The Other One: Third Eye Blind, "Never Let You Go"

It wouldn't be fair to call Third Eye Blind a one-hit wonder. In the late 90's and early 2000s they had a commendable string of hits that included not only "Semi-Charmed Life," but also the similarly ubiquitous anti-suicide jingle "Jumper" and teen heartbreak classic "How's It Going To Be?" But a decade-plus on, "Semi-Charmed" far outshines those tunes that, at the time, reached a similar level of success.

The one song by TEB that I thought never got its due was "Never Let You Go." Having achieved popularity with their earlier singles, they had the task of maintaining that level of success without seeming like they had run out of ideas. "Never Let You Go" does this exceptionally. It starts with the fact that it is built on essentially the chord progression from "Sweet Jane," which is an instant recipe for an indelible hook, then add in some of the same late-90s sunny-gloom of "Semi-Charmed" and "Jumper," and you've got a winner. If it doesn't have the cache of "Semi-Charmed Life," it's still a worthy successor and a perfectly-crafted piece of 90s pop-rock.

Serious Contenders: Third Eye Blind, "Semi Charmed Life"

As you might have noticed, I'm in the business of lifting the music of the 90's up amongst the rest of music history, and not just for Nirvana and Radiohead. Half the future installments of "Serious Contenders" are from the 90's, simply because it's been long enough that my relatively impartial memory -- around but unaware during the time -- feels suited to the task of sussing out what should survive, what should be remembered and enshrined.

You never know what's going to sum up a time or place. I thought, when I was a kid, it was just some dumb pop song, but it's actually pretty bang-on for that 90's feeling of sunshine on the outside, turmoil on the inside. It's this feeling of seeming happy but knowing inside something's wrong. So Third Eye Blind married the sunniest goddamn hook you could think of (Doot-doot-doot, doot-do-doot-doot) to wry, lamenting lyrics about addiction and emotional instability, delivered at a pace that indicates how in-touch with hip hop "alt-rock" was or felt at the time (one of many examples, most of which will probably end up here before long.) It even has that eye-of-the-storm middle eight, "I believe in the sand beneath my toes," etc, that seem to indicate the late 90's were just a big ole beach party, but one everyone was ready to leave.