The song peaked at number 30 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and became a top-three hit in the Netherlands and the Flanders region of Belgium.

[4] Its charting in the United States is due to a RealAudio remix of the song featuring actualities from the September 11 attacks gaining attention online,[5] which resulted in rock radio stations adding "Overcome" to their playlists in late September 2001.

It was subsequently also picked up by VH1's sister station MTV and both channels played it, along with only a handful of other videos, for close to a week.

They enlisted director Mary Lambert (who worked pro bono) to film singer Ed Kowalczyk performing the song under falling water in a Los Angeles studio on September 18.

Kowalczyk agreed, flew to New York the same day, and that evening Rosenbaum and his wife filmed him visiting Ground Zero, a fire station and various memorials.