Smash Mouth has lengthy been, as its guitarist, Greg Camp, as soon as stated, “a band that you can make fun of.” The pop-rock group’s signature hit, 1999’s “All Star,” combines the sounds of DJ scratches, glockenspiel, and a white dude rapping that he “ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.” Fashionwise, the band tended to decorate for a cool evening on the bowling alley. And over almost three a long time, Smash Mouth has remained well-known partly due to the flatulent cartoon ogre Shrek.
But the love Smash Mouth instructions is critical—the results of music so concurrently pleasing and odd that it might rewire a younger listener’s mind. In reality, the unhappy information of the loss of life of authentic entrance man Steve Harwell at age 56 has me questioning if the band’s 1999 album, Astro Lounge, is the explanation I’m a music critic. Most individuals can level to songs that hit them in early adolescence, when their ears have been impressionable however their curiosity in different individuals’s judgment was nonetheless, blessedly, undeveloped. Smash Mouth’s second album, the one with “All Star,” got here out once I was 11. Every goofy organ melody continues to be engraved in my thoughts, and in the present day, the album holds up as an ingeniously crafted pleasure capsule.
Smash Mouth shaped in California within the mid-Nineties, and its music coalesced motley phenomena of the period: ska, hip-hop, surf tradition, Nineteen Fifties nostalgia, aliens. Harwell, the son of a UPS truck driver, had first pursued a profession as a rapper. But when watching a efficiency by MC Hammer—a hitmaker whom many individuals thought-about to be a punch line—one thing inside him instructed him to maneuver towards rock. He joined up with Camp, the drummer Kevin Coleman, and the bassist Paul De Lisle, and picked a band title from a soccer time period for making an all-out cost to victory.
Smash Mouth’s inventive dynamic was formed by the dichotomy between Harwell and Camp, the band’s main songwriter. Harwell wielded an abrasive charisma: His voice contained gravel and rasp, but in addition the sassiness of a schoolyard troublemaker. Camp was a pop-and-punk historian, gifted at fusing the traditional and the trendy. Smash Mouth’s breakout 1997 hit, “Walkin’ on the Sun,” from its debut album, Fush Yu Mang, revived garage-rock noisiness and mod cool whereas Harwell requested, in a spoke-sung patter, the place the peace-and-love beliefs of the Sixties had gone. This misfit observe labored properly on pop-rock radio subsequent to Third Eye Blind, Barenaked Ladies, and Chumbawamba: It was a golden age for catchy, wordy songs whose vibrant exterior belied angst and social commentary.
For the follow-up LP, Astro Lounge, Interscope Records needed surefire hits, and Smash Mouth obliged with anthemic songwriting and crisp, punchy manufacturing. But polish didn’t dilute the band’s standpoint—it sharpened it. The preparations have been eclectic: chunky riffs, sci-fi sound results, flamenco guitars, tight but woozy reggae rhythms (in addition to some unlucky Jamaican-accent work). Camp’s wry lyrics and Harwell’s ornery voice conjured the persona of lovably sleazy slacker poet. “I’m getting stoned, and what’s wrong with that?” one track requested. “The president seems to be just fine.”
As a child, I used to be drawn to the candied sound of Astro Lounge, however I additionally distinctly keep in mind feeling a way of thriller about it: I listened and relistened to decode what the heck was occurring. The explosive opener, “Who’s There,” had a herky-jerky drum sample (I now understand it’s known as the “Be My Baby” rhythm, derived from the Ronettes track) and a spooky synth (I’d now establish that as a theremin). The album’s lyrics about harmful chicks and rest nearly made sense, however they have been affected by phrases I didn’t perceive (“tragedian,” from “Then the Morning Comes”). Today, I nonetheless need this mix from music: accessibility with weirdness, inviting obsession and love.
“All Star” epitomized that combo. It was each dumb and sophisticated, biking by disparate cadences and instrumental tones whereas sustaining puppylike bounce and extroversion. The lyrics have been unwieldy—what does it imply to be “fed to the rules”?—however the message was clear. Here was a track about believing in your self, but in addition believing in international warming, which implies you must attempt to maximize pleasure whilst you can, together with by unapologetically having fun with “All Star.”
This was a saleable message: The track, a direct success, was within the soundtrack to 2 Hollywood movies, Inspector Gadget and the superhero satire Mystery Men. A number of years later, DreamWorks Animation needed to reuse it within the opening scene of its slapstick fantasy film Shrek. The band stated no, however the studio hounded it for approval: No different track the filmmakers tried to make use of labored as effectively with take a look at audiences. “It’s just irresistible to kids,” the observe’s producer, Eric Valentine, instructed Rolling Stone in an oral historical past in regards to the track. “They freak out for it.”
More just lately, “All Star” has turn into an all-purpose meme. The track has been rendered within the voices of Bill O’Reilly and varied Star Wars characters. The YouTube consumer Jon Sudano turned a sensation by singing the phrases to “All Star” over different songs—the Village People’s “YMCA,” John Lennon’s “Imagine”—to weird but listenable impact. The punch line of “All Star” memes is usually about how deeply this track has imprinted on all of us, like some chaotic Lord’s Prayer. “Steve just walks out on stage and says the word ‘Some,’ and the crowd will finish the song for you,” Camp instructed Rolling Stone. “My hair still stands up when that happens.”
After Astro Lounge, the band landed a smattering of hits within the type of cowl songs, whereas Harwell struggled with private tragedy (the loss of life of his son, in 2001) in addition to alcoholism. He was principally pleased with his music’s resurgence within the web period—although he did generally really feel disrespected by the joking about “All Star.” But when individuals coated the track in earnest, treating it as music along with comedy, it felt like “a really cool thank you,” he instructed Rolling Stone. He understood, it appeared, the gratitude listeners can have for that which breaks the mould.