“Superman's Song” by Crash Test Dummies

"Superman's Song" was the first single from Crash Test Dummies' 1991 debut album, The Ghosts That Haunt Me, and the song that put the Canadian folk-rockers on the map, reaching number four at home. Brad Roberts wrote it and Steve Berlin produced it as a slow, stately march, with a guest cello from Lynn Selwood adding to the funeral-parlour gravity.

On the surface it's about comic-book heroes, but Roberts described it as an analysis of political philosophy: his Superman is a left-leaning figure whose whole being is bound up in serving the community, set against Tarzan, a laissez-faire loner who flees to the forest and wants nothing to do with anybody. It also got to 56 in the US, and it turned up in the pilot of the Canadian series Due South.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.