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Third Eye Blind trolled the RNC by playing Third Eye Blind songs no one wants to hear

Musician Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind performs onstage at the 2015 iHeartRadio Music Festival at MGM Grand Garden Arena on September 18, 2015, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Musician Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind performs onstage at the 2015 iHeartRadio Music Festival at MGM Grand Garden Arena on September 18, 2015, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at the Atlantic.

"I want something else to get me through this" is the linchpin of the chorus in "Semi-Charmed Life," the most popular song the '90s band Third Eye Blind has ever created. The jaunty track is about the allure of crystal meth addiction and the itchy desperation of desiring an escape.

And on Tuesday night, Third Eye Blind inflicted a similar kind of distress at the Republican National Convention during an after-party, surprising guests with messages of gay rights and science and serenading them with some of the band’s more obscure songs, while withholding the most popular song in their discography.

Here’s a scene from the concert:

The crowd was not pleased, but Third Eye Blind didn’t care. "You can boo all you want, but I'm the motherfucking artist up here," lead singer Stephan Jenkins said.

Jenkins and Third Eye Blind were performing at a concert hosted by the Recording Industry Association of America and AT&T — a special event for the convention-goers and GOP allies. But Jenkins and the band are apparently not fans of Trump and his policies (Jenkins wrote a piece for the Huffington Post in 2012 about how Republicans are the wrong side of history and policy), so they decided to stage a rebellion.

They used their time onstage to give the musical equivalent of a middle finger by sticking to their less popular songs, mixed in with questions to the crowd like, "Who believes in science?"

Concert-goers were no doubt upset that they were lambasted by talk of science and tolerance instead of getting to hear "Semi-Charmed Life."

The band showed no remorse — though, for what it’s worth, it appears they eventually did play "Jumper," another of their hit songs, which is about talking someone back from the brink of suicide.


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