'All Star' At 20: How A Smash Mouth Victory Ode Launched A Thousand Memes

These days, artists who book session time at Los Angeles's Barefoot Recording have a sprawling, completely loaded, three-studio musical playground at their disposal. Vintage tools — including a nine-foot Yamaha grand piano used by Stevie Wonder — lines the walls. Soon after producer Eric Valentine took ownership of the facility in 2000, it became the recording nexus for a couple of rock albums of the era: Queens of the Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf, Good Charlotte’s The Young and the Hopeless, Taking Back Sunday’s Louder Now, and more. Nevertheless before Valentine ran Barefoot, he operated a much less glamorous and smaller space 350 miles north in Redwood City.


“It was called H.O.S. Recording, and H.O.S. Actually really stood for ‘hunk of shit,’" Valentine told MTV News. “That song certainly was recorded in that building for sure.”


“That song” is “All Star” by Smash Mouth. You know it. Each person is aware it. You could sing the chorus without much effort, so you could even be singing it now. Maybe you’re whistling its sugary melodic breakdown. Quite possibly, you’ve just thought of your preference “All Star” meme, and you’re laughing. It’s in your head. It’s habitually in your head.


“All Star” seems immortal right now, the sort of song that can never perish because it’s not really a song at all, not anymore. Though it was released because the initial single from Smash Mouth’s second album, Astro Lounge, on May 4, 1999 — 20 years prior this week — you likely know it from 2001’s Shrek, where it soundtracked the title ogre’s disgustingly charming morning routine. It actually first appeared in another movie, the ’99 superhero spoof Mystery Men, which accounts for its Ben Stiller-led music video. Maybe you remember hearing it all that summer, any time it topped Billboard’s U.S. Adult Top 40 and Mainstream Top 40 charts, almost topped the U.S. Option Songs chart, and peaked at No. 4 on the Hot 100.


Quite likely, you know it from the memes. Valentine is aware this, also, and he’s into it. He likes how “All Star” really never went away.


“It really speaks to how much that song became a segment of the culture of the generation. I’m really delighted of that,” he mentioned. “Whether folks are making fun or it or celebrating it or both or whichever, the fact that it's still meaningful to people, I think it's really cool.”


In the 20 years since song hit, The world wide web has accelerated our nostalgia cycles. Anyone Wi-Fi plus a little bit time can with little effort isolate the components of pop culture we collectively remember, warp them in eccentric although hilarious ways, then reintroduce them to the world as new creations. In the event of “All Star,” those constructions steadily became more deranged in 2010s, following the song's 10-year anniversary. A Saturday Night Live sketch from 2010 portrayed the musical group as one-hit-boogeymen haunting a girl at bedtime with their infectious chorus; four years later, mash-up artist Neil Cicierega positioned the song as a centerpiece to his Mouth Sounds composition. In 2016, YouTuber Jon Sudano recorded a series of bait-and-switch “covers” built around an eas gag: He actually just sang “All Star” over other popular songs. Then things got weird.


Compositionally, “All Star” is easy to meme. Its starting “some-BODY” lyric, delivered in singer Steve Harwell's husky croon, is instantly recognizable as is its chorus, making both efficient punchlines. (The musical group, for their part, have been in on the fun for a couple of years right now) Smash Mouth songwriter Greg Camp maximized these same elements to prepare an indelible, instantly memorable pop song — brought to life by Valentine’s production flourishes. The two first linked up in 1997 to record the band’s debut album, Fush Yu Mang. It yielded their first breakthrough hit, the beachy, ’60-inspired “Walkin’ on the Sun.”


“When we got with each other, they were like a punk-ska musical group and amazingly good at it, because Greg is an incredible songwriter. ‘Walkin’ on the Sun’ group kind of came up as an aside any time we were doing pre-production,” Valentine mentioned. “I did this more retro surfy thing to it, and that became group kind of their sound. That first record, it did really well for them. It was a multi-platinum record.”


to prepare good on that momentum, the musical group and Valentine spent months “wringing our hands and pulling our hair” recording follow-up Astro Lounge. Although their label, Interscope, didn’t hear a first single. So they all returned to H.O.S. For a fast weekend session where they banged out both “All Star” and fellow vintage-inspired single “Then the Morning Comes.” They worked diligently, and key decisions happened rapidly. Valentine hired a session musician to nickname drummer Kevin Coleman’s parts for expediency’s sake. (“He never forgave me for that,” the producer mentioned) He also blended in a drum loop from a ’60s David Axelrod instrumental with the live percussion on the chorus, building a potent kick that redoubles the song’s hooks.


The end result, as we know it, is an anthem to self-positivity. Because the lore goes, Camp penned the lyrics as a rally against bullying and grabbed the title from his preferred brand of sneakers. As such, the song doesn’t take itself that seriously — it's not “Everybody Hurts” — however it’s also not a lark, either. That’s perhaps why it lends itself to seeming unending relevance and boundless memeability. Valentine mentioned his preference send-up is the SNL sketch, although for a very specific reason.


“[In the sketch], the daughter’s saying, ‘It’s that song that you hear all of the time,’ and the dad goes, “Isn't that the one that goes ‘do do do, do do-do do?’ And it’s another song I recorded [Third Eye Blind’s ‘Semi-Charmed Life’],” he mentioned. “There was a lot going on for me in the ’90s.” As an educated man once sang, the years begin coming and so they don’t stop coming.