After Steve Harwell, ‘Shrek’ Is Not Gonna Be the Same Without Smash Mouth!

Heather McKeever

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‘Shrek’ Wouldn’t Be the Same Without Smash Mouth

There are many videos on YouTube of Smash Mouth playing their hit song “All-Star,” but one that stands out is a live performance from June 1999, a month after the song came out. During a show at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, the crowd seems quiet, and the lead singer, Steve Harwell, messes up the words and tells the crowd to trust that it’s worth sticking with him.

Many of the most popular comments on the video are now tributes to Harwell, who died on Monday at age 56 from liver failure. One old saying, though, stands out: “Guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet… but your kids are going to love it,” he said, referring to the scene in “Back to the Future” where Marty McFly plays Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B.

Good” for a crowd in 1955 that doesn’t know what to do with it. “All Star,” which hit No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1999, has been played almost a billion times on Spotify and is one of the most named songs of all time.

Why Smash Mouth is So Important to Shrek?

“All Star” was one of the last songs that the band wrote for their second album, Astro Lounge. But it was Smash Mouth’s first big hit, and when it came out in May 1999, everyone was talking about it. The song was in the movie Inspector Gadget, which came out in July 1999 and made $134 million around the world.

It was also on the soundtrack and in the trailer for the superhero spoof Mystery Men, and its themes were used as part of the story for the music video. The same summer, the band also played the song live at the Home Run Derby during baseball’s All-Star Weekend in Boston. Some fans of the Boston Red Sox think that this game kept Fenway Park open.

‘Shrek’ Wouldn’t Be the Same Without Smash Mouth

Even though most people who haven’t been living under a rock (or a nice boulder) for the past twenty years probably know the basic story of Shrek, focusing on some of the movie’s themes really helps show how well Smash Mouth got the movie’s main message. When we meet Shrek for the first time, he is living alone in a swamp.

Mike Myers does his voice, and he likes to be dirty and by himself.

He spends his days swimming in mud, making lights out of earwax, and making signs that are surprisingly good at telling people to stay away. People coming after you with pitchforks will do that to your self-esteem, but Shrek is sure of his skills and happy with the life he’s made for himself.

Because of these things, it makes sense that the first song we hear when we meet Shrek is “All-Star” by Smash Mouth. In the song, Steve Harwell talks about how people mistake him and insult him, and how hard it is for him to understand the world around him. But he decides to do what he wants and have fun.

The song continues the message of the movie, which is that even if everything around you is going wrong (because of a school bully or a swamp full of annoying fairytale animals, for example), you’ll figure things out and be fine. Even though mean people try to bring Shrek down, “All-Star” shows how driven he is to make the most of his life.

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