Steve Baltin from Cash Box named "Strange Currencies" "maybe the sweetest song" from the Monster album.

"[5] 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.

[7] 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.

[...] 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".

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.