The Best Songs Ever Recorded By Anyone Ever: Smash Mouth, "Your Man"

If you like Barry Andrews-era XTC, you shouldn’t have much musical beef with TRL era Smash Mouth. Their big hits fit right in with songs like “Statue Of Liberty” and “Are You Receiving Me?” Andy Partridge would have been proud to write that verse in “All Star” where life makes us colder but then again climate change. Or to get that diminished chord in the chorus in a sports anthem, underscoring how resigned and ironic it really is.

XTC wanted to shtup the "Statue Of Liberty," but you don't think they'd have done "All Star"?

All those songs were written by their original guitarist, who is now in an anti-vaxx supergroup with Dickie from the Bosstones that is somehow not named YIKES. Ironically, their greatest hits album suffers from an excess of covers, ballooning the track number to twenty. Twenty! That said, if I told you a band’s best-of featured covers of ? & The Mysterians, War, The Beatles, Steely Dan, Let’s Active and Neil Diamond/Monkees, you probably wouldn’t assume the group was millennial MTV fodder. But the late '90s alternapop era was a lot like early '80s new wave, where hooks and the right look (thank you, McG) allowed a lot of weirdos and amenable pros to latch onto an eccentric jukebox moment. Smash Mouth may have chased the PG-movie soundtrack cash a little too vigorously for cool kid comfort, but it’s not like the cool kids were coming back.

I briefly owned their first three albums way back when, and the non-smash that stuck with me the most was “Your Man,” off their self-titled 2001 album (Sugar Ray & Smash Mouth both released underperforming self-titled follow-ups to their big albums that year, lord knows why). The music is boisterous power-chord pop-rock, despite lyrics that begin “I don’t know why I’m with you/ the only right thing I do is get along you" before piling on examples of the singer’s romantic failures - infidelity, emotional isolation - until the self-loathing turns into baffled frustration (“I don’t know why you’re with me/ the only reason I see’s some sort of fetish thing”). As the pre-chorus winds up for the big chorus pitch, Steve Harwell sings “I tried to warn you/ but you said ‘just play dead/ as long as we stay true.'” What a heart-melter!

Smash Mouth circa "Your Man", photographed on the sun.

The pedals get jumped, the sound gets pumped, and Harwell bawls “you weren’t listening when I told you everything/ that you need I ain’t got/ you should be gone by now, but you’re not,” with goddamn BELLS punctuating his anguish like it’s the most romantic sentiment you’ve ever heard. Despite being baffled by her commitment (“emotional codependency” must not have come up in therapy yet), he finally brightens up by the end of the bridge, swearing he’ll just play every song he knows alone in his hotel room, grateful somebody gives a shit no matter how often he fucks up. Yaaaaay?!

Not having attended therapy myself twenty years ago, I found the song extremely affecting (rock songs with bells often get me, see Urge Overkill’s “Bottle Of Fur” or Dino Jr’s “Out There”). If only it had been released as a single, maybe they would be seen as artists! Someone at the label must have agreed with me, because - while the song wasn’t a single - they did shoot a video, uploaded to YouTube in 2009. No director is credited, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was abandoned in post-production (it’s rather slack and un-shiny for these guys). The clip has Harwell blankly watching an extremely dysfunctional couple as they go through their day of broken promises, infidelity, violent retribution and make-up sex. He seems kind of forlorn, not able to do the sunglassed Shrek thing but not being given an alternative either. So was it just that a third single was scrapped after “Pacific Coast Party” and “Holiday In My Head” tanked, or did the label see the clip and realize that this was grim even for a world spending every Thursday with Ross & Rachel?

The clip for "Your Man," which has an impressive million plus views despite...everything.

Smash Mouth made chart hits out of the drug-fueled failure of '60s counterculture, and a general sense of impending doom, but eventually it was time to either commit to being sad bastards or commit to mugging with cartoon characters. They chose mugging, which was probably better for their LLC’s overhead. But “Your Man” suggests a band that could have been as darkly ironic as Randy Newman or Warren Zevon, or at least Fountains Of Wayne.

His lockdown-era stage meltdowns aside, Steve Harwell seemed like a well-intentioned, humble guy in interviews and on The Surreal Life many years ago, especially considering the heartbreak and health issues he experienced. His passing after twenty plus years of punchlines, memes and endless recurrent radio play is a reminder of how long and how short twenty years can feel. RIP.