Automatic Flowers

"Automatic Flowers" is a song by Canadian alternative rock group Our Lady Peace. It was released in July 1997 as the third single from their second studio album, Clumsy.

Background and writing

In writing the song, Raine Maida began by thinking about a woman who lived alone in her apartment. The woman has little going on in her life, and the apartment is dingy, without much of a view. She has boxes from her childhood, and one day she takes out a pop-up book and opens it to a garden with pop-up flowers. Whenever she wants to cheer herself up, she opens the book. Maida puts only traces of the entire history in the lyrics.

Music video

For the first time, Our Lady Peace self-directed their music video for this song. The video consists of the band playing in a dimly lit room. The video reached the #1 spot on the Muchmusic countdown on October 15, 1997. In 1998 it was ranked #47 for Muchmusic's favourite videos of all time.