Smash Mouth

Smash Mouth are an alternative band from California. Their genre of music is sometimes called "neo-ska". The band adopts retro styles that actually cover several decades of popular music, as well as performing remakes of several blasts from the past such as "I'm a Believer" and "Why Can't We Be Friends".

The band is headed by vocalist Steven Harvell. Greg Camp is the guitarist, while Paul De Lisle is the bassist and Kevin Coleman is the drummer.

Smash Mouth first broke out into popularity in 1997 after releasing their single "Walking on the Sun", a song written in 1960s style presenting a Generation X view about the decade that brought us the hippie movement and the movement's later abandonment by the generation that had brought it about. Its retro style just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Summer of Love and well-written rhymes such as "This is a love attack/I know 't went outbut it's back/It's just like any fad/It retracts before impact" helped garner it a lot of airplay. The single was a kicker for their album entitled Fush Yu Mang, whose title was written in a font suggesting Oriental characters. It was filled with songs suggesting a hard-partying, beer-and-gambling image combined with some connoisseurial cultural tastes, like "Let's Rock", "Heave-ho", "Beer Goggles" and "Padrino". A few other songs, such as "Disconnect the Dots" and "Nervous in the Alley", the latter of which was released as a cut for airplay, revealed a more distressed side.

In 1999 Smash Mouth released their sophomore album, Astrolounge. While Fush Yu Mang had an "Explicit Lyrics" label stamped on it due to lines such as "Fuck it, let's rock!", Astrolounge had no warning label. The year Astrolounge came out, "All-star" and "And Then the Morning Comes" were released as singles.