The heartwarming reason why Smash Mouth wrote ‘All Star’
‘All Star’ by Smash Mouth is just one of those songs that you seemingly have never been able to escape. It was released on the band’s second studio album, Astro Lounge. While the song was undoubtedly popular given its hooky nature, it exploded into popularity after it was included in the soundtrack to Shrek in 2001.
The track is something of a ska-pop-punk hybrid and drew influence from bands like Sugar Ray and Third Eye Blind. It hadn’t been included on the first draft of Astro Lounge; the band wrote it for the album after their label, Interscope, had asked for more single-worthy tracks.
Smash Mouth’s guitarist, Greg Camp, once explained that ‘All Star’ had actually been written as an uplifting song for Smash Mouth fans who were being bullied. He said: “When we were on tour for the first record, it was still when people were writing fan mail in the form of paper and pencils and typewriters and stuff. We would get these big bags of fan mail, and we would take them to the Laundromat and do our laundry and read all this mail while we were sitting around waiting for our clothes to get dry.”
Camp added: “And about 85-90 per cent of the mail was from these kids who were being bullied, or their brothers or older siblings were giving them shit for liking Smash Mouth or liking whatever they’re doing or the way they dressed and stuff. So we were like, ‘We should write a song for fans.’ It was sort of like a daily affirmation. It was designed to be an uplifting, self-confidence-building song. The melody was very simple and very much in the scale.”
A further great appeal to the success of ‘All Star’ was its simplicity. While Smash Mouth had first started out as a pop-punk band, they quickly shifted towards pop and away from punk, following the crazy success of their hit single. Camp noted that many other songs could be sung over ‘All Star’, which shows its pop generality.
“There’s this one guy named Jon Sudano,” Camp said, “And he has a whole YouTube channel about singing ‘All Star’, the melody and the lyrics, over any song. Like, any song. Like, ‘YMCA,’ or ‘Under the Bridge’ by the Chili Peppers. He sings that melody with those words to these instrumental versions of those songs, and it works on every single song. It’s really weird.”
Camp added: “I’ve kind of become Facebook pals with him, because I just think he’s fabulous. He’s this big, overweight guy who sits in front of his computer and does stuff like this all day long. The song was written for people like him, who may be a little bit of an outcast or not accepted socially because of their appearance. And he’s just going for it. He gets it completely. He is the person that that song was written for.”
Stream the song below.
