The 10 Best Blind Melon Songs of All-Time

Blind Melon is an American band that found success in the early 1990s. As such, they emerged around the same time grunge broke into the mainstream. However, they stood out because they were more neo-psychedelic than conventional grunge.

Blind Melon released two studio albums before the untimely death of their lead vocalist Shannon Hoon in 1995. Since then, the remaining band members have released a third studio album and are expected to release the fourth one at some point. Here is our opinion on the 10 best Blind Melon songs ever released:

10. “Three Is a Magic Number”

Schoolhouse Rock! is a series of educational videos shown on ABC from 1973 to 1985 and 1992 to 2000. Each one used a song to teach a bit of either mathematics or some other academic subject. Blind Melon was one of the acts that covered Schoolhouse Rock! songs for a tribute album in 1996. It covered “Three Is a Magic Number,” which is notable because that is the song used for the series’s pilot episode.

9. “New Life”

“New Life” is one of the songs from Blind Melon’s second studio album, Soup. Generally speaking, the latter is seen as being quite dark. “New Life” is a notable exception because it is a celebration of the birth of Hoon’s daughter, thus explaining much about its name. Unfortunately, Hoon himself died just eight weeks after Soup came out.

8. “Deserted”

Meanwhile, “Deserted” is a song from the band’s self-titled debut. It is hard not to feel sympathy for the viewpoint character. The lyrics don’t make it 100 percent clear what is going on. Even so, it seems safe to say the viewpoint character is in a bad state, so much so that he is asking the listener to tell him everything will be alright.

7. “Time”

“Time” is another song from the band’s self-titled debut. Specifically, it is the song that closed it. Once again, this isn’t a happy song, though this expresses more anger and annoyance than its album-mate above. One of the neat things about “Time” is its use of uncommon phrasing, which seems nonsensical on initial inspection but tends to be more meaningful than that indicates. For example, see the use of “Columbus clouds” to create vivid impressions of clouds intruding upon a previously pristine sky.

6. “Galaxie”

“Galaxie” served as the lead single for Soup. It did well enough, as shown by how it reached the number 25 position on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks. The song’s name refers to Hoon’s 1967 Ford Galaxie, which serves as a symbolic vehicle for him to explore the breakup of his first relationship. Some people have been known to find the “Galaxie” music video uncomfortable because Hoon was intoxicated while filming. Due to that, they see the whole thing as a sort of foreshadowing of the man’s death by drug overdose.

5. “Soul One”

“Soul One” isn’t particularly well-known. That is because Blind Melon released it as one of the extra songs on the self-titled debut’s 20th Anniversary Edition. Despite that, “Soul One” predates the formation of the band, seeing as how Rogers Stevens and Brad Smith wrote it before they even met Hoon. With that said, Hoon was the one who completed the song, thus resulting in its surprisingly enjoyable final state.

4. “Tones of Home”

“Tones of Home” is the second song on Blind Melon. Given the name, interested individuals should have no problem guessing it is a song about homesickness. Reportedly, the members of Blind Melon didn’t like Los Angeles very much, which spurred their desire to return to their respective hometowns. The neatest part is that the song finishes by mentioning how the viewpoint character’s friends and family members don’t understand his desire to return at all. A surprisingly realistic touch that gives the whole thing some extra bite.

3. “St. Andrew’s Fall”

As mentioned earlier, Soup is regarded as being darker than Blind Melon. “St. Andrew’s Fall” is one of the songs responsible for that judgment. For those curious, the band wrote the song because the band members once saw a young woman jump to her death from the top of a building. No one knew why she did so because she didn’t reveal her motivations to anyone. As a result, a fair amount of speculation is contained in the song’s lyrics.

2. “Change”

Blind Melon chose “Change” as the fourth single from their self-titled debut. It is a fascinating meditation on its namesake topic, though it has room for interpretation. Various things can be gleaned from the lyrics. For example, there is the idea that people are nothing without their dreams. Likewise, there is the idea that people have to change when they feel down and defeated. Besides these things, “Change” also possesses incredible symbolic importance. It became a dedication to Kurt Cobain when Cobain died. Later, it became a dedication for Hoon himself when Hoon died. Some of the song’s lyrics are engraved on the Blind Melon frontman’s headstone, an expression of the desire to be remembered because no one will live forever.

1. “No Rain”

Unsurprisingly, “No Rain” tops the list. Simply put, it is Blind Melon’s best-known song. After all, “No Rain” reached number 20 in the United States, number 8 in Australia, and number 1 in Canada. Thanks to that, it played a sizable role in making the band’s self-titled debut a multi-platinum release as its second single. Smith wrote the song about depression. Supposedly, he started out thinking he was writing it about his then-girlfriend. It wasn’t until later that he realized that he was writing it about himself. “No Rain” is another Los Angeles-inspired song, further evidence that the band members’ time in the city hit them very hard.

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