all star by smash mouth is fascinating to me because of its faustian nature. it is the ultimate anthem of the has-been, the perfect song for the smash mouth of the 2010s. but in order to get there, it needed to have been written by the smash mouth of the 90s. it needed to become a hit so that it could have been a hit; and it needed to fade into irrelevancy in order to achieve it’s full artistic potential as an emblem of that irrelevancy
no one could write all star by smash mouth in 1999. but in 2022, smash mouth may have finally managed to have written all star by smash mouth
