It’s the ecstasy and agony of longing and never, ever being able to arrive: ‘I want something else.’ It’s got this green light and I always thought that was the essence of this song. Somebody said once that it sounds like summer and everything is going to be wonderful, and I love that just because of the verb tense – it’s all sort of out there in the future. It’s not my biggest live song or the biggest song of the night. I like playing Semi-Charmed Life because I see it come alive in the faces of my audience, which is a real treat to a part of. We had the biggest-selling tour of our career, probably, last summer. “I want to talk about my new album and going on tour in Europe and how that, years later, has sort of become a thing. The only people who think I’m living in some kind of legacy like that are writers who don’t know anything about my music or my band. The pre-sales on Screamer came in at Number Two, just behind the soundtrack for the new Quentin Tarantino film, which is fine with me. My last couple of records went into the Top Five. For example, if you listen to my new album, Screamer, it moves all over the place because I don’t feel wedded to one thing. It’s whatever is provoking me at the moment.
I’m not a formulaic writer – I don’t have some cookie cutter method. “In terms of the dark lyrics and the catchy tune, I was just messing with whatever the paradigm was – I’ve always had a mischievous nature in that way. READ THIS: The 50 best album openers in metal And then probably underneath that, also the weight of coming to terms with the kind of agony that your life is always about to change and never be reliable. “It’s about living in the lower Haight and all the machinations that were going on at a time where my friend group was finally out of the institutions that we’d been in our whole lives – because we’d all been in school since kindergarten and everybody now was in their early 20s and out of college. To be fair, that is the nature of this series, though. He’s not particularly interested in talking about the track, but after some cajoling, he does relent and reluctantly discusses the song and how he wrote it – but not without dropping shade on publications who are much more focussed on the past than on the present. A lyrical tour de force sung at breakneck speed, it’s essentially about a couple taking crystal meth, although the frontman insists that’s just a metaphor for living life. While it’s not particularly indicative of the rest of the band’s output – either on that record or anything they’ve written since – it remains, as much as Stephan would argue otherwise, their most widely recognised song, especially in the UK. Much of that was due to the phenomenal popularity of the record’s lead single, Semi-Charmed Life its blend of dark lyrics with upbeat melody certainly make it stand out from the rest of the album, which is often more contemplative and sombre in tone. The 2019 album Screamer may find the band soaking up the kids’ edgy synthesizers and indie-rock moves, but deep down, the humor, sass, and smarts therein are quintessential Third Eye Blind.When San Francisco’s Third Eye Blind – fronted by Stephan Jenkins – released their eponymous debut album in 1997, they suddenly became one of the biggest alternative bands in America. It’s this very quality-an ability to laugh in the face of life’s succession of tragedies-that has helped Third Eye Blind retain such a doggedly loyal fanbase well into the 21st century. On 2003’s Out of the Vein, which plays out like a bummer breakup album, Jenkins can’t help but insert the cheeky rocker “Crystal Baller,” on which he sounds both extremely heartbroken and utterly hilarious. Another prime example of the band’s deceptive songcraft arrived in the form of “Never Let You Go,” which anchored Third Eye Blind’s second album, 1999’s Blue: The hit single wears its Cars influences proudly on its sleeve while the singer cleverly blurs the lines between heartfelt love and creepy obsession. “Semi-Charmed Life” on its face sounds lighthearted a close listen, however, reveals Jenkins addressing issues of addiction and existential insecurity. A good deal of the credit goes to vocalist Stephan Jenkins, a nuanced lyricist who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in English literature before co-founding the band in 1993. Along with Weezer and The Presidents of the United States of America, the San Francisco outfit signaled a new breed of alt-rock, one eschewing grunge’s bludgeoning heaviness and brooding sincerity for power-pop hooks and lyrics capable of twisting ironic humor and heartfelt sincerity into a pretzel. When Third Eye Blind dropped “Semi-Charmed Life” in 1997, the earworm chorus and scrappy melody sounded downright fresh.