Is “Semi-Charmed Life” The Best Pop Song Ever Written?

Yes.

Oh, you wanted a whole post about this? I don’t know if I can manage that, but how about a top ten reasons list? Wait, you’re sick of numbered lists? Bullet points it is! Here’s why Third Eye Blind’s “Semi Charmed Life” is the best pop song ever written.

• You know this song, at least peripherally. That’s how great pop music works: everyone who was around when it was released is familiar with it.
• This song is about drug addiction, overdosing, and oral sex, but you probably didn’t know that. That’s also how great pop music works: the song is so good you bop along with your mom and dad to a radio spewing intimate details about blow jobs and crystal meth.
• It dates itself just enough to feel 90s (see lyrics “velvet dress” and the poppy grunge sound of the guitars) but not so much you can’t love it in any decade.
• “Do do do do do do dooooo, do do do do do do dooooooo”
• There are about three different versions of the song played on the radio not including the versions with various levels of bleeping. I remember when it came out that the pop station “B103.9” of my youth would reverse A LOT of tiny parts of the lyrics to the point that today I still sing “Doing cnvkweroiufsckncdhffhsdkfh til you break IT WON’T STOP!”
• Did I mention the “dos”?
• “The four right chords can make me cry” and the song is basically just four chords (like all great pop songs).
• It starts all at once with this weird little intense drum solo thing and as soon as you hear it you know you’re in for a good fucking time (like I imagine one’s first time on speed might be).
• The breakdown where it’s all chill and cool which seems to mimic the slow, dreamy, trippy sleep you might slip into when you start coming down.
• “But I’m not coming down!”
• This is one of those 90s songs that’s simultaneously sad and happy at once. Even if you don’t know the theme or most of the lyrics, the concept of a “semi-charmed kinda life” is one of those “aww that’s nice…wait” kinda phrases. Stack on top of that the reaching “good-byeeeeeeee”s and sandwich it all between how happy a “do do do” should be, but how strained and almost mocking they sound and you’ve got a good feel-weird hoagie going on.
• “And I speak to you like the chorus to the verse / Chop another line like a coda with a curse” is pretty fucking great. Any song that’s kinda meta really gets me.
• DOO DOO FUCKING DOO, BITCH!