Weak and Powerless is the first single by A Perfect Circle, from their second album, Thirteenth Step. The single album was released on August 5, 2003. Weak and Powerless is also their highest charting single, reaching #1 on both the Mainstream Rock Tracks and Alternative Songs, the band’s first number one hit.
This song was featured in the movie Underworld. One of the most prominent aspects of Weak and Powerless is its various layers of clean guitars and vocals, which build the relatively soft yet highly active verse into a powerful chorus.
A remix of the song was made, entitled Weak and Powerless (Tilling My Grave Mix) and featuring instrumentation by Danny Lohner, Wes Borland, and Josh Eustis. This version is significantly heavier than the album version and was featured in the soundtrack to Underworld.
Borland told Cleveland Radio station 100.7 The Buzzard in an interview at the time of the soundtrack’s promotion that he and Lohner wrote the remix by putting the song up in Pro Tools and stripping away everything but Maynard‘s vocals, leaving the three of them to write new music around the vocals.
Tracklist:
- Weak and Powerless
- Blue (Bird Shake Mix)
The music video, directed by the Brothers Strause, features a nude woman with long, white hair, as seen in various artwork for the album, crawling through the woods, collecting various reptiles, and throwing them into an amblypygi filled pit.
The commentary by Maynard James Keenan provided for the video stated the model’s name as Tonya, a woman who had never done this type of work before. There are two versions of the video; edited and unedited.
In the unedited version the woman’s breast and pelvic areas are clearly visible. These areas of the body are darkened and blurred for the television version and the scenes are sped up.
Various camera and computer effects are used throughout the video. The video saw significant airplay upon release and is included on the AMOTION DVD/CD. The end of the video features a barely audible shampoo commercial.
A Perfect Circle
Maynard James Keenan: lead vocals, executive producer, artwork direction
Billy Howerdel: guitar, backing vocals, production, engineering
Josh Freese: drums
Twiggy Ramirez: bass, backing
Paz Lenchantin: strings
Danny Lohner: guitar
