Third Eye Blind

Third Eye Blind formed in San Francisco in 1993 around singer Stephan Jenkins and lead guitarist Kevin Cadogan, whose songwriting partnership powered everything that followed. After years working the local scene they signed with Elektra in 1996 — with what was reported as the largest publishing deal for an unsigned artist at the time — and released their self-titled debut in April 1997.

The album was a slow-burning monster. It never rose above number 25 on the Billboard 200 — a peak it hit nearly a year after release — but it stayed on the chart for 106 weeks and went six-times platinum on the strength of an absurd singles run: "Semi-Charmed Life" (number four), "How's It Going to Be" (number nine), and "Jumper" (number five) all cracked the Hot 100's top ten, while "Graduate" and "Losing a Whole Year" owned alternative radio in between. The band's signature was hiding heavy subjects in bright, shout-along hooks — meth in "Semi-Charmed Life," a plea to someone on a ledge in "Jumper" — which made them the decade's great Trojan-horse hitmakers.

The follow-up, Blue (November 1999), went platinum and delivered one more top-40 hit in "Never Let You Go," but the classic era ended abruptly: Jenkins dismissed Cadogan in January 2000, weeks into the new decade; Cadogan sued and the case settled out of court in 2002. Jenkins has kept Third Eye Blind touring and recording ever since, to generations of fans for whom that first album is wall-to-wall memorized — but the band that mattered is the 1997–2000 one, four guys smuggling the saddest songs of the alternative era onto every summer playlist in America.