Dopamine

Album: Dopamine (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that regulates the sensation of pleasure. In this track, Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins is trying to figure out if his feelings are real, or just a change in brain chemistry (if he "dopa-means" it).

    In our interview with Jenkins, he explained: "'Dopamine' is almost like becoming addicted to the feeling and not necessarily attaching it to a single person, and not allowing your emotions to be hustled."
  • "Dopamine" is the title track of Third Eye Blind's fifth album, and their first since Ursa Major in 2009. When we spoke with Stephan Jenkins, he explained that the shift he's witnessed with young women and Millennials inspired the title. "I think women are more on their own terms," he said. "I don't even want to say equal because I think that there's a whole new set of female that doesn't even factor males into the equation of equality any more than males factor in anybody else."

    Jenkins also revealed how that shift has inspired the message of the song: "I say, 'I aspire to your rockabilly heart, girl, animal and engine,' meaning that you're not the vulnerable, delicate flower. It's not how this exchange is actually happening, so it's not that those relationships are being flipped, it's that they're being realigned."

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