Songoftheday 10/18/21 - Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me, I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed...
"All Star" - Smash Mouth
from the albums Astro Lounge and Mystery Men (Original Soundtrack) (both 1999)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 27
(ed. note: wouldn't you know it, the week this band gets back in the news and their most-remembered song is up on SOTD. Coincidence?)
Today's song comes from the rock band Smash Mouth, who after having a big radio hit with "Walkin' On The Sun" in the beginning of 1998, returned in the summer of that year with a remake of the 60's nugget "Can't Get Enough Of You Baby" for the movie Can't Hardly Wait that made the pop radio top-40. That latter song would also appear on the group's second album Astro Lounge. The following year, the group returned with the next selection from the sophomore set, "All Star", which also appeared in a movie. No, not Shrek (yet), but the oft-forgotten-for-good-reason "comic superhero" movie Mystery Men. An embarrassing vehicle that had such talent appearing in it as William B Macy, Janeane Garofalo, Hank Azaria, Ben Stiller, Eddie Izzard, Paul Reubens, and Geoffrey Rush, the film ended up being a spectacular box office bomb, raking in less than half of what it cost to make. It wasn't for lack of promotion, as Smash Mouth's "All Star" music video featured the cast of the movie and scenes all through it like a trailer. But unlike the movie, somehow "All Star", which was a mediocre power-pop track with bizarrely semi-motivational lyrics written by the band's guitarist Greg Camp, became massive on the radio and in the record stores. Its guitar crashes and sing-along chorus (along with the memorable first line) gave the band a hit that has lasted even to today's times...
"All Star" became Smash Mouth's biggest hit on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, reaching the top ten in August of 1999. The song spent nine weeks at #1 on Billboard's older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio chart, while taking three weeks at #2 on their Alternative Rock format list. Internationally, the song made the top ten in Canada (#2) and Australia (#4), and reached the top-40 in New Zealand (#15), Spain (#17), Finland (#17), Iceland (#18), and the UK (#24). The Astro Lounge album, released in June of that year, became their biggest album, rising to #6 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and staying on the list for over a year, going on to sell over three million copies. The band and the album will return to the series...
(4/10)
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And finally, in concert in California that same year...
Up tomorrow: This diva may forgive, but won't forget.
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