Smash Mouth
Smash Mouth (also known as Shrek Mouth or That Shrek Band) is a critically-acclaimed American pop punk–ska–alternative fusion band from San Jose, California. The band formed in 1994 with Steve Harwell (vocals), Greg Camp (guitar), Kevin "Ogre" Coleman (drums), Paul "DONKEY!" De Lisle (bass), and Michael "Puss in Boots" Klooster (keyboards) as their "classic" lineup. They found success around the turn of the millennium, with ubiquitous smash (mouth) no-soap radio hits such as "Walking On the Sunshine", "Mall Star", and their cover of The Monkees' "I'm a Believer", plus cult classics like "The Fonz", "Then the Snoring Comes", "Holiday Inn, My Bed", and "Hang Yourself".
The band is the most correctly named of all one-hit wonders, as it took only one baseball's ricochet to permanently disfigure their faces, hence the name.
Formation[edit]
Smash Mouth formed in 1994 somewhere in San Jose, California, where Greg Camp met Steve Harwell, a local street fairy tale performer, at the Prince Charming Pub. After snorting a large amount of onion juice and singe shots of dragonfire, they looked into the future and saw themselves performing the song "Heave Ho" on stage. Due to this hallucination, Harwell walked home stumbling, looked at his neighbor's house, and started writing material for their future.
The next day, Harwell called Camp on the phone and spread the idea of starting an earnest pop punk ska band. Camp got a hold of two future band members to start: Kevin "Ogre" Coleman on drums, Paul "DONKEY!" De Lisle on bass, and Michael "Puss in Boots" Klooster on keyboards. They did several rehearsals, which Harwell labeled overall as "messy", and several live shows, where they were booed off stage twice due to their layered onion addiction affecting their performances.
Fush Yu Mang and early success[edit]
Smash Mouth recorded their debut Fush Yu Mang from 1995 to 1996, and released it in 1997. The album as a whole became a cult classic and a heatseeker, as the album's third track "Walking on the Sun" (its title a reference to The Police's "Walking on the Moon", as the band wished to pay homage to their ska forefathers) went to #1 on the U.S. Billboard Rock Charts and the World Groove Charts, catipulting them to national success and a tour.
Astro Lounge and breakthrough[edit]
After the tour, music executives took notice toward Smash Mouth and paid them $15 million in cash to convince them to make a family-friendly radio album, free of profanity-laced anagrams; the band agreed to the offer. After enduring a $23,000-a-day parfait habit, Steve Harwell announced that he wrote some new material for the band's then-upcoming release and told them to record it ASAP before his money went to waste.
The finished product, Astro Lounge, was released in 1999. It featured such highlights as "Diggin' Your Grave", "Waste", "Then the Snoring Comes", "I Just Can't Get Enough of You", and their signature song "Mall Star". The album received mixed-to-positive reviews, with the positive reviews being from critics who tested Harwell-positive for warm snow.
"Mall Star" lamented the difficulty in failing to receive a head injury in Sport Chek from stumbling on soccer balls and slipping on footballs. The hillions of royalties it earned funded an enormous real-life Astro Lounge facility in outer space. This song was featured in numerous movies of the Y2K era, such as Mystery Men, Rat Race, Digimon: The Movie, and most famously, Shrek, which later catapulted the song to Internet meme status.
| “ | SomeBODY once told me the stores'll overcharge me I'm not the smartest jock in the world. The saleswoman was looking nasty With the frumpy white carpet unfurled. [Chorus] All I wanted was some soccer [Repeat chorus 18x] |
” |
— Lyrics to "Mall Star"
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Smash Mouth and Get the Picture[edit]
Sadly, while the band was celebrating their success, Steve Harwell's son died at only six months old due to bone cancer (I can't make a joke about this because I'd be pretty sad if I were in Steve's shoes). In order to keep himself from growing deeply depressed, he convinced Smash Mouth to make another album with him, that being the confidently-self-titled 2001 album Smash Mouth, featuring the dysfunctional '60s ripoff cover of The Monkees' "I'm a Believer", also featured on the Shrek: Green Ogre, Obnoxious Donkey, and Fairy Tale Friends Rock the Swamp soundtrack.
Following this was 2003's Get the Picture, featuring another dysfunctional '60s ripoff cover, this time being The Beatles's "Getting Better", later featured in the 2003 dysfunctional '50s ripoff movie The Cat in the Hat.
All-Star Smash Hits and The Gift of Rock[edit]
In 2005, Smash Mouth released their greatest hits, Smash Mouth's All-Star Super-Best Mouth-Smashing Shrektacular Smash Hits, as well as the Ringo Starr/Christmas cover album The Gift of Rock, titled despite snarky critics' insistence that both Smash Mouth and Ringo were "dedicated to undermining all that is rolled and/or rocking in the music industry." In 2006, the band performed the soundtrack to Zoom, a national disaster kids' movie led by Tim Allen.
Descent into irrelevancy[edit]
The band underwent lineup changes and released some albums that nobody cared about, which smashed their own mouths shut. Most of the band's time since then has been spent slouching about the Astro Lounge, but more recent tours reprised their non-"All Star" singles in support of the smashed-mouth cause. Steve Harwell often flipped out on fans, usually when they pelted him with bread, which Harwell called a crumby greeting.
In 2017, following the band's resurgence as a Shrek meme, Harwell received the San Jose Lifetime Achievement Award for using the profits made from Smash Mouth's music to feed the city's homeless, ease the tensions in relations between street gangs, and cure Princess Fiona of her ogreness. To commemorate his work, the city erected a to-scale Shrek fountain that splashes all over downtown's San Pedro Square.
In 2021, the band performed at The Big Sip beer and wine festival in Bethel, New York. Harwell got drunk on stage, threatening to kill a crowd member's family and performing an exuberantly ironic Roman salute. Following the performance, Harwell announced his retirement due to health issues. The years didn't stop coming for Smash Mouth, who announced they were carrying on with a substitute singer.
The years sadly stopped coming for Harwell on September 4, 2023, as the health issues did not stop coming. The band continued to play in tribute to him, saying "The show must go on".