Throw away the radio suitcase
That keeps you awake
Hide the telephone, the telephone, telephone in case
You realize that sometimes you're just not okay
You level off, you level off, you level off
And it's not all right now
You need to understand
There's nothing strange about this
You need to know your friends
You need to know that
I'll be waving my hand watching you drown
Watching you scream
Quiet or loud
And maybe you should sleep
And maybe you just need a friend
As clumsy as you've been
There's no one laughing
You will be safe in here
You will be safe in here
Throw away this very old shoelace
That tripped you again
Try and shrug it off, shrug it off, shrug it off
It's only skin now
You need to understand
There's nothing fake about this
You need to let me in
I'm watching you
And I'll be waving my hand
Watching you drown
Watching you scream
No one's around
And maybe you should sleep
And maybe you just need a friend
As clumsy as you've been
There's no one laughing
You will be safe in here
You will be safe in...
I'll be waving my hand
Watching you drown
Watching you scream
Quiet or loud
And maybe you should sleep
And maybe you just need a friend
As clumsy as you've been
There's no one laughing
You will be safe in here
You will be safe in here
You will be safe in here
In here
In here
In here
In here
In here
In here
Our Lady Peace, Extreme Magazine, 1997:
With 'Clumsy' it orginally started off acoustically and it didn't have as much impact as we wanted it to. It didn't set enough of a mood. So that piano was just recorded regular and Arn has this fancy machine that he twirls. We were all sitting on the couch putting the piano through all these different effects thinking what could we do and then Arn started turning this one wheel and that was it.
Raine Maida, Extreme Magazine, 1997:
It's just about perspective. At different times of the day you see the same things differently. It's just about standing back sometimes trying to really see what's happening and get to the heart of whatever it may be. It's important to be analytical about things. I think sometimes people are a little temperamental or judgemental. Sometimes the energy you have stored up in your body comes out the wrong way and you have to be aware of the things you say to people and the way you view your problems. That's the whole 'watching' thing. You can see someone and they might appear to be waving you good-bye and you can walk away and they'll end up drowning, or you can see it from a different perspective and see that they are drowning and they need your help and you need to jump in and save them.
Arnold Lanni, Canadian Musician, April 1997:
At the beginning, we recorded a sampled piano, put it into my workstation, screwed around with the motion -- in other words, instead of going left to right, we'd stop it, start it, stop it, start it, so that it sounded like a toy piano. We EQ'd it, put it in the space and made it sound like someone just stepped on it. There's one part in the song where we had that middle breakdown. We didn't want to do a guitar, because we wanted the guitar to keep playing and the band wants to be able to play everything live, so that was like a turning point. We tried a whole slew of things and one night, I said, let's pick up the 58, we'll sing into an Eventide 4000, which is an effects processors, found a couple of patches, fooled around with them, and tried to emulate a cross between a guitar and a kazoo, but with the effect of the voice.
Mike Turner, Words and Music, July 1997:
We have to find a sound that sets a mood. The piano you hear at the beginning has a dusty, front-parlor-of-your-grandmother's house feel. We actually used a Kurzweil K2500, sampled it into an Eventide 4000, then played it back using the scrub wheel. We went through so much incredible high-tech wackiness to get those four noes, but it is what we needed. I think vibe and feel are almost as important as a good melody. We desperately searched for those things.
Raine Maida, Detroit News, 5 Mar. 1998:
It's all about perceptions. I think a lot of times people tend to not give people the benefit of the doubt. It's a lot easier to get angry at someone and shrug them off, than really spend the time and put the effort into feeling out what may be troubling them or disturbing them or building a nurturing relationship with someone that you care about. Consoling is not an easy thing to do on a real level. It's easy to hold someone for two minutes, but to really put in the effort to build a bridge or something that can help them get out of a hole is tough.
Raine Maida, Circus Magazine, Apr. 1998:
There's a connection between the song Clumsy and it being the title of the album. There's a line in the song that says: "I'll b waving my hand/wathing you drown/wathing you scream," it's about seeing something, but not seeing it for what it really is. It is about decisions. That image of "waving your hand/watching you drown," is about seeing someone in the water, they're waving at you and you're just waving back, not realizing they are drowning. Or, you think they're drowning, but they're just waving at you. It's those weird situations where you just take something at fac value, but you can be so wrong. You have to look deeper and question things. I think it's something that too many people don't do these days.
We're so inundated with fucking media, and you just believe it. How many times, not to just focus on us, have we read an interview or an article where we've been completely misquoted? We're just some small band, you think about some of the major players and you really have to question how true it all is.