"Strange Currencies" is a song by R.E.M.. It was included on the album Monster and was also released as a single in 1995. The single hit #9 in the UK singles chart and peaked at #47 in the United States.
The song almost didn't make it on the album, due to its rhythmic similarities to another R.E.M. song, "Everybody Hurts." Yet Michael Stipe's melody, the band felt, was too good to pass over, so the original rhythm was slightly reworked. Stipe has said that it's 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 video, directed by Mark Romanek, was shot on the first anniversary of the death of Michael Stipe's close friend River Phoenix and features River Phoenix's last girlfriend, actress Samantha Mathis.
Read more about Strange Currencies: Track Listing
Famous quotes containing the word strange:
“A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)