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3AM (Matchbox Twenty song)

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Format
  
CD cassette

Genre
  
Alternative rock

Label
  
Atlantic

Recorded
  
1996

Length
  
3:46

Released
  
November 23, 1997 (1997-11-23)

"3AM" (written "3 am" on the album and "3 AM" on the single) is the third single and the third track from Matchbox 20's debut album, Yourself or Someone Like You. It topped the Canadian RPM record charts in early 1998.

Contents

Background and content

This song was written by Rob Thomas, Jay Stanley, John Leslie Goff and Brian Yale while performing together in the early 1990s band Tabitha's Secret. The song was first recorded by that band on its debut EP, Tabitha's Secret?. The lyrics are inspired by Thomas as an adolescent having to live with a mother fighting to survive cancer. In 1997, after the other members of Tabitha's Secret left to form Matchbox 20, Goff and Stanley released other early recordings of the band (including 3 A.M.) on Don't Play with Matches.

Music video

The video (directed by Gavin Bowden) features the band sitting on sides of a street next to some telephone booths. A supermarket is also shown. The video switches between color video images and black-and-white still images. During the introduction and the third verse of the song, Thomas walks in the middle of the street with some construction signs and lights. During the third verse, a Pontiac Trans Am with a bare-chested man and a woman inside stops in front of Thomas. The man gets out, revealing a catheter in his chest, receives three cigarettes from Thomas and then gets back in the Trans Am. Finally, during the last two choruses, the band is shown playing their instruments (presumably in the lobby of a hotel or office building) as rain can be seen falling from a large window behind them. The video ends with an image of Thomas standing next to the telephone booths.

Track listing

3-track version
  1. "3 AM" – 3:46
  2. "Push" (acoustic) – 4:19
  3. "Shame" – 3:35

References

3AM (Matchbox Twenty song) Wikipedia