Revisiting the rest of Astro Lounge 20 years later

Half a month after Astro Lounge hit music shelves, reviewer Michael Tedder heard a hodgepodge in Smash Mouth’s second album.

In his Maneater review, published June 23, 1999, Tedder wrote, “most of the album sounds like an-all American garage band treading all over the pop-culture map with the zeal of early XTC, Talking Heads and even a postmodern day Beck.”

He continued, “In theory, it sounds like a mess. But on CD, it sounds like a masterpiece. Astro Lounge is one of those rare albums where almost any song released of it would likely be a top-ten single, and several tracks will no doubt go to number one. Even the surprisingly somber ‘Waste’ will reach the ballad-loving audience.”

As it approaches its official 20-year anniversary this Saturday, Astro Lounge is well back on Earth. Only “All Star,” which had its 20-year milestone as a single last month, hit Tedder’s lofty prognostication. But many other tunes fared non-allergenically, and might have pierced the stratosphere under more opportune circumstances.

More crucially for the band, the album established their identity and secured their mainstream position. With the latter achievement, it also gave them license to keep broadening their horizons.

As Tedder was apt to observe, they were already doing that. Bassist and secondary songwriter Paul De Lisle acknowledged as much in interviews plugging the CD.

“We realized that we’re not really a punk band,” he said in the embedded video above, uploaded to Toazted’s YouTube channel. “We just kind of found out strength a little more. It’s a litte bit slower a record, a little more melodic and it’s just more song-oriented.”

As it happened, though, Smash Mouth’s pinnacle of success was relatively short. Besides 2001’s Smash Mouth, it is hard to argue that any of their other albums can challenge Astro Lounge’s legacy.

With that in mind, it is worth noting that “All Star” did not singlehandedly brighten the CD’s bulb. From the forgotten to the other commercial heavyweights, here is a look back on the (potential) meanings and performances of the 14 other Astro Lounge songs. Tracks are revisited in order of appearance on the album.

“Who’s There”

As with some of its more recognized cohabitants, this leadoff track begins with a tone- and theme-setting sound effect. For all of the variety in Astro Lounge, it is appropriate that an album with artwork depicting interplanetary luxuries should feature a song about extraterrestrial encounters.

What kind of alien-visit story “Who’s There” is getting at is hard to determine. Perhaps that is the idea. Even when it ceases to be unseen, the unknown remains the unknown.

All the while, the lyrics accentuate the chaos with the varied visuals they evoke. Some people are clearly fearful, per their expressions and actions. (“Out the theater doors they’re screaming, ushers pick up treasures.) Others, particularly the “children” who “gather and wonder” sound mystified and innocently willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

If the former crowd reacts appropriately, this song would probably still have been out of place in, say, 2005’s The War of the Worlds. Even if it had the requisite recognition to appear in other media, the tempo is not dark enough. But if the children are right, this might be a plot along the lines of the Simpsons gems “Bart’s Comet” and “Lisa the Skeptic.” Or fodder for a segment on the Science Channel’s Strange Evidence.

So who is right? Smash Mouth is not telling us for sure. They just leave off on the titular query.

“Diggin’ Your Scene”

Per Songfacts, writer and guitarist Greg Camp offered, “That song’s about things you love and can’t live without that can nonetheless kill you. It’s mostly about a particular relationship, but I compare the relationship to drugs — people can be like drugs you’re addicted to.”

That explains the second bridge’s simile, “Like a junkie knows he ought to kick.” But for the most part, the metaphors and implicit straightforward narration suggest feeling controlled by a femme fatale. The steady speed of the music and delivery capture the way some find such a scenario disturbingly exhilarating.

Commercially, this song fared unremarkably. But whether it was hardcore fan response, the band’s own liking or a combination thereof, “Diggin’ Your Scene” returned in 2005 as part of the All Star Smash Hits compilation album.

“I Just Wanna See”

After the first two tracks evoke visions of sci-fi/horror and romance/thriller/action genre mashups, this comes at an appropriate point. It also instills assorted visuals of age groups, occupations and creatures, but without the disruptions or distractions.

“I Just Wanna See” is slower paced than its two immediate predecessors, yet unmistakably upbeat. Through the decades, listeners have consistently taken it as a fresher articulation of “Stop and smell the roses.” (As it happens, that adage is actually evoked in later track. More on that soon.)

 

“Waste”

Just like “Diggin’ Your Scene,” “Waste” flew under the mainstream radar, but cracked the 20-track All Star Smash Hits roster. It is also one of 11 songs with an official music video on Smash Mouth’s YouTube channel.

The way this largely forgotten single (released April 27, 2000) is singled out by the band is rather appropriate. At its inception, it introduced the new variety in Smash Mouth’s repertoire better than most of its teammates.

In terms of track listing between Astro Lounge and its predecessor, “Waste” is the group’s first subdued song. While “I Just Wanna See” is slow and soft in its own right, “Waste” conveys reflective regret. The pace barely kicks up around the midway point, but only enough to intensify the lament.

To lend the song more power, it focuses on the aftermath of an unpleasant scenario while the video illustrates the action. The upscale restaurant setting cleverly literalizes the lyrics’ metaphors on “messy recipes of romance” and “too many cooks in the kitchen.”

Appropriately, after this song fades, we go right into “All Star.” Whether this was a calculated ordering or not, it makes for a timely pick-me-up.

 

 

“Satellite”

As the sixth track, “Satellite” was eternally condemned to the impossible task of following the act of “All Star.” But if nothing else, it saw action in films that younger audiences would have noticed.

As this author previously recounted, “All Star” was how millennial kids could first hear Smash Mouth in age-appropriate media. No sneaking around parents, parental control or parental advisories necessary.

In less than a year, those who remembered Harwell’s voice might have recognized it again in Snow Day. The Nickelodeon movie released at midwinter 2000 has “Satellite” playing, somewhat faded, behind the introduction to the protagonist’s crush.

“Radio”

Here is another track that, shall we say, hits the ground running and does not slow down until it finishes. That approach captures and conveys the chaos and fast pace of the fluctuating hot list and the sway it holds on an artist’s fame.

Once again, Smash Mouth puts fresh twists on trite phrases in this song. “Radio” concludes with a don’t-get-too-high-on-success warning, “In fifteen minutes you’re a Neanderthal.”

Odds are that prehistoric evocation was selected to rhyme with “cattle call” and “disco ball.” But it also works as a less clichéd alternative to dinosaur in this context.

Before that, to accentuate the tune’s personal touch, the band references its roots through repeated proud queries of “San Jo who would’ve ever thought?” Contrasted with Hollywood (also mentioned in the lyrics) downstate, San Jose is the group’s relatively forgotten place of origin.

Even in the Bay Area — Dionne Warwick oldies and Sharks hockey aside — San Jose is historically eclipsed by San Francisco and Oakland. “Radio” therefore speaks to Smash Mouth’s self-awareness of how high it had to climb in the public eye and, in turn, how far it could have fallen at any time after Astro Lounge. With that said, the song’s consistent rhythm underscores their intent to just keep pursuing their formula for success.

“Stoned”

Coming off “Radio” or not, this song with a not-so-subtle chorus about “getting high” makes an interesting segue into the next track. Not unlike “Diggin’ Your Scene,” there is some dangerous denial coming from the narrator’s mouth here.

 

 

“Then the Morning Comes”

As one mark of this song’s success, it joined “All Star” as the only other Astro Lounge track to make Now! That’s What I Call Music. Within months of “All Star” helping to tout the compilation’s third installment on TV, “Then the Morning Comes” led off the commercials for Now 4.

This would be the third chronological single from Astro Lounge, and the first released as one after the full album. For at least three years thereafter, it constituted the soundtrack to several retail ads. (This author distinctly remembers hearing it in a clothing commercial while on vacation in August 2002.)

The intro also makes an easy choice to kick off an a.m. TV or radio talk show. Its alarm-clock sound effect, automated “Good morning” and instrumental riff pack sufficient musical coffee alone. Nobody needs to know or remember that the subsequent lyrics tell of old partying patterns, complete with painful hangovers afterward.

“Road Man”

It is hard to get distracted from the lyrics to this tale of a tune. Somehow the limited, lightweight instrumental dressing cannot cloud the notion that the title character’s story will end badly.

In the chorus and first three bridges, Steve Harwell’s narrator recounts his calm, straightforward warning to practice commonsense traffic safety. When the fictitious road manager disobeys, the consequences illustrate how the risk outweighed the reward all along.

The delivery of the fateful fourth bridge and final chorus repeat would fit right into any so-deceptively-lighthearted-it’s-disturbing public-service announcement. Unlike the narrator of “I Just Wanna See,” the road man lets himself get caught up in a craving for speed. As a result, he lives fast and dies young, though the lyrics barely circumvent the latter detail.

“Fallen Horses”

Seven tracks after “Waste,” this is another deep-thought ballad open to melancholic interpretation. One might even take it as the funereal follow-up to “Road Man” as the title figure’s fate sinks in.

Where “Waste” is subdued over something the narrator might have done better, “Fallen Horses” agonizes over that which one cannot control, let alone rectify. That helplessness spurs the cut-and-dry refrain, “Tell me why? Why, oh, why? I said why? Why, oh, why?”

“Defeat You”

In the track order, just as “All Star” is the bounce-back after “Waste,” “Defeat You” is the bounce-back after “Fallen Horses.” It also has its plain distinctions from the album’s earlier downtrodden-to-determined pattern.

“All Star” focuses squarely on the protagonist and their positives. “Defeat You” is directed at a rival. The song’s bridges build up the hypothetical recipient’s profile before the chorus and conclusion overpower them and bring them down.

The twists in the last bridge, in particular, imply exposing a paper tiger in either a competition or court case. In turn, the line “I know what you’ve done/It makes it that much better to defeat you” acquires an intriguing ambiguity.

Is the knowledge of accomplishments that motivate the long-suffering underdog or of bad deeds warranting karma? It could, by all means, be both.

 

 

“Come On, Come On”

How is this for staying power? In December 2003, Smash Mouth guest-starred and performed an abridged, sterilized version of this song on the Disney Channel series Kim Possible. And their animated incarnations more or less resembled those adorning that year’s album, Get the Picture?

The show’s choice of the Astro Lounge track chalked up to four-and-a-half years after the album. In between, though never released as a single, “Come On, Come On” had several stints on screens of all sizes. Just to name two, it followed the snippet of “Satellite” to lend the aforementioned Snow Day a double-dose of Smash Mouth, then graced Dude, Where’s My Car? later in 2000.

“Home”

The penultimate Astro Lounge track also assumes the persona of a distant relative of its signature song. “All Star” comes across as pure upbeat motivation while “Home” poses a basic, but rigid question as to “What do you do when opportunity knocks…”

Adding to the paradoxically colorful plainness, Harwell presents the options of “Lottery or poverty or a commodity.” The first two extremes, in particular, ought to spur anyone to test their skills or instill an understanding for those who take seemingly iffy risks.

“Can’t Get Enough of You Baby”

The album’s first chronological single (released nearly a full year earlier) carried on a brief unofficial Smash Mouth tradition. Like Fush Yu Mang with War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends” and Smash Mouth with the Monkees’ “I’m A Believer,” Astro Lounge closes with a cover. (They would do this again in 2012’s Magic with Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”)

Though performed by several other artists of varying name recognition since the mid-’60s, “Can’t Get Enough of You Baby” got a modern mainstream boost from Smash Mouth. It showed up on several hit lists and took the second slot on the Can’t Hardly Wait soundtrack. The film in question, which hit theaters the same day the single was released (June 12, 1998), also featured “Walkin’ on the Sun.”

By 2007, the song had a second wind via Pizza Hut’s ads for the chain’s Bonus Pizza promotion. The fact that only an instrumental portion plays in the ad speaks to the tune’s resonance. Apparently, marketers were confident that prospective customers would recognize the song and why it made sense in this context without Harwell’s help.