Steve Harwell, the former lead singer of the rock band Smash Mouth, best known for its 1999 hit song “All Star,” died Monday. He was 56.
Band manager Robert Hayes confirmed his death at his home in Boise, Idaho, and said the cause was liver failure.
Smash Mouth was formed in 1994 in San Jose, California, and consists of Harwell, lead singer, Kevin Coleman on drums, Greg Camp on guitar, and Paul De Lisle on bass. The band debuted with their song “Walkin’ on the Sun” in 1997, which appeared on their debut album “Fush Yu Mang”.
“Walking on the Sun” changed music. “It changed the way people listen to music,” Harwell said. Rolling Stone in 2019. “It was so different, it was so unusual, it was so special. It had this sound that we created. Ask anyone who tries to imitate us, you can’t. You just can’t.”
The band enjoyed greater success with the release of their next album, “Astro Lounge” in 1999, and their hit single, “All Star”. The song, which was nominated for a Grammy Award, also appeared in several films, and gained new popularity two years later when it was featured in the opening credits of “Shrek,” the Oscar-winning animated film about a ghoul voiced by Mike. Myers.
“We had no idea how big ‘Shrek’ would be,” Harwell said in a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone. (The song “All Star” was also featured on the soundtrack to the 1999 film “Mystery Men,” whose characters appeared in the song’s music video.)
Since then, he has lived and become an “All Star.” A rich source of online parodies. Nearly 25 years later, Harwell’s voice is still associated with the song’s iconic opening lines: “Someone once said to me / The world’s going to roll me over / I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed“.
“All Star” has nearly 1 billion streams on Spotify. “Walking on the sunand “I’m a Believer”, a cover of a Monkees song that also appeared on “a partner“The soundtrack, too, has garnered hundreds of millions of streams.
Harwell left the band in 2021 and retired from performing completely after a live show in upstate New York During which he was seen Stuttering his words and using profanity. Earlier that year, Harwell took a break from performing live due to heart problems, according to several media reports at the time.
Smash Mouth, which has had a rotating lineup over the years, hasn’t released a new studio album in about a decade, but they have released new singles, including “Underground Sun” this year, with a different lead singer.
The band is still performing — including a show scheduled for Saturday in Illinois — but will forever be associated with “All Star,” something Harwell was aware of.
“No one else could sing that song.” “It was never the way it is now,” Harwell told Rolling Stone in 2019. I could have shown this song to a million bands and they would have tried to do it, and it would never have been the same.
