Songoftheday 10/31/20 - I'm packed and I'm holding I'm smiling she's living, she's golden she lives for me says she lives for me...
"Semi-Charmed Life" - Third Eye Blind
from the album Third Eye Blind (1997)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (four weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 38
Today's song of the day comes from the rock band Third Eye Blind, who came together in San Francisco in the early 1990s. Started by lead singer Stephan Jenkins and guitarist Kevin Cadogan, the band signed to Elektra Records and solidified its lineup with bass player Arion Salazar and drummer Brad Hargreaves, and recorded their self-titled debut album in 1996. The lead single was "Semi-Charmed Life", a sarcastic take on crystal meth use in the community flushed out by an undeniable set of guitar and back-up vocal hooks. Supposedly inspired by Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side", the almost spoken-word verses about the altered world the drug brings contrasts with the sunny production of the song, and so mainstream radio (and a horde of fans) fell in...
"Semi-Charmed Life" became Third Eye Blind's first top-40 hit, reaching the top ten in August of 1997. The song was a huge rock radio hit, spending two months (eight weeks) at #1 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock chart, and crossing over to #26 on the Mainstream Rock list. It also took eight weeks at #3 on their Adult Top-40 format chart as well. Internationally, the single peaked at #2 in Canada and #8 in Australia, and made the top-40 in Iceland (#20) and the UK (#33). The Third Eye Blind album only got to #25 on the Billboard 200 album chart, but proved to be a long and steady seller, eventually moving over six million copies.
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next up, in concert at Rockfest in 1999...
and lastly, on the Today Show in 2017...
And for a bonus, here's a very thorough and totally fascinating breakdown of the song from producer and music expert Rick Beato that definitely worth watching...
Up tomorrow: Country teen asks an existential question.
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