Track 13 from Friends Again (1999)

Track 14 from Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2000)

Track 24 from The Gift Of Rock (2005)

I will always associate Smash Mouth with Sugar Ray, two bands who blew up with groovy midtempo songs with bright, sunny McG-directed videos in the summer of 1997. I once wrote an essay for Billboard about music videos in the year 1997 and how McG completely overhauled the look of MTV and signaled the arrival of "alt-pop" with those videos, plus more for Fastball, Barenaked Ladies, Sublime and others (interestingly, McG was a pal of Sugar Ray who co-produced and co-wrote some of their songs, before his videos became a springboard to 10 feature films and a career box office of over a billion dollars). 

Another thing Smash Mouth has in common with Sugar Ray is that both bands made much faster, more guitar-driven music before reorienting their respective sounds around those hits. I often forget that the band's name isn't 'Smashmouth' with no space, but apparently that's what it was before local radio play for their "Nervous In The Alley" got them signed to Interscope and someone decided that Smash Mouth was a more marketable name as two separate words. 

The alien-themed Astro Lounge opener "Who's There" is probably the band's best deep cut, I really like that song, with "Your Man" a close second. And "Diggin' Your Scene" is their most frequently performed album track. If all their songs were up to the standard of those and "Walkin' On The Sun," I dunno, Smash Mouth would've probably gotten more respect than just being the "All Star" band, although there are worse things than having one song that will live forever. 

Smash Mouth's most popular non-single is "Come On, Come On," which was featured in the episode of "Kim Possible" where Smash Mouth made an animated cameo. Obviously, Smash Mouth's music got some big boosts from film soundtracks, and I included some of their soundtrack work. At one point they were on three Mike Meyers soundtracks in a row, following their famous work for Shrek with Goldmember and The Cat In The Hat. One of the band's later independent albums, 2006's Summer Girl, isn't on streaming services. 

The band's primary songwriter, guitarist Greg Camp, left the band in 2011, with a couple temporary returns since then, and Steve Harwell, retired in 2021 because of a variety of health issues. Smash Mouth is still going as kind of a zombie band, with bassist Paul De Lisle as the only original member, although they also have keyboardist Michael Klooster, who has toured with the band since the Fush Yu Mang days and has recorded with them since Astro Lounge. This Smash Mouth has released a couple of lousy singles with a new singer in the past two years, and a Rick Astley cover. Obviously you don't need to hear them.