Hootie & The Blowfish officially release R.E.M. 'Losing My Religion' cover

Hootie & The Blowfish have officially released their version of R.E.M.‘s ‘Losing My Religion’.

• Read more: R.E.M. tell us about 25 years of ‘Monster’: “We needed swagger – to be loud and raw”

The band have been performing the cover at their live shows for a number of years but yesterday (April 17) they decided to share a studio version of the song.

“When we were cutting our teeth as a band, almost every night fans would hear us on stage covering R.E.M.,” Hootie & the Blowfish’s Darius Rucker said in a statement. “‘Losing My Religion’ is a song that when you first listen to it, you can feel the struggle, the back-and-forth.”

He added: “Plus, Peter Buck wrote the song on mandolin, and being in the south, it’s a lot of fun to perform live. We’re releasing it as a cover with Amazon Music as I think it’s still as thrilling to people today as it was when it was first released.”

Listen to Hootie & The Blowfish’s cover of ‘Losing My Religion’ here.

You can also watch the band’s 2019 performance of the song at Dallas’ Dos Equis Pavilion below:

Last month, R.E.M‘s Michael Stipe has delivered a brief rendition of the band’s seminal hit ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’ in a new coronavirus safety video.

The group’s former frontman sang the 1987 track’s chorus in a new Twitter video, which saw him urging fans to keep safe as coronavirus continues to spread across the US.

Meanwhile, Michael Stipe has said he’s “proud” he was always open about his sexuality in a new interview.

Speaking to Billboard, the former R.E.M. frontman, who came out as gay in 1994, said he believed the other members of the band knew about his sexuality long before he came out.