Songfacts®:

• The lyrics were inspired when lead singer Michael Stipe saw the word "Daysleeper" on the door in an apartment and wondered about the life of the person inside.
• This was the first single released off the very experimental Up album. The song was chosen because it was the only thing that sounded anything like the R.E.M. of old. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Ian - melbourne, Australia, for above 2
• The lyrics are documenting the nocturnal trials of an international share trader on the verge of a breakdown.
• The music to this song was already written during the New Adventures in Hi-Fi sessions, but it wasn't released then, because Michael Stipe didn't have any lyrics to it. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Martin - Rostock, Germany
• "Lyrically, what can I say? I relate," Peter Buck wrote in the liner notes for the hits compilation In Time. "After all the years we've been a band, the one thing I know we have in common is that we stay up all night and sleep in the day. Also, we're all incredibly stubborn, so I guess that's two things. Anyway, I think this song perfectly captures that woozy, sea sick feeling you get during the daylight hours when you haven't slept."
• The music video was directed by the Snorri Brothers and shot at Broadway Studios in New York City, and follows Stipe as a night shift office worker. "I think it's about the sort of alien nature of a night shift," bassist Mike Mills told Q magazine. "The weird lighting, the fluorescent lights that you find and the isolation of working the graveyard shift - how it screws up your sleep patterns and that sort of thing, and I think that's the main image we're trying to get across."