Songfacts®:

• Temples close their Volcano album with this psych-pop anthem. "We're continually inundated with pressure in modern life to have to make something of ourselves and leave behind a legacy in this world," explained bassist Tom Warmsley to Noisey regarding the song's inspiration. "'Strange Or Be Forgotten' is our way of questioning the necessity of having to be all so individual and unique - when really it's our true selves that should be celebrated."
• James Bagsaw sings:
  
  I am living in the past
  Future came to me
  
  He explained the lyric to Billboard magazine: "With that I was just looking at, I don't want to say "celebrity" culture, but just popular culture, and how it's changed."
• The James Beale-directed video features an eclectic group of performers. Bagshaw said: "James Beale did a casting of all these people, but it wasn't like in a normal way. It wasn't actors. They scoured London through friends to find people that were interesting that weren't necessarily professionals. So he got different forms of expression out of it, and we kind of picked a few people from this casting that we thought would work effectively."
• James Beale explained the video's concept to Promo News. He said:
  
  "At it's core this video is about being comfortable and confident in yourself, no matter who you are. I think we have moved into an age where people are genuinely worried whether they are kooky or different enough to fit in. Shock value seems to be at an all time high, be strange or be forgotten. I wanted to cut through that and find a number of diverse people whose emotions manifest physically through some kind of performance. So that's what we did.
  
  We found eight characters, from bricklayers to drag queens, and asked them to come perform their own personal act. During their performances we shot a lot of stuff pretending to be practising or having camera difficulties to catch them unaware. Natural real character. We wanted to see different sides to each person not just their show face. Insecurities. Confidence. Anxiety. Then switch the act on. Empowerment. Emotion. Intensity. It's brilliant to be different if that is who you are, you should embrace it, but it's not all that matters. Hopefully I've somehow shown that."