Songoftheday 5/25/21 - Whenever we kiss I get a feeling like this, I get to wishin that there was two of you...

 

 

"Can't Get Enough Of You Baby" - Smash Mouth

from the albums Can't Hardly Wait (Original Soundtrack) (1998) and Astro Lounge (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart

Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #27 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Airplay Top-40: 7

 

Today's song of the day comes from the rock band Smash Mouth, who had scored a huge radio hit in the beginning of 1998 with the song "Walkin' On The Sun". Later that year, the group contributed to the soundtrack to the movie Can't Hardly Wait, which had already spun off a top ten pop hit with the Miami Bass-adjacent song "Swing My Way" by K.P. & Envyi. Smash Mouth went in a totally opposite direction, covering a garage rock nugget from 1967. "Can't Get Enough Of You Baby" was written by the team of Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell, who wrote for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and originally released by the band ? & The Mysterians, who were all of Mexican heritage and had a #1 hit of their own with "96 Tears" in 1966. This single, taken from their second album Action, was a minor pop hit at #67. You can definitely tell this record was the template Smash Mouth used to come up with "Walkin' On The Sun"...

Smash Mouth brightens the song up but is rather reverend to the original, keeping that rhythmic keyboard riff the center of attention along with the slightly off harmonies. All in all its a great party record, and does the classic justice in bringing it back from obscurity...

Since Smash Mouth's version of "Can't Get Enough Of You Baby" was released as a commercial retail single, it wasn't able to place on Billboard magazine's official Hot 100 pop chart. However, the song got enough radio love to make it to the top-40 of the airplay component of the tally in August of 1998. The track also climbed to #30 on Billboard's Alternative Rock radio chart, and rose to #14 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. Internationally, the single peaked at #8 in Canada and #14 in Australia. The song would appear on their album Astro Lounge released a year later with an even bigger hit to boot.

As for the Can't Hardly Wait soundtrack, one more song, the Missy Elliott song "Hit 'Em Wit Da Hee" with Lil' Kim and Mocha, popped on to the R&B Airplay chart at #61. 

(7/10)

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The Four Seasons also recorded the song in 1966...

 

 

And here's the band performing the song live at the Hard Rock Cafe...

 Up tomorrow: A Fresh new face scores a big pop hit in slumbers.