Song Interpretations - What do Third Eye Blind songs mean? - Music - http://phatbowling.com/3ebfan/Song

10 Days Late
"It's about an alien-in-utero-invasion."-Brad.. don't take that seriously!

Slow Motion
"That song is a protest song. It's an irony. 'Slow Motion' is about how we revel in amorality. It is supposed to be seductive. It's almost like an opiate. It is intent on drawing you in. I'm sure I'll get a lot of shit for it. I'm sure nobody's going to get any sense about it at all. But I like it, I get it."-Stephan

Darwin
"I've been reading an evolutionary-psychology book called The Moral Animal. It's this discussion of how we conduct ourselves as a species... What it's about to me, man, is the friction between people."-Stephan

Losing A Whole Year
"It started from a riff that Kevin was playing on the guitar. The words were how that riff made me feel. The story is just lamenting the end of a relationship and all of its wasted time." -Stephan

Narcolepsy
"'Narcolepsy' comes from some weird, bizarre sleep-crazed things that were happening to me a couple of years ago. It was actually kind of funny. I was waking up but not really waking up, and I was stuck in this paralyzed state, and I was sort of drowning, I felt like I was dying really. So this happened twice in a month's period. So I'm sitting there and I'm freaking out. I'm calling sleep disorder clinics. I didn't know whether I had a tumor on my brain, and I'm watching Dr. Dean Edell and some guy actually called up with the same thing. He was having post-sleep paralysis or something. It has to do with your mind, sometimes it wakes up before your body...He said, this could be a symptom of narcolepsy. You should get it checked out. I don't have narcolepsy, but I was just trying to describe this to Steve and playing this guitar lick that came to me after this nightmare, and this song just kind of came out of that experience."-Kevin

Semi-Charmed Life
"I think people are initially drawn to that song because of the sound of it. And then they come to realize that there's a deeper meaning to the story. But I don't think it's really like they identify with it because not that many people have had any dealings with speed addicts. And I hope that you don't, because they're really fucking lame. I think it's a song about always wanting something. It's about never being satisfied, and reaching backwards to things that you've lost and towards things that you can never get. I think everybody has some identification with that. The story line between the people, the demise of this relationship, is just an extreme example of that condition. I think that's what makes people really relate to 'Semi-Charmed Life.' Also we ripped off Lou Reed - *singing* doot doot doot doot doot... "-Brad

Jumper
"I probably think the most universal meaning of 'Jumper' comes from the chorus, 'I would understand.' It just comes down to the idea that we should all give each other a break. Beyond that, it's in part inspired by a friend of our manager's who killed himself by jumping off a bridge in high school because he was gay. It was a bridge in San Diego - so, needless to say, it's a song about understanding."-Stephan

Graduate
"People don't know - they think it's about getting out of high school or something. No, 'My punk ass off the street/ Someone poked you down below.' It's basically because being a male prostitute is a metaphor for how we've all felt like when we're doing something that's way below our station in life. I think we've all been like, 'I'm just taking it up the ass here!' And that's what the song is about. 'Come on!/ Can I fucking graduate?' We've all had that feeling of 'You know, this is really beneath me.' Not to knock male prostitutes or anything, it's just a metaphor."-Stephan

How's It Going To Be
"'How's It Going to Be' started with an autoharp that Kevin was playing. It's an antique instrument, and it inspired a nostalgic, emotional condition in me. And the lyrics really came out of that very quickly. It deals with a question that we ask ourselves whenever a relationship ends: What does that mean? What it means is that you are no longer intimate, and the transition from friends to acquiantances is a brutal one. Because it reminds us, I think, of all the things ending. 'How's it gonna be/When you don't know me?' There's not an answer to that question."-Stephan

Burning Man
"'Burning Man' has to do more with Jack Kerouac actually, where Sal says about Dean and all their friends in New York, 'those are the ones for me mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of all things who burn, burn, burn'. And it's really about being a burning man, 'live your life like a burning man' is what it's about."-Stephan

I Want You
"This band thrives on friction, musically and lyrically. It's about the pull between things - even the happiest song on the record, 'I Want You', is about death: 'The village churchyard is filled with bones weeping in the grave...Send me all your vampires, I want you. I've always liked the romantic literature that highlights the glory of life by focusing on mortality. That's something I relate to."-Stephan

The Background
"Let me put it this way: Have you ever felt like your life was in high gear, and you were right in the moment, and you were happy, and rolling into some glorious unknown future? And then have that all taken away? And then lived in sort of the post-period of that high? That's what it's like to live in the background."-Stephan

Motorcycle Drive By
"That song started as a journal entry made on a trip to New York to visit a girl I used to go out with. Needless to say, the trip didn't work out. I went back to San Francisco and went surfing which is what the last verse is about and wrote the song."-Stephan

God Of Wine
"'The song 'God of Wine' takes things from the cellular level, where it says, 'And soon cells give way.' And then also it says, 'Every glamorous sunrise throws the planets out of line.' The stars sent out of whack. The universe is expanding and it's crumbling. The universe is mortal. It's disappearing. Everything that we have, everything that we live in is pointless and crumbling. And some people are born with an innate understanding of that. They have this sort of life rage. And this is the melancholy that they find themselves in. It's a song about those people. And it's basically a story about how we turn back to the Irish theme. You turn to drink to escape that condition. In the end of this song, talking about the God of Wine, the Bacchanalian, even that lets you down."-Stephan

Tattoo Of The Sun
"I love that song, those are probably the best lyrics I've ever written in my opinion, but it just didn't seem to fit onto the record."-Stephan

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Page Updated Fri May 5, 2000 5:19pm EDT