Semi-Charmed Life: A melodic song about hooking up and drugs that gets played multiple times everyday.

BUZZ TRACKS-LATE 90s

When Third Eye Blind released this single in 1997, it quickly went from an alternative rock buzz track to a massive hit. It got drilled into our heads blowing up in the Adult Contemporary and Top 40 radio formats. The song is super catchy, especially when you hear that chorus line “I want something else to get me through this semi-charmed kind of life.”   

Perfect! A slightly angsty gen-x anthem of hope for a better tomorrow. Of course when one reads into the lyrics, this whole song is about doing Crystal Meth and getting busy.

The sky was gold, it was rose
I was taking sips of it through my nose
And I wish I could get back there, someplace back there
Smiling in the pictures you would take
Doing crystal meth, will lift you up until you break

Yet it was catchy, so their label cleaned it up! Understand this single has four different versions including the original, clean, radio, and video edits.

Here's your chance to relive the odd times on 1997 and it's ridiculous.

I still remember finally buying the album and realizing how many different ways this song was cut up because of the references to drugs/sex and the original version goes over four minutes

It’s like the band had to have the following conversation when promoting this single.

Tonight we are performing on Letterman, so will play the clean version, but in the morning when we are at K-ROCK we’ll play the radio verison, and then finally that night when we are at Roseland, will actually play the original fucking version of this song we wrote. 

This is why getting on the radio and being played on popular music mediums can be so frustrating. You create a piece of art and then it’s modified based on what’s supposedly is appropriate for the public to hear and their attention span.  

Though luckily because of new outlets like YouTube, Spotify, and SoundCloud this has become less of an issue, giving more control to both the artist and the consumer.

WARNING: By reading this post you may now be prompted to listen to Eve 6's "Inside Out", sorry!