Carlos Santana, Rob Thomas, and the cult of ‘Smooth’
With parts of the world reaching record-breaking temperatures this week, there’s never been a more fitting time for revisiting the iconic opening line of ‘Smooth’ by Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas: “Man, it’s a hot one.” Has there ever been such a cult following of a hit song in history? Santana and Thomas’ chart-topping leviathan retained cultural value years after it arrived during the brief Latin music explosion of 1999. Whilst the track is ubiquitous, it has found life with a new audience and entered internet and meme culture.
At its inception, Santana hadn’t had a hit single in over 15 years and longed to return to the radio. One thing led to another, and he had reconnected with Arista Records President Clive Davis, who had signed him to his first deal on Columbia Records in the late 1960s. This was significant, as the pair worked together during Santana’s most fruitful chapter when he was delivering classics such as ‘Black Magic Woman’ and ‘Oye Como Va’.
One thing led to another, and after linking up with various songwriters for his new album on Arista – Supernatural – Itaal Shur was eventually drafted in to write the lead single for the record. ‘Smooth’ emerged from a song by Shur called ‘Room 17’. The words were removed, and the track was handed to Rob Thomas of the rock band Matchbox Twenty. He wrote a new batch of lyrics and conceived a fresh vocal melody, renaming the song ‘Smooth’. After hearing Thomas’ effort, Santana initially hated it, but eventually settled on having him record the vocals for the final version. As an interesting side note, when recording his demo, Thomas originally had George Michael in mind for the singing.
The scene was now set for history to be made. Whilst the song was officially released on June 15th, 1999, it had leaked by the first day of the month, with a collection of radio stations eagerly playing it to listeners. A chart-topper, it spent 12 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 later that year and became the first number one of Santana’s career, with ‘Black Magic Woman’ peaking at number four back in 1971. ‘Smooth’ stayed in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 for 30 weeks and the top 100 for 58.
A global hit, it entered the top five in Australia, Canada, Greece, Ireland and the UK. It was also a top 40 success in the likes of France, Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland. Reflecting just how monumental ‘Smooth’ was, it became the second biggest-selling single of all time, after Chubby Checker’s ‘The Twist.’ Cementing its triumph, in 2000, it won the Grammy Awards for ‘Record of the Year’, ‘Song of the Year’ and ‘Best Pop Collaboration with Vocal’.
As with any big hit, ‘Smooth’ had its time in the sun, and then people got sick of it. The track faded into obscurity as the noughties moved on and the zeitgeist changed, but years later, it had a resurgence. It became the subject of numerous internet memes in the summer of 2016, creating a community still alive and well today, with daily posting on social media groups. If you type in “‘Smooth’ by Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas” on the internet, you will find scores of material related to the 1999 track. This situation has been compared to what happened to other hits from the era, such as Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’.
“It went through the, ‘Hey, this is a good, cool summer jam,’ and then the, ‘Hey, we’re all sick of this song and never want to hear it again,'” Santana told Rolling Stone in 2019 when discussing the song’s 20th anniversary. “And then it went through the, ‘Hey, let’s listen to that song again. I remember it. That sounds good still!'”
That’s sort of what happened. A new generation of internet-savvy listeners, many of whom weren’t even born when ‘Smooth’ arrived, heavily memed it, with hilarity found in both Santana’s searing guitar line and Thomas’ growling vocals that are far too much for the song’s chilled summer groove. Regarding the Matchbox Twenty man’s performance, it is also packaged with a range of unironic and, accordingly, comic lyrics outside of the classic opening, “Man, it’s a hot one”. Roared in his gravelly voice, these include moments such as “My muñequita / my Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa”, “Well, and it’s just like the ocean under the moon”, and the famous hook, “Give me your heart, make it real, or else forget about it”. As internet users have pointed out for years, these lyrics are incomprehensible, despite the Latin essence of ‘Smooth’.
For such an enormous hit to have such questionable lyrics brings into question the mainstream tastes of 1999, but it only takes the mention of acts like Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys, who were all the rage at the time, to show that the bar was low. However, the thing about ‘Smooth’ and the union of Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas is that for all its flaws, there’s something inherently loveable and honest that saves the song from the damning criticism that other hits of its era receive. Of course, musically, it isn’t the greatest, but those who meme it do so without any tangible malice, as Santana and Thomas created a comedy masterpiece without realising it. Whether it be Santana or Thomas’ performances, the lyrics, rhythm or the video, it is god damn hilarious.
Thomas told Rolling Stone for the song’s 20th anniversary: “It’s not the best song I’ve ever written, and it’s not the best song Carlos has ever done. But sometimes, it’s about timing. It was time for that record. The thing they were calling the ‘Latin Explosion’ was there. It was just all meant to happen in that time, and I just got lucky enough to be a part of this moment that nobody really can be that responsible for, you know, just having perfect timing like that.”
Touching on the song’s newfound comedic status, he concluded: “Any fun you want to make of that song, I’ve made fun of it too. I’ve literally been in Singapore with the guys from Matchbox, drunk, singing it at karaoke. The amount of times somebody’s looked at me and said, ‘Man, it’s a hot one, huh?’ To this day. You got to have a big sense of humour about those kinds of things. It’s like the gift that kept on giving.”
