Songfacts®:

• In this song, Puddle Of Mudd lead singer Wes Scantlin is giving his girl the boot. She has him coming apart at the seams, and he can't take it any more.
  
  The song is about a real person, although it's infused with Puddle Of Mudd's trademark anger. In a Songfacts interview with Scantlin, he explained: "'Heel Over Head' is really cool. I wrote that when I first got to LA. There was this Russian girl, Elena, and she would come by the house. She was really good friends with Rick Rubin. She'd come by and say, 'Wesley, want to smoke some greeenge?' I was telling her to call weed 'Grinch,' because it's green, but she couldn't say it correctly. She would come by and tease me and be flirting with me... and she would never let it totally go down. I wrote that song completely about her."
• The song title is a flip of the phrase "Head Over Heels," which means to be totally infatuated with someone. Scantlin feels the opposite, so he's heel over head.
• "Heel Over Head" was released as a single from Life On Display, Puddle Of Mudd's follow-up to their breakthrough debut Come Clean, which includes the hits "Blurry" and "She Hates Me." The band did a lot of touring to promote Come Clean, and by the time Life On Display was released, their strain of hard rock had fallen on hard times. The first single from the album, "Away From Me," made the Hot 100 at #72, but was the only track from the album to reach that chart.
• Chris Cuffaro directed the music video, which shows tight shots of the band performing the song, intercut with scenes of a girl in various stages of torment as she responds to the breakup.