Blue is the second studio album by American rock band Third Eye Blind, released on November 23, 1999. The album's creation was difficult, mainly due to power struggles and arguments between frontman Stephan Jenkins and lead guitarist Kevin Cadogan, leading to a quick but isolated recording experience between members. The album was generally well received by critics, and was certified platinum by the RIAA, but performed below the band's prior album, the multi-platinum Third Eye Blind. While managing to stay together for the creation of the album, shortly after its release, the band fired Cadogan, touring in support of the album with replacement guitarist Tony Fredianelli.
Background
Writing and recording
The band enjoyed extensive success in 1997 with their first album, Third Eye Blind, which eventually went platinum six times. The band maintained popularity into 1998 through extensive touring and a number of singles that performed well in the charts, including "Semi-Charmed Life", "How's It Going to Be", "Graduate", "Losing a Whole Year", and "Jumper", but by the end of the year, the band looked to start working on new material.
In promoting the album, frontman and lead vocalist Stephan Jenkins recounted a pleasant experience in recording the album, referring to it as "too much fun and feeling like...a complete recording group for the first time...We had these jam sessions that were fun". He also commented that it had been more collaborative than their prior album; bassist Arion Salazar became more involved in the writing and production, while drummer Brad Hargreaves was involved in the creative process for the first time, as he had joined the band late into their sessions for the first album.</blockquote>
A major issue of the recording sessions was internal strife between band members, namely between Jenkins and lead guitarist and co-founding member Kevin Cadogan. The two actively fought for ownership of the band; Cadogan, under the impression that the band was made as an equal partnership, was outraged to find that Jenkins had made legal changes to make Jenkins the sole owner of the band. While Jenkins insisted that the song was satirical parody, and actually anti-violence, Elektra disapproved of the track being on the album, feeling it could cause controversy due to the proximity of the Columbine High School massacre, which had just happened in April of that year. The band and the label fought over the song's inclusion for four months, with the label proposing a compromise that would allow only the instrumental to be on the album, and in return, the label would finance an EP to be released after the album, where the band could release the song in its entirety and have complete creative freedom, without restriction.
With the members of the band not working together at the same time in the studio, the band's manager Eric Godtland set up a voting system for each member of the band to vote for the rest of the songs they wanted included on the album. A list of twenty songs were recorded during Blues sessions, with Godtland instructing each member of the band to vote for their top fifteen.
Sound, composition, and themes
Not wanting to be pigeonholed into the pop rock genre after the success of "Semi-Charmed Life" from their debut, the band aimed to have a more experimental and harder-edged rock sound on their second album. Cadogan personally aimed for the album's sound to reflect all of the music he had encountered, due to it always being planned as one of the last albums released in the 20th century. "Wounded" was described by Jenkins as "a chronicle of a friend's sexual assault", while "10 Days Late" was described as an "ambiguous [song] about abortion". "Slow Motion" was Jenkins' satirical commentary on how the media and Hollywood glorifies violence. Blue was certified platinum by the RIAA by April 2000, and had sold over 1.25 million copies in the U.S. as of May 2003. Two variants of the album were released: a first pressing with "Slow Motion" with a chorus as track 11, and later pressings with it as an instrumental at the very end of the album. Four singles were released to pop and rock radio: "Anything", "Never Let You Go", "10 Days Late", Tony Fredianelli, who had some limited experience with the band previously, joined the band shortly thereafter, filling in for the rest of the touring cycle. Third Eye Blind would go on to put out two more albums with Fredianelli, albeit with very long delays, Out of the Vein (2003) and Ursa Major (2009), until similar power struggles between Fredianelli and Jenkins led to similar firings and lawsuits between the two in 2010. Cadogan mostly kept to low-profile projects, largely three solo albums: 12 Nights in Studio A (2002), Wunderfoot (2003), and Thousand Yard Stare (2006). Notably, a number of versions of his songs written, but ultimately rejected for, Blue ended up on the album Wunderfoot, including "Lipstick", "Pack a Halo" (reworked into "Palpatations"), and "Walk With the Devil" (reworked into "Waiting for Me"). <!---Additionally, lyrics from the rejected Blue track "Separation/Light That Hits the Room" were worked into the track "Here in the Still".--->
The contentious full lyric version of "Slow Motion" never appeared on a later EP, as the Black EP, later re-titled Symphony of Decay, was never released, but the song was eventually released in 2006 on the greatest hits album A Collection. Despite the difficult recording sessions and strife among members, in a 2015 Vice retrospective, Jenkins rated the album as his favorite of the band's releases, feeling that the album marked a sweet spot in the band's career, where they had freedom due to the prior album's success, but hadn't developed a fear of failing to create a followup yet.
Critical reception
The album was generally well received by critics. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised the album for proving that they're "stronger and more serious than many of their post-grunge peers" and concluding that "there's not quite enough of it this time around to make Blue the equal of its predecessor, but it should be enough to please devoted fans."
- "Darwin" ends at 3:50. After 15 minutes of silence, hidden song "The Red Summer Sun (Extended Coda)" begins 18 minutes 50 seconds into Track 13.
- Most streaming services have "Slow Motion" as the last (thirteenth) track instead of the eleventh.
Personnel
Personnel taken from Blue liner notes.
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