After the preliminary success of their debut single, “Walkin’ On The Sun,” Smash Mouth returned to the studio to report the follow-up to 1997’s Fush You Mang at their new house on the key label Interscope. Inside the band, tensions had been excessive because the concern of being a one-hit surprise loomed above them. “Walkin’ On The Sun” had been a divisive hit, luring in droves of latest followers intrigued by its quirky, Farfisa-driven beach-blanket sound. On the similar time, nevertheless, it alienated lots of the band’s longstanding followers, who recognized with the tougher, ska-punk songs that comprised a lot of the album. However by the point Fush You Mang’s follow-up, Astro Lounge, hit the cabinets, Smash Mouth would have absolutely embraced a poppier sound, epitomized by their juggernaut single “All Star.”
“Smash Mouth was sort of in between pop and punk”
Smash Mouth enlisted producer Eric Valentine (Good Charlotte, Queens Of The Stone Age, Third Eye Blind) to supply the tracks for what would finally turn out to be their second album, Astro Lounge. For the periods, the band transformed an previous home right into a recording studio in Los Gatos, south of the band’s hometown of San Jose.
On the onset, a choice was made to eschew their earlier punk leanings to concentrate on a extra commercially viable pop sound, main drummer Kevin Coleman to half methods with the band after the recording periods. Having written “Walkin’ On The Sun” earlier than even becoming a member of the band, Smash Mouth guitarist Greg Camp was promoted to go songwriter.
Valentine and Camp labored collectively to create a imaginative and prescient for Astro Lounge with some enter from Interscope. Camp introduced a wistful, 60s surf-lounge aesthetic to the music whereas Valentine introduced the pragmatism of trade expertise. By the top of the periods, the band had 13 songs’ price of potential pop-rock gold.
Hold drilling
Believing the album was within the can, Robert Hayes, the band’s supervisor, delivered it to Interscope. Regardless of Smash Mouth’s concentrate on writing poppier songs, Jimmy Iovine and Tom Whalley, then working within the label’s A&R staff, felt the gathering lacked a robust single. They ordered Hayes and the band to maintain drilling till they hit business oil.
After months of back-and-forth, all sides expressing frustration, Hayes sat Camp down with a replica of Billboard journal. Collectively they went by way of the High 50 and dissected the songs right down to their profitable elements. Camp was then charged with writing some songs together with all these components. Just a few days later, the guitarist returned with the soon-to-be hits “Then the Morning Comes” and “All Star.”
“I set out to write an anthem for them”
“Smash Mouth was sort of in between pop and punk at that time,” Camp informed Rolling Stone in a latest interview.
“These were kids that weren’t really wearing a uniform in any certain way. They weren’t mods, they weren’t punks, they weren’t jocks, they weren’t sport-os. They were just these kids that liked music, saying that they got picked on a lot. I sort of verbally set out to write an anthem for them. That’s how it started.”
Valentine had introduced in session drummer Michael Urbano, who performed the track twice earlier than nailing it; he shortly forgot in regards to the session till listening to “All Star” on the radio someday. “I had only heard it three times, and then I heard it three million times within two weeks,” mentioned Urbano in the identical interview.
“All Star” was first launched as a single on Might 4, 1999, adopted by Astro Lounge on June 8. By August, the one peaked at No.4 on the Billboard Scorching 100. Following the album’s launch, the band set out on a relentless two-year tour.
“You couldn’t turn on the TV without hearing ‘All Star’”
Throughout this time, “All Star” saturated the airwaves. “One of the things with ‘All Star,’ it was very licensable, I licensed the crap outta that song,” remembers Hayes. “You could not walk into a grocery store or turn on the TV without hearing ‘All Star.’”
Even to at the present time, licensing requests for the track nonetheless come up just a few instances per week, Camp defined to The Ringer in a latest interview. “I mean, even this morning I was getting asked by our publishing company if it was OK to use it in two different things. Most requests are approved, unless they want to change the lyrics something like, ‘Hey now, you’re a hamburger guy.’”
The track additionally featured prominently within the movies Thriller Males (1999), Inspector Gadget (1999) Digimon: The Film (2000), and Rat Race (2001). It obtained a Grammy nomination for Finest Pop Efficiency on the 1999 awards, however finally misplaced out to Santana.
Hollywood comes calling
Then, in 2001, director Vicki Jenson was on the helm of an animated household movie for DreamWorks a couple of curmudgeonly inexperienced ogre referred to as Shrek. Jenson was on the lookout for one thing totally different for the film, particularly when it got here to the soundtrack. After they initially approached Smash Mouth to ask if they may use “All Star,” the band turned the request down. Following a non-public screening of the movie, nevertheless, the group acknowledged how profitable it was going to be.
Shrek went on to gross over half a billion {dollars} on the US field workplace, and, for a complete technology of kids, “All Star” grew to become a comforting anthem of braveness and self-acceptance. For Smash Mouth, it was the top of economic success – with all of the spoils they may think about.
If that wasn’t sufficient of a fairy-tale ending, by the late 00s the track discovered an ironic afterlife being memefied, parodied, and mashed-up in tons of, if not hundreds of movies on YouTube. Over twenty years since its launch, “All Star” nonetheless glitters like gold.
Take heed to the most effective of Smash Mouth on Apple Music and Spotify.
