Stipe, the leader of R.E.M., was inspired to write this song as, walking down the stairs of an apartment building, he saw a sign attached to a door of one of the apartments that read "daysleeper".
He immediately tried to make as little noise as possible so as not to wake up that poor person who was trying to rest during the day, since he evidently worked at night.
The music video was shot in stop-frame photography by the Icelandic Snorri brothers (not real brothers).
They also created the so-called Snorricam, a body-mounted camera rig that fixedly frames the face of the person wearing it, so that when the person moves in the frame, it is the background behind them that moves.
It wasn't the first time the stop-motion technique had been used in a music video, but I think it's particularly spot on here, along with the livid atmosphere of the neon-lit interior, as Stipe himself called it "druggy".
It struck me when I saw it at the time, in addition to the beauty of the song and the video, because it reminded me of the effects of repeated long sleep deprivations on my brain.
A few years earlier, I had been caring for my father (who was hospitalized), several nights a week, and I would sometimes stay awake for much more than 24 hours straight, helping myself with massive doses of caffeine.
And the effect on the perception of reality was very similar to that shown in the video.
The balance of neurotransmitters goes out of whack, and the fluid perception of reality seems to break into micro-moments, just as if the brain can no longer organize perceptions fluidly.
As if it could only focus on one sense at a time, sight, hearing, touch, and was no longer able to unite everything.
And even processing information from a single sense was too much work, as if it had to take your attention away every few thousandths of a second to rest.
The song and video also effectively convey the sense of alienation and isolation of those forced to work at night, while everyone else follows a natural rhythm
