All Star is a song that has enjoyed more prosperous returns than Tyson Fury – and it almost didn't appear on their second album, Astro Lounge.
The San Jose quartet had previously enjoyed chart success in 1997 with their first major single Walkin' on the Sun, a '60s-tinged plea for the world to get along. The song itself was an audio catfish which lured fans in with the promise of more psychedelic soul, when in fact their debut Fush You Mang was a bit of a mish-mash of ska, punk and thrash.
"We were kids when we made Fush Yu Mang," vocalist Steve Harwell told Rolling Stone. "We didn’t know who we were. It sounds like somebody didn’t know what they were doing and were confused."
Whatever it was and whatever they were, Smash Mouth topped the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart with their single and it landed at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart, which kicked open many doors for the band. They opened for U2 on their Pop Mart tour that year and appeared on an episode of medical telly series ER the following year.
The band relocated to Los Gatos Hills in the Santa Cruz mountains foothills in order to work on the follow-up in 1998. Guitarist Greg Camp – who had a knack for writing pop songs – was tasked with writing the album.
