When You're Falling

Peter Gabriel provided keyboards and vocals to "When You're Falling" and discussed his involvement with the track in a 2001 interview.

The song was very loose and relaxed. There were a couple of places where we were just fooling around, like at the end, trying to build up different harmonies in an a cappella style, and in the middle section, which was improvised. It was a lot of fun to sing and play keyboards on, so what I thought might be hard work turned out to be a real pleasure.^[3]

"When You're Falling" was serviced to US adult album alternative radio stations in June 2001 and debuted on the Billboard Adult Alternative Airplay chart at No. 8 for the week dated 9 June 2001, making it the highest debut on the chart that week.^[3][4] Billboard announced that "When You're Falling" would be serviced to hot adult contempoary radio stations on 9 July 2001 and would later be issued to alternative stations around the same time.^[3]

When You're Falling" was released as a physical single in July 2001.^[1] Adam Wren of Leftfield created a remix of the track, which was included on the commercial single.^[3] Music Week called the song "a curiously weak choice for a single" that more closely resembled Gabriel'smusic than the work of Afro Celt Sound System. They also felt that the song would have little appeal outside their most dedicated fans.^[5]

Adam Berg directed the song's music video, which featured Gabriel in certain scenes. The music video was added to VH1 during the week of 22 July 2001.^[6] It was also made available on the Real World Records website.^[3]

Following the September 11 attacks in the United States, Slate reported that Clear Channel Communications distributed a memorandum to various program directors. The memorandum contained a list of over 150 songs that they believed contained "questionable lyrics", with one of those songs being "When You're Falling".^[7] The vice president of programming at Clear Channel had assembled the list for radio programmers and advised them to exercise restraint when selecting songs to broadcast.^[8]

CD single (UK)

1. "When You're Falling" (Short radio edit) – 3:44
2. "When You're Falling" (Wren & Morley Mix) – 4:35
3. "When You're Falling" (Album version) – 5:16
4. "When You're Falling" (video)

Promo CD single (UK)

1. "When You're Falling" (Short radio edit) – 3:40
2. "When You're Falling" (Long radio edit) – 4:14

Promo CD single (US)

1. "When You're Falling" (Short radio edit) – 3:40
2. "When You're Falling" (Long radio edit) – 4:14
3. "When You're Falling" (Album version) – 5:14
4. Call-out hook