On 27 May 2022, the band unveiled an edited version of "Strangers" for the first time during a DJ set at their Malta Weekender Festival.[4][5] The band were originally meant to release the single prior to the festival but were unable to due to not being able to shoot a music video in time.[6] On 22 June, they formally announced the official release date of "Strangers" for 6 July 2022.[7] On the day of the song's release, "Strangers" was premiered on BBC Radio 1 during Clara Amfo's "Future Sounds" segment as the "Hottest Record" ahead of the music video being released an hour later.[8][9]
"The song came out of a long writing trip in LA, and as soon as the lyric 'we're just a room full of strangers' came it took on such a deeper double meaning – how it would feel to be performing it live as that's what it is.. all strangers connecting on this mad level.. and that it was like rehab. Coming out of lockdown and the pandemic, everyone is recovering from something and I'm so aware that so many people struggle daily with differing traumas, and just wanted to stress that they're not in this alone… and we're a community here to help each other."[1]
In an interview with Maniacs, Fish expressed his feelings about what "Strangers" meant to him and the band in terms of the importance of their musical progression:
"Writing Strangers didn't feel like just writing another song, it felt like writing the most important song of our career and it felt like that on the last one and the one before that. We have that feeling all of the time. We don't want to drop a shit song. We don't want someone to say "oh that sounds like a boring progression". We do try and push it forward, because we care about the band and what we're putting out."[18]
Music video
The official music video for "Strangers" was premiered on YouTube one hour after the single was released on 6 July 2022. The video was directed by Thomas James, marking this the first time Sykes hasn't had music video directorial duties since "Mother Tongue".[19]
The band asked fans to anonymously share their own personal struggles and stories that the band used to inspire the disturbing narrative and visuals that transpire in the music video.[20] The music video for "Strangers" features disturbing visuals of people being overtaken by alien-like viruses in desolated warehouses, suffering in pain while their faces are being horrifically mutated into contorted figures. The band perform the song simultaneously as the video alternates between the various scenes. Revolver compared the video to the likes of a Saw film crossed with Alien.[21] The video was also noted of taking inspiration from the classic dark rock videos of the 1990s.[22]
^Garro, Adrian (6 July 2022). "Bring Me The Horizon Updates Mid-2000s Emo/Punk with Anthemic New Song "sTraNgeRs"; Tour This Fall". Rock Cellar. Retrieved 22 August 2022. Pairing an emo-styled pop-punk structure with a soaring chorus and lyrics about mental health and internal struggles, it's an example of the group taking what's been done before (in this case, the Warped Tour scene of the mid-2000s) and updating it with that BMTH energy.
^Aarons, Ricky (7 July 2022). "Bring Me The Horizon Share Radio-Rock Single 'sTrAnGeRs'". Wall of Sound. Retrieved 22 August 2022. Following on from 'Die4U', BMTH have continued down the pop-rock territory with 'sTrAnGeRs', with Oli Sykes leading with his raspy cleans and the band tuned into radio-rock mode.
^"ČNS IFPI" (in Czech). Hitparáda – Radio Top 100 Oficiální. IFPI Czech Republic. Note: Select 30. týden 2022 in the date selector. Retrieved 14 March 2023.
