Superman's Dead

In 1997, Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida wrote this song about how hard it is to be a kid growing up surrounded by media, TV images, and outside pressures to look or feel a certain way. When we caught up with Maida in 2012, he thought the song felt more relevant than ever before. Maida explained, "That's probably the genius of that song, not by any part on me, but just the fact that I think the trend has gotten even tougher for kids these days. It seems that if you talk about the world going faster, my analogy back then was the subway. Now it's like we've hit light speed with ADD and the technology. I mean, just to stay focused for 20 minutes, I can hardly do it. You're just inundated. Our senses are on overload, for sure."

Lead singer Raine Maida said of this song: "It's just about how hard it is for kids to grow up today. They're inundated with the media and images and cliques they try to have to fit into. Two images that are really strong for me lyrically are 'Ordinary's just not good enough today' and when I think of kids today, I would never think of a group of eight year olds going out to a baseball park and throwing the ball around. It doesn't happen anymore. I have a nine year old brother; he's either inside playing Nintendo or staying up late on a school night to watch Beavis And Butthead. And you juxtapose that against the old Superman, on the black and white series. He was also a real hero, good values, strong willed, a gentleman, but I think Beavis And Butthead wins today."