Db major · Camelot 3B · 175 BPM
Superman's Dead
by Our Lady Peace
- 175
- BPM
- Db major
- Key
- 3B
- Camelot
- 25
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Raine Maida was toying with an acoustic guitar during a break late in the recording of Clumsy when producer Arnold Lanni overheard him. Lanni had stepped away to the bathroom while the band tracked a song called "Hello Oskar", and what he heard from Maida caught his ear. When he asked about it, Maida said it was just an idea he was playing around with. Lanni liked it enough that over the following day or so the band and he developed the sketch into "Superman's Dead".
Our Lady Peace released the track on January 16, 1997 as the lead single from Clumsy, one week ahead of the album. It climbed to number 17 on the Canadian RPM Top Singles Chart and spent five weeks at number 2 on the RPM Alternative Chart. In the United States it reached number 11 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and number 14 on the Mainstream Rock chart. Between 1995 and 2016 it ranked as the 15th most played song by a Canadian artist on Canadian rock radio.
The band viewed the song as a dark statement on how much television children watch and what that programming contains. Maida, who grew up watching the black-and-white Superman, said there was something honest about the old show that had since evolved into Beavis and Butt-Head. He added that youthful images are defined by television, shaping how kids think and what they wear.
Superman's Dead runs at 175 BPM, the tempo of drum and bass and jungle. In classical terms it sits in vivace territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.37 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 343 ms. It is in Db major, Camelot 3B, which shares its notes with Bb minor and mixes cleanly with F# major and Ab major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.