"Never Let You Go" is a goddamn banger. It is the apotheosis of late-90s power pop, the culmination of what had started with The Beatles and Buddy Holly two generations before. Throughout the 1990s, power pop had been in a symbiotic relationship with Rivers Cuomo and Weezer, like E.T. and Elliott, but "Never Let You Go" is the moment E.T. gets on his spaceship, tells Elliott to be good and goes back to his home planet.
I went back to look at the lyrics in preparation for writing this post, and they are even more vapid and pointless than I'd remembered. But that doesn't matter because this song is more addictive than nicotine with a three-chord base and a five-note main guitar lick. At some point, you have to admire Third Eye Blind for getting so much play out of a song that probably took all of 25 minutes to write and another hour to record and produce. Third Eye Blind was capable of at least trying to write complex and meaningful music ("Motorcycle Drive By" is evidence of this), but "Never Let You Go" is not. Neither, for that matter, was "Semi-Charmed Life" but if you were born in the 1980s and say you either 1) do not know all the words to that song or 2) have not sung at least part of that song in a large group of drunk people, please let me know so I can never trust you again because you are a goddamn liar.
But the nice thing about doing a completely subjective list like this is that it matters less whether a song is objectively good than whether or not I love it (which I do) and whether or not it gets everyone jumping around (which it does). Therefore I will not apologize for the exalted place "Never Let You Go" has in my heart, and if that bothers you, feel free to make your own list and have less fun with it elsewhere.
