"It's Not My Time" was originally written for the remake of the film The Poseidon Adventure. Brad Arnold explained: "It was gonna be a track on that movie. In the movie, they're just trying to escape their death. And there's a ship sinking. They showed me like a 30-second clip of the movie, and I went and wrote that song from it. And they wound up not wanting it, so I was like, Cool, we'll keep it. And that's actually the second song off a film like that. I wrote "Let Me Go" off of Seventeen Days for Spiderman, and they didn't want it, so we kept it. I'm glad. I had no problem with it."
Music video
The video was shot in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 1, 2008. The shoot was done in Over-the-Rhine, Fountain Square, Clifton and other locations around the city. The music video was officially premiered by Universal Republic on April 23, 2008. The beginning sequences were shot on top of the shelter structures, at Bellevue Park, edited to appear as a tall building. It begins with a man standing on the roof of a pavilion in a local park. A scene then shows a mother and her daughter driving in a car. As the clock in the car turns to 10:13 they are hit from the side by a truck. The video then goes back to the man on the rooftop, who looks at his iPhone, displaying the time 10:08. When the time turns to 10:09, he immediately begins to run, and jumps off the building, landing safely on the ground. The video then proceeds to follow the man, as he rapidly traverses on foot through the city, avoiding numerous city obstacles by performing acrobatic maneuvers of parkour. The man is shown jumping high fences, leaping across city rooftops, hopping over vehicles, somersaulting through an empty pool, among various other stunts. The video also shows the woman and her daughter in the car at several points, where the clock shows the times 10:11, and 10:12. At the end of the video, the man leaps in front of the woman's car right at 10:13, causing the woman to stop, thereby avoiding the fatal accident seen in the beginning. The band is shown throughout the video performing on the rooftop where the man started from. At the end they are seen performing on a skywalk, overlooking where the accident would have happened. The start of the song and part of its riff is likely lifted off The Replacements' cover of the 1974 Kiss song, "Black Diamond". The song reached number one on VH1's Top 20 Video Countdown on June 7, 2008.
Track listing
;EP version
"It's Not My Time" - 4:03
"Who Are You" - 3:10
"It's Not My Time" - 3:57
Chart performance
The song officially began playing on U.S. radio on February 18, 2008, but was available for airplay on Valentine's Day 2008. By its first official day of release, it was the most added track at both active and alternative rock radio stations, as well as getting adds to some Top 40 stations. With less than a week of airplay the song debuted at number 37 on the BillboardHot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart for the week of March 1, 2008. It went on to top the chart, becoming the band's eighth top-ten single, and fifth number one, on the chart. It debuted at number 38 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart, eventually peaking at number five. The song peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the band's fifth top twenty pop hit. The song became their second number one on the Adult Top 40, following "Here Without You". In Canada, Finland, and New Zealand it has reached the top twenty, peaking at #20 on the Canadian Hot 100, #12 in Finland, and #18 in New Zealand. It is their third top forty hit in Australia, peaking at #26. It has also reached the top forty in Germany.