Strange Currencies

"Strange Currencies" is a song by American rock band R.E.M. It was included on their ninth studio album, Monster (1994), and was released as the album's fourth single on April 18, 1995, by Warner Bros. Records. The song reached number nine on the UK Singles Chart and peaked at number 47 in the United States. Like "Everybody Hurts" on R.E.M.'s previous album, it has a time signature of. The song's music video was directed by Mark Romanek.

Composition
Stipe has said that the song is about "when somebody actually thinks that, through words, they're going to be able to convince somebody that they are their one and only."

The song almost did not make it on the album due to its rhythmic similarities to "Everybody Hurts." Yet Michael Stipe's melody, the band felt, was too good to pass over, so the original rhythm was slightly reworked.

Critical reception
Steve Baltin from Cash Box named "Strange Currencies" "maybe the sweetest song" from the Monster album. He explained, "There's a simple longing, mixed with reassuring, in the way Michael Stipe sings "I tripped and fell/did I fall/what I want to feel I want to feel it now." A sparse but lovely melody accompanies Stipe's tour de force. [...] Of course it will be a smash at the usual outlets, it's R.E.M.; but look for this one to break out at Top 40 and maybe even at Adult/Contemporary." Chuck Campbell from Knoxville News Sentinel said it's the song "with perhaps the most enduring appeal" on the album, declaring it as "a languid track on which Stipe explores the enigma of a would-be lover with alternating fits of determination and vulnerability." Jennifer Nine from Melody Maker complimented it as "buoyant". Another Melody Maker editor, Andrew Mueller, wrote that it "puts the accompaniment to "Everybody Hurts" through a cheap and brutal amplifier and replaces universal balm with the self-abasing heroics of the unrequited admirer. "Fool might be my middle name", he sings, gloriously, uselessly besotted, "I tripped and I fell...you will be mine". Ah, the pathos, the hopeless deluded joy of it all. Lovely." Barbara Ellen from NME said, "Like Morrissey, Michael Stipe is an expert on the agonies of obsessive, unrequited love. [...] The lyrics of "Strange Currencies" are among his most deceptively simple and potent yet, encapsulating all the need, hope and dread of a painful, secret crush". Howard Hampton from Spin felt it's better than its "tearjerking predecessor", "Everybody Hurts", describing it as a "tremulous, pledging-my-soul" track.

Music video
The accompanying music video for "Strange Currencies", directed by Mark Romanek, was shot on the first anniversary of the death of Michael Stipe's close friend River Phoenix and features Phoenix's last girlfriend, actress Samantha Mathis. It also features an early performance by actor and model Norman Reedus. It is in black and white, and shows the band playing in an industrial area. The images of the band are interspersed with other shots, some of which, such as a child playing with a dead bird, suggest urban decay.

A second music video for a remix that incorporates live footage from Road Movie and the second season of The Bear was released on June 27, 2023. A lyric video for the Monster 25th anniversary remix was published on July 20, 2023.

Live performances
"Strange Currencies" was played live frequently throughout the Monster tour but was not performed live again until 2003, when the song would then only appear on and off throughout various set lists until their final tour in 2008.

Track listings

 * US CD and cassette single, UK 7-inch and cassette single
 * 1) "Strange Currencies" (album version) – 3:52
 * 2) "Strange Currencies" (instrumental version) – 3:52


 * UK maxi-CD and 12-inch single, UK and Australian CD single
 * 1) "Strange Currencies" – 3:52
 * 2) "Drive" (live) – 4:17 (4:10 in UK)
 * 3) "Funtime" (live) – 2:16 (2:20 in UK)
 * 4) "Radio Free Europe" (live) – 4:43

Note: All live tracks were recorded at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, on November 19, 1992. The performance, a benefit for Greenpeace, was recorded on a solar-powered mobile studio.


 * 2023 digital edition, released to coincide with the second season of The Bear
 * 1) "Strange Currencies" (25th anniversary remix by Scott Litt) – 3:52
 * 2) "Strange Currencies" – 3:52
 * 3) "Strange Currencies" (Live version from Road Movie) – 4:13