For a brief period at the end of the ’90s, Third Eye Blind were pretty big. They had two Top 5 hits, three Top 10 hits and four Top 20 hits, in the span of just three years. But “Semi Charmed Life” topped some other charts, just not the Hot 100. And, decades later, it has double the streams of their next most popular song and double the covers. But “Semi Charmed Life” is one of those covers that poses a difficult conundrum for the cover artist. Because if you attempt Stephan Jenkins’, um, semi rap, you run the risk of sounding exactly like him.
Ian Sweet, aka Jilian Medford, decided to take a different tack. Instead of opening with the famous wordless vocal hook, Medford opens her cover with acoustic guitar and backmasked sounds. She waits a full 30 seconds before she starts singing, tricking us into thinking she might drop the hook from the song. But she doesn’t; it’s there, only sung slower as Medford treats the song as a ballad.
Medford whisper-sings the verses, at a much slower pace than the original. So there’s no sense that she’s almost rapping. And she sings the chorus even slower.
All around her the backmasked sounds swirl, while drums move in and out of phase and sometimes drop out of the mix. Medford accompanies herself on backing vocals, with an even fainter voice; otherwise, it’s just her, the guitar and drums, and the ethereal sound effects.
It’s a very different approach which drains the song of its propulsive energy and instead tries to match the arrangement to the meaning of the lyrics. Check it out:
