Released December 11, 2001 Genre Alternative rock Label Radioactive Records | Format CD Length 4:16 Writer(s) Ed Kowalczyk | |
"Overcome" is a song by alternative rock group Live, which was released as the second single from their 2001 album, V.
Contents
Background
The song became associated with the September 11 attacks on the United States. Proceeds from the sale of the single were donated to charities to benefit the victims of the attack.
Chart positions
The song was a major hit in Belgium (#2) and The Netherlands (#3). It was not released as a single in the US, but reached #30 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Australian and German CD singles
- "Overcome" – 4:16
- "Overcome" (Acoustic Version) – 3:01
- "Simple Creed" (Acoustic Version) – 3:22
- "Overcome" (Video)
European CD single
- "Overcome" – 4:16
- "Overcome" (Acoustic Version) – 3:00
Music videos
The song spawned three music videos.
The first version was created by Steven Rosenbaum, founder and CEO of production company CameraPlanet, and consists of footage Rosenbaum's seven camera crews had shot around Ground Zero on 9/11. During that day, Rosenbaum had heard "Overcome" on the radio—the song had been picked up by several stations in the wake of the attacks—and in the evening he started editing the footage to the song. On September 13, after a total of seven hours of editing, he showed the finished video to a friend at VH1 which put it into rotation within an hour. It was subsequently also picked up by VH1's sister station MTV and both channels played it, along with only a handful of other videos, for close to a week.
After having seen the video, of whose existence they had no prior knowledge, on TV, the band decided to create their own version. They enlisted director Mary Lambert (who worked pro bono) to film singer Ed Kowalczyk performing the song under falling water in a Los Angeles studio on September 18. This material was then intercut with footage of world leaders and children from all over the world as well as clips of the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and other world events along with famous quotations such as "Imagine World Peace" and "The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself".
Being informed, on September 19, by the band's manager, Chris Harden, of the studio shoot, Rosenbaum objected: "[I]f you're gonna make a video, it has to feel honest, and putting something from the studio over those pictures is just wrong." Kowalczyk agreed, flew to New York the same day, and that evening Rosenbaum and his wife filmed him visiting Ground Zero, a fire station and various memorials. Clips of that footage were then interspersed into Rosenbaum's original video. Only this video was released on the Awake: The Best of Live DVD.