“I think we're a really great rock band, frankly, and I think that we've been pretty slammingly misunderstood,” Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins lamented in a 2009 interview with the Shepherd Express. Third Eye Blind got a bum rap in the late-'90s, Jenkins contended, because they were a pop band at a time when it wasn't cool to be pop, and their songs (including the hits “Semi-Charmed Life” and “Jumper”) were often dismissed for their superficial silliness while their subversive undertones or hidden meanings went unnoticed. “We believe that you could have something that was catchy but also conveyed some irony, and some ambivalence,” Jenkins said. “We could not get that across, though, with the way we were marketed.”
The band no longer has that problem. After Elektra Records dropped them in 2004, they created their own label to release their 2009 album, Ursa Major, and took on a greater role by communicating directly with fans online.
“Technology has democratized our ability to make and distribute music straight to fans,” Jenkins said. “It's funny, because our band was a beneficiary of the last of the big-machine model of music, but we're also experiencing the cusp of a new model, one that works much better.” (Evan Rytlewski)
