Their story begins with the release of their Self-Titled Album in 1997. They just wanted me to come and shoot the San Francisco vibe, so I just made it up as we went along, and responded to the cast I found on the streets.Third Eye Blind is an Alternative Rock band that emerged during the late 1990s (though, as the article says, "Alternative Rock" certainly wasn't the "alternative" at the time).
They loved my first video so that was the starting point for the two-day shoot. “ told me they had friends, but when I arrived from London they didn’t really have any, so I had to find them from the streets of San Francisco. “I found the scooter kids driving around San Fran, and the same with the studio shots,” Morgan said of the video. The band continues to perform as the group of strangers dance, argue, and kiss around them, before circling back around to the American flag as one of the women watches the moon landing on television. Videos of the group are intercut with shots of the San Fran natives, including two women who are shown to kiss before abruptly starting an argument with one another. With the opening refrain playing, the band members are shown driving around in a car, living the easy life while singing the song’s dark lyrics.
#THIRD EYE BLIND SEMI CHARMED LIFE PATCH#
The video starts with a satellite in outer space before quickly transitioning to an American flag patch on a leather jacket. The accomplish the vision, they brought on director Jamie Morgan and a host of San Fran residents. I think that’s what makes people really relate to ‘Semi-Charmed Life.'”įor the accompanying music video, the group wanted to capture an idealized San Francisco. The storyline is just an extreme example of that condition. I think everybody has some identification with that. It’s about never being satisfied and reaching backward to things that you’ve lost and towards things that you can never get. In the same interview with Reverb, Jenkins said of the song’s deeper meaning, “It’s a song about always wanting something. I want something else, I’m not listening when you say good-bye I want something else to get me through this The second verse is the heaviest in the drug references, with Jenkins singing about “taking sips through his nose” and “bumps,” while later mentioning the drug by name, saying it will “lift you up until you break.” When the song was released, many radio stations thought the lyrics were a little too risque causing them to distort “crystal meth” in the radio edit. The doo-wop-inspired opening is a reference to Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side,” another urban tale of a drug addiction spiral that has been credited as an inspiration for this song.Īnd I wish I could get back there, someplace back thereĭoing crystal meth, will lift you up until you break The lyrics follow a drug user as he falls deeper and deeper into a crystal meth addiction. And we all were sort of into hip-hop, and so it has a hip-hop flow over it.” “You know, it’s sort of a bright, shiny drug.
“When I wrote ‘Semi-Charmed Life,’ the guitar riff was intended to have this shiny thing because that was a feeling of speed,” he said. The song’s dark lyrics were meant to be in contrast to the “bright, shiny” musicality, he added in an interview with Reverb. Jenkins has been quoted as saying the meaning of this song is “about falling apart,” and the drug-induced high that makes everything “fleetingly better.” Frontman Stephan Jenkins is credited as the sole writer of the song, although guitarist Kevin Cadogan has long disputed the song’s authorship through litigation. “Semi-Charmed Life” was the lead single from Third Eye Blind, released in 1997. The song featured on the rock outfit’s eponymous self-titled debut album and catapulted them into fame.
Riddled with references to crystal meth, the 1997 hit spoke to the life-altering state of addiction. At first listen, Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” is an upbeat, perfect-for-summer track, but when you get into the nitty-gritty of the lyrics, a deeper meaning is unveiled.
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