I’ve been listening to Our Lady Peace since the late 1990s and I’ve always loved their music. I can’t remember exactly when I first heard their music, but it might have been when one of my friends played me their song “Clumsy” (which was released in 1997). I was still at varsity and going through an inquisitive phase at the time.
I started digging around on the internet (which was way more limited back then than it is nowadays) and started reading up on them (thanks to Netscape Navigator) and listening to their music (thanks Napster).
I got hooked to their tunes and I’ve been following them since then. There’s probably a lot that you don’t know about this Canadian rock band, but today my aim is to change that.
Here are 21 Interesting Our Lady Peace Facts that you might not have known
1. The band have been around for longer than you think. Our Lady Peace was formed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1992. Their name comes from the Catholic church they all attended. They were originally known as As If.
2. Mike Maida co-founded the band with Mike Turner. Maida changed his stage name to Raine to eliminate confusion.
3. Raine Maida, Duncan Coutts, Steve Mazur and Jason Pierce are the current members of the band. Jeremy Taggart, Mike Turner, Jamie Edwards, Robin Hatch, Chris Eacrett, Jim Newell and Paul Martin are all former members of Our Lady Peace.
4. To date the band have released 10 studio albums: Naveed (1994), Clumsy (1997), Happiness… Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch (1999), Spiritual Machines (2000), Gravity (2002), Healthy in Paranoid Times (2005), Burn Burn (2009), Curve (2012), Somethingness (2018) and Spiritual Machines 2 (2022). They’ve also released a live album and 2 compilation albums.
5. The band has also released 28 singles to date, ranging from “Out of Here” in 1992, to their most recent, “Drop Me in the Water”, in 2017.
6. Between 1996 and 2016, Our Lady Peace was the third best-selling Canadian band in Canada and the ninth best-selling Canadian artist overall in Canada. To date they’ve sold more than 7 million records worldwide.
7. Steve Mazur was chosen from thousands of other entries to replace guitarist Mike Turner. He is the only non-Canadian in the band. Turner left the band during the Christmas holidays in 2001.
8. In their earlier days Our Lady Peace opened up for the likes for Led Zeppelin, Page and Plant, and the Rolling Stones. Robert Plant heard the band’s single “Starseed” on the radio while touring in Canada, he invited the band to join him on tour to open a string of shows.
9. Our Lady Peace was part of the line-up for Woodstock in 1999. +/- 400,000 people attended this festival over 4 days.
10. Raine Maida and his wife (Chantal Kreviazuk) have written songs for Pink, Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood.
11. The band’s song “Whatever” was used as professional wrestler Chris Benoit’s WWE theme song from 2002 to 2007. They had not performed the song live for a number of years prior to the murder/suicide of Benoit and his family in 2007. In a 2012 interview, the band vowed to never play the song live ever again due to the circumstances of Benoit’s death.
12. The band’s first four albums was produced by Arnold Lanni. Lanni has also produced albums for Canadian Rock bands Finger Eleven, Simple Plan, Hello Operator, Thousand Foot Krutch, Echo Jet, The Waking Eyes and Rev.
13. The band’s fifth album (Gravity) and sixth album (Healthy in Paranoid Times) was produced by Bob Rock (the same guy who has produced 5 Metallica albums). Rock has also produced albums for a long list of artists including Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams, Cher and Bush.
14. Their Burn Burn album title is based on a quote by Jack Kerouac from his 1957 novel On the Road.
15. Naveed is the only album to feature bass player Chris Eacrett. He was replaced by Duncan Coutts in 1995.
16. Happiness… Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch made its debut at number one in Canada.
17. To date Our Lady Peace have won 4 Juno Awards: 2 Rock Album Awards, 1 Group Award and 1 Album Artwork Award.
18. The band have also won 10 MuchMusic Video Awards. It’s the most MMVAs ever awarded to any artist or group.
19. Our Lady Peace launched the Summersault Festival in 1998. The festival toured across Canada in 1998 and in 2000. The 2000 edition of the tour featured The Smashing Pumpkins, Our Lady Peace, Foo Fighters, A Perfect Circle, Deftones, Sum 41 and others.
20. “Clumsy”‘s lyrics convey a sense of self-doubt and insecurity. The term “clumsy” in the context of the song represents a feeling of awkwardness and vulnerability. The lyrics are introspective and reflective, touching on themes of self-acceptance and the challenges of personal relationships.
21. The lead single off their 2022 album (Spiritual Machines 2), “Stop Making Stupid People Famous” (featuring Pussy Riot) was released in June 2021. The drum-and bass-driven track gives off the funk of the subjects at hand – the fame-obssessed, delusional, and reality-detached.
Well, there you have it, 21 Interesting Facts that you might not have known about Our Lady Peace. I hope that you’ve learned something you did not know before.
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