Nothing gets people more worked up than when their favorite songs get covered, altered, edited, and/or screwed with. Herewith, to that end, is a musical reworking by Major Scaled TV, taking R.E.M.’s standard “Losing My Religion” from its familiar major scale to minor scale, creating a version that sounds… well… the same but different. Does that make sense? No? Listen and it will become more clear.

The video resurfaced this weekend, but it and similar scale alterations have been around since September, including Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”:

The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm”:

And Django Reinhardt’s suddenly inaptly named “Minor Swing”:

On Major Scaled TV’s Facebook page, people like the experiments and appreciate the idea of seeing what happens when scale is messed with, and that’s because the people coming to the Facebook page to comment are there because they already know what’s happening. On the video pages and at Open Culture, which posted the R.E.M. video and a short article about it, the comments include several folks who are livid at the desecration and not at all on board with the concept. But the originals still exist, and you can take the alterations as a goofy experiment to see what the changes would sound like and enjoy the parallel-universe versions or ignore them.

HT: Open Culture via Mindy Holahan