on the quality of the shifted song, really, just whether I could listen to it. I think taking them into major keys makes both "Nothing Else Matters" and "Minor Swing" sound substantially more generic. "Losing My Religion" is not forgettable in a major key, but it got way more challenging for me to listen to -- on preview, very much like FAMOUS MONSTER describes.
posted by EvaDestruction at 8:52 AM on January 17, 2013

Shit, nevermind, that's just a diminished chord on the leading tone, I don't know what I was hearing.
posted by invitapriore at 8:54 AM on January 17, 2013

It makes Losing My Religion sound kind of tedious and like the key is always about to change but never does.
posted by AnnElk at 8:55 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I like this. But I much prefer songs in major keys. I'd say it's a safe bet that of all the songs I dislike, 90% of them are in a minor key. (although I do like songs in minor keys, but usually only listen to in certain "moods")

I wish Internet music services like Pandora had an option you could choose when you log in so it would "learn" whether you like major or minor keys, what those specific keys are and what your preferred BPMs are, for use when "suggesting" new music.

A simple data bit tagged to the song for its Major/Minor Key (A-G) and BPM would probably do it.
posted by Debaser626 at 9:03 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Yeah, my immediate feeling with the Losing My Religion switcheroo was that it was a plausible alternate-universe take if Stipe et al had just not quite hit the nail on the head. It sounds like a lot of other sort of jangly pop rock ballads, a little too major key for the emotional tone of the thing. Though in practice I'd want to nudge a couple things about the arrangement if I were gonna try and take this and actually perform it. Makes some of the changes a little stronger for something sitting in the major.

I've always sort of felt like Luka was a song that didn't know what it was supposed to be, in that way—an overly cheery major-key, major-scale tune with shiny lines running through it about some neighbor kid being abused. A good piece of songwriting and production work in general, but just sort of goofyfooted at the end of it all.
posted by cortex at 9:03 AM on January 17, 2013

I wish Internet music services like Pandora had an option you could choose when you log in so it would "learn" whether you like major or minor keys, what those specific keys are and what your preferred BPMs are, for use when "suggesting" new music.

The good news is that that data, at least, is something folks are looking at even if just-press-pray services like Pandora etc. aren't exposing that functionality to users; Echo Nest's API into their music database makes it actually pretty doable to query up a custom playlist parameterized by BPM and key, for example.
posted by cortex at 9:06 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I like this. But I much prefer songs in major keys. I'd say it's a safe bet that of all the songs I dislike, 90% of them are in a minor key. (although I do like songs in minor keys, but usually only listen to in certain "moods")

I've mostly found that I'm kind of tired of the ♭6 scale degree in an already minor context. It just doesn't sit right with me, like diner eggs that are just a little too greasy. Though, now that I'm thinking about it, I actually still remember when I played a m7 chord for the first time and I was just astounded at how much better and richer it sounded than the unadorned triad. It makes my having gotten into jazz seem almost inevitable.
posted by invitapriore at 9:16 AM on January 17, 2013

I wish Internet music services like Pandora had an option you could choose when you log in so it would "learn" whether you like major or minor keys, what those specific keys are and what your preferred BPMs are, for use when "suggesting" new music.

This is a really frustrating aspect of Pandora. Here's how Pandora works, as I've gleaned from email exchanges with them:

"Offline" steps:
1. Classify each song along many criteria
2. Form a big graph of songs, connecting songs in the graph if they are similar enough in their classifications

"Online" steps (while playing a station):
1. Start with an empty queue of songs in the player.
2. Whenever the player doesn't have anything in its queue, it selects a thumbed-up or seeded song from that station
3. Queue up three more songs connected to the song you picked in online step 2 that haven't been thumbed-down.

What this means is that the criteria never get exposed to the user! I'd love to be able to create channels that, for example, just never select a song with vocals; they distract me from my work. But Pandora will just stupidly walk around its graph and the only input I can give it is "I like/dislike this node on the graph for this channel". Poop, I say!
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:16 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Aside from wanting the criteria exposed in some way, my other most-wanted feature for Pandora is a "move to other channel" button. Sometimes I like a song in general, but don't want it in the context of the channel that's playing. To move a song, right now you have to thumb it down in the current channel, then edit the channel you want to move it to and add it as a liked song (which requires you to find the song again).
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:19 AM on January 17, 2013

I was thinking of making a post of it, but this seems like a perfectly good place to put Rockabye Baby Music.
posted by moonmilk at 9:24 AM on January 17, 2013

Anyone else having trouble loading up the REM song? Looks like it was just taken down.
posted by mark7570 at 9:25 AM on January 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

what the mainframe? i must have missed this joke when it made the rounds..
posted by fatbaq at 9:29 AM on January 17, 2013

Deleted! Oh bummer!
posted by chara at 9:37 AM on January 17, 2013

Seems like then REM tune was removed. The rest remain. Here's a link to the channel page.
posted by to sir with millipedes at 9:54 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

If they got a takedown from REM's camp, I can only imagine what will come from Metallica when they get wind of this.
posted by bendybendy at 9:57 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

dirtdirt:
"I spent a hilarious Christmas eve one time with some friends playing and singing happy 'major' key Christmas Carols as haunting, minor dirges"

This would be the Abney Park Christmas album.
posted by charred husk at 10:02 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Daaang, I *really* wanted to hear the R.E.M. one!
posted by iamkimiam at 10:03 AM on January 17, 2013

Yeah, same here.

Then again, maybe not. I couldn't listen to the Doors all the way through in one sitting. After a minute or two of play, my brain starts to scream "THIS ISN'T RIGHT"
posted by Doohickie at 10:20 AM on January 17, 2013

I'm going to be humming a strangely upbeat "Riders on the Storm" all day at work.
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:20 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

So, uh, anyway to capture these for later listening?
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:23 AM on January 17, 2013

In a similar, yet Yankovician theme You Da F**kin Best - Drake
posted by Debaser626 at 10:25 AM on January 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I loved the Doors one. Will definitely listen to a couple more later. If there is a good Elton John one somebody could point to I bet he would work pretty swell in this mode.
posted by bukvich at 10:32 AM on January 17, 2013

Wow, this is the most amazing thing I've come across in a while.
posted by COBRA! at 10:36 AM on January 17, 2013

The other song, by Django Reinhardt, ends up sounding like the treacly Hawaiian music you'd hear in a hotel lobby.
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:43 AM on January 17, 2013

Page not found

Sorry, "Major Scaled #2 : REM - "Recovering My Religion"" was deleted at 12:01:56 Thu Jan 17, 2013.

We have no more information about it on our mainframe or elsewhere.

posted by Sys Rq at 10:49 AM on January 17, 2013

That version of RIDERS ON THE STORM is so much better than the original. Morrison should have gone the lounge singer route. He'd still be packing them in on the Borscht Belt.
posted by unSane at 10:49 AM on January 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

These are really wonderful pics and songs. I like them.
posted by caladesi at 10:53 AM on January 17, 2013

REM Mirror
posted by tresbizzare at 10:57 AM on January 17, 2013

REM Mirror

That's just an embed of the same video. It's deleted too.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:00 AM on January 17, 2013

Sorry, it worked for me for some reason and I never saw the original link before it was taken down.
posted by tresbizzare at 11:02 AM on January 17, 2013

I've been taking guitar lessons for a few months to fill in all of the gaps I've developed after 20ish years of teaching myself to play... For the most part, the lessons have really focused on music theory. I have a lesson tonight, and I think it'll largely be half an hour of talking about these videos.
posted by COBRA! at 11:14 AM on January 17, 2013

The Doors one sounds like Interpol.
posted by Saddo at 11:31 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

These made me laugh out loud.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:34 AM on January 17, 2013

Between this thread and the MeTa about the color shift in the AskMe green background, I have learned that I infinitely more skilled at detecting subtle variations with my eyes than I ever will be with my ears.

Also, if somebody could start a MeFi Project of reinterpreting songs in major and minor keys and then post it on Music, we could have a meetup IRL and the circle would be complete. Please start with R.E.M., as I never got to hear it. I await the reaffirmation of my faith in you.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:11 PM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Did anyone happen to download it? I grabbed the Metallica one just in case...
posted by djeo at 12:12 PM on January 17, 2013

s/Metallica one/other three/
posted by djeo at 12:18 PM on January 17, 2013

http://www.frequency.com/video/major-scaled-2-rem-recovering-my/14399508
posted by djeo at 12:34 PM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Holy damn, the Doors one! What an improvement! Whee!

So great. Sounds a bit Stereolab-ish in places.
posted by jokeefe at 12:40 PM on January 17, 2013

I can't not tap my feet to the Doors track. It really feels upbeat now. What a great concept. Mathmatical!

Zippy -- You're in for a treat (?) if you search for "Gregorian" on youtube.
posted by jclarkin at 12:46 PM on January 17, 2013

Finnish Musician Anssi Kela did this to some heavy metal riffs some years ago.
posted by Authorized User at 12:46 PM on January 17, 2013

I'm going to be humming a strangely upbeat "Riders on the Storm" all day at work.

I'm on my fourth playthrough! It rocks!
posted by jokeefe at 12:59 PM on January 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

These are amazing, but will it work with something in D minor, the saddest of all keys?
posted by TwoWordReview at 12:59 PM on January 17, 2013

Putting Losing My Religion into the major drained it of all its power, for me. It was weird; it suddenly sounded banal and unremarkable.
posted by jokeefe at 1:04 PM on January 17, 2013

Frequency is on scheduled maintenance, now. It's a freakin' conspiracy, man.
posted by dhartung at 1:13 PM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is awesome. REM's losing my religion evokes a completely different emotion from the original. From "doomed sadness" to "happy abandon" with only a trace of melancholy.
posted by gadget_gal at 1:28 PM on January 17, 2013

I'm on my fourth playthrough! It rocks!

♫ ♫ There's a killer on the road! ♫ ♫
posted by KokuRyu at 1:36 PM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Just saw the alt links.
posted by synthetik at 1:36 PM on January 17, 2013

Mental note: Check the tags first...
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:42 PM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Well, February's challenge on MeFiMusic is sorted anyway.

(I have already worked out a jaunty version of Radiohead's HIGH AND DRY on the banjo)
posted by unSane at 2:33 PM on January 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

GAH! Frequency, nooooo!
posted by iamkimiam at 3:04 PM on January 17, 2013

Somehow this version of R.E.M. is working as of this moment. Get it while it's hot.
posted by 2bucksplus at 3:04 PM on January 17, 2013

Just listened to 2bluckplus' version of the link and...

No no no. For this to work in a major key, different instruments are needed and the tempo needs to be changed. Indeed, a different vocal track (and perhaps even different singer) are needed. As it stands, this change is just enough to make the song sound off, but not enough to make it sound cheerful.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:17 PM on January 17, 2013

It's now cold. :(

(I feel like I'm playing Whack-A-Mole. Badly.)
posted by iamkimiam at 4:29 PM on January 17, 2013

They turned the Metallica song into a Queensryche song.
posted by 4ster at 5:07 PM on January 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

Shifting from minor to major key is practically a stylistic trademark of 1960s sunshine pop and Now Sound cover versions.

Here's the Sunshine Company's peppier cover of the moody Beatles B-side, Rain. For the really adventurous, there's also Tony Bennett's ill-advised cover of Eleanor Rigby.
posted by jonp72 at 7:09 PM on January 17, 2013

That REM remake is SO VASTLY SUPERIOR to the original! They should have made Losing My Religion in this key. Massive earworm. I LOVE THIS!

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the Doors. That one was just icepick creepy.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 7:19 PM on January 17, 2013

They turned the Metallica song into a Queensryche song.

*youtubes the fuck out of Queensryche*
posted by Sys Rq at 7:27 PM on January 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

I loved this post and desire MOAR. Listened to all of these several times today. I don't see much love here for the Metallica one. I thought that one was particularly good, it made me happy. I grew up listening to a lot of Metallica on the radio and finding them really obnoxious, but I liked this a lot. I appreciate artful discordance, but I also appreciate when things "match" and I liked how the sound of the song is now something like "hopeful in spite of itself" in a way that matches the lyrics.

But anyway, MOAR.
posted by bleep at 7:29 PM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Is that high C or vitamin D?
posted by Brocktoon at 9:09 PM on January 17, 2013

LP, you have it exactly backwards. The Doors one was a vast leap forward. The REM cover was no fun. Please keep up.
posted by jokeefe at 9:20 PM on January 17, 2013

"I like sad songs. They make me want to lie on the floor."
posted by neuron at 10:21 PM on January 17, 2013

For posterity, audio only (get 'em while they're hot): "Recovering My Religion", "Nothing Else Majeur".

It looks like the first one is in the process of being memory-holed by Vimeo's CDN right now. The Vimeo site knows it's deleted, but the "mirror" sites can still sometimes find it.
posted by neckro23 at 11:31 PM on January 17, 2013 [6 favorites]

I just woke up, saw this post, listened to the song! neckro23, you made my day, thanks! I love the ending of Losing my Religion...absolutely perfect.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:17 AM on January 18, 2013

FYI: MajorScaled reposted the "Recovering My Religion" video on their Facebook page.
posted by cowboy_sally at 9:06 AM on January 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

My housemates are watching (actually, blasting) Silence of the Lambs downstairs and it just occurred to me how badly I want to see this whole film again, in a major key.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:51 PM on January 18, 2013

Having finally heard the R.E.M. song... the interesting thing to me is that the Doors and Metallica songs sounded hilarious and wrong; this one just sounds like a different R.E.M. song. Meaning, I guess, that they had a lot more range in terms of what you could expect from them.
posted by COBRA! at 3:03 PM on January 18, 2013

I know what you mean. I really think that It's The End of the World As We Know It should be changed to a minor key, as well as Shiny, Happy People. And Everybody Hurts to major. Then the world will be balanced and hey, new R.E.M. songs to boot!
posted by iamkimiam at 3:21 PM on January 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Everybody Hurts already is in a major key, though; it's just I / IV / I / IV in the verse, ii / V / ii / V in the chorus. R.E.M. is just one of those bands, man.
posted by cortex at 4:29 PM on January 18, 2013

See, this is where we need that minor/major key reference thing you or somebody else mentioned above. I have no clue. I just know, "song sound happy, song sound sad" and I want happy song to sound sad and sad song to sound happy. I also want more R.E.M. songs.
posted by iamkimiam at 4:33 PM on January 18, 2013

"Recovering My Religion" sounds like what "Losing My Religion" would have sounded like if REM had made it ten years later.
posted by afiler at 3:59 PM on January 19, 2013 [4 favorites]

"Recovering My Religion" sounds like what "Losing My Religion" would have sounded like if REM had made it ten years later.

That's funny, I was thinking it sounded like something from their first album.
posted by bonobothegreat at 3:13 PM on January 21, 2013

How Major-Key Version of R.E.M.’s ‘Losing My Religion’ Was Made.
posted by fings at 10:54 AM on January 24, 2013 [3 favorites]

Major Scaled has now re-uploaded "Recovering my Religion" to their Vimeo page.
posted by JiBB at 12:25 PM on January 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

As promised, this is now February's Mefi Music Challenge.
posted by unSane at 1:10 PM on January 30, 2013 [1 favorite]