all star is a great meme. it's an even better song
You know why we’re here. The tragic passing of Smash Mouth singer Steve Harwell is likely to result in a flood of “All Star” retrospectives, and (wishful thinking incoming) the song might even pop back onto the bottom half of the Billboard Hot 100 for a week or two. Though Harwell didn’t write the song, (that was former guitarist Greg Camp) it’s difficult to imagine anyone else performing the lead vocals — one of the things on which the song lives and dies is his specific vocal stylings. I’ve never heard a cover that wasn’t hamstringed by his absence. No one else can so effortlessly rhyme goh-oowld with moh-ooh-wode. You hear this guy, and you genuinely believe that he’d start waxing philosophic to a stranger at a gas station instead of just forking over a few dollars.
Though the song is often played earnestly at sporting events, the lyrics are actually just as cynical as those of Smash Mouth’s earlier hit, “Walkin’ On the Sun.” The narrator flaunts his jaded worldview, then taunts you in the chorus for daring to challenge it. The world’s on fire, but sure, go ahead and convince yourself you still have the potential to thrive in it. He won’t argue. Harwell’s goofy, fratboy delivery masks the sardonicism almost too well. “All Star” has layers, you see. Like an onion, or perhaps an ogre.
Even before his death, I’ve seen the genius of “All Star” attributed primarily to Harwell, but I have to give credit to songwriter Greg Camp, too. It’s his perfectly ’90s, irony-laden lyrics that are so flawlessly compatible with Harwell’s vocals, and of course, the composition really glows. Shines, even.
First of all, it’s in F sharp. This is entirely a personal preference, but F# is my favorite key. Try to name a bad song in F#. You can’t. Second, despite the radio-friendliness that propelled the song to #4 on the charts, it has a somewhat unconventional structure (by radio standards, anyway). Usually, a pop song will follow this pattern: Verse, Pre-Chorus, Chorus, Verse, Pre-Chorus, Chorus, Bridge, Instrumental Break, Chorus. “All Star”, however, goes Verse, Pre-Chorus, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Instrumental Break, Chorus, Verse, Pre-Chorus, Chorus. And it’s those last three that augment the song into something special. Allow me to expound.
The verses utilize the following chord progression: F# C# G#m B, or I V ii IV. So it’s already strayed slightly from the conventional I V vi IV pop structure. But a lot of songs do that; it’s not revolutionary. This progression continues into the first pre-chorus, (“the years start coming…”) and then the chorus shakes things up, opting to follow the progression F# B C-diminished B. The C-diminished is what we in my brain call an Important Chord, i.e. it means nothing to anyone who has actually studied music theory; I simply like it.
Diminished chords, consisting of two minor triads, are often employed transitionally — usually when moving from a IV to a V, or a V to a vi. A Cdim chord is just a B major chord with a C instead of a B. B major chords consist of the notes B, D#, and F#; Cdim is C, D#, and F#. The notes C and F# are a tritone (two major triads) apart, or, the furthest apart two notes can be in the chromatic scale. Playing them at the same time results in a creepy dissonance, which is why you hear one whenever Azula does something nefarious. An expected move from Cdim to C# would break this tension, so the song returns to B instead. It’s not until the last four measures that a detour to the progression F# E B B offers any kind of relief. And then the second verse resumes I V ii IV, as does the third.
But then! Unlike the first pre-chorus, (and the nonexistent second pre-chorus) the third pre-chorus follows the chord progression from the chorus — F# B Cdim B. The song is so off the rails by this point that the weird, dissonant chord has infected the pre-chorus. And it’s arpeggiated. Harwell sings this pre-chorus with renewed passion, reiterating the narrator’s desire to follow his own path and try to make his own fun in an otherwise unbearable existence. The safe V chord is never heard again. It’s as though you’ve finally caught onto the narrator’s sarcasm, realizing too late that you might’ve been the one in the wrong here.
So. We’ve got a song from the perspective of an embittered outsider, derided for the manner in which he chooses to live his life, even though he is unlikely to be taken seriously if he did conform to societal expectations. Does that bring to mind any particular animated film protagonist?
It took me exactly two paragraphs to reference Shrek in this article, and that is because it is simply impossible to discuss “All Star” without mentioning Shrek. The song had two years of radio play before it served as an introduction to the film’s eponymous character, but pretty much everyone my age or younger associates it first and foremost with the Shrek opening. In the 22 years (Jesus Christ) since Shrek hit theaters, animated movie soundtracks (especially those made by DreamWorks) have become saturated with lyrically irrelevant pop songs, but I don’t think anyone can argue that “All Star” isn’t Shrek. The narrator of “All Star” is such an undeniably Shreklike figure that it’s hard to believe the song wasn’t written for the film. Even the composition kind of works — the movie is set in a quasi-medieval fantasy world, so the villain belongs to a demographic apocryphally unfond of tritones. If basketball existed in the Shrekverse, I do believe our hero would’ve sarcastically referred to the 4’11ish Lord Farquaad as an all star, and Farquaad would not have recognized it as an insult.
“All Star” is a meme because Shrek is a meme, (and because of Neil Cicierega’s contributions to the cause) but I think it deserves canonization on its own merits. To quote the reblogs on a Tumblr post I first saw in August 2012, that was just the unedited, original “All Star” audio, “You know this song. Every word. Every syllable. Every letter. Every accent. Every punctuation. Every pause. Every beat. Every time signature. Always reblog. Forever.” This is how we spoke on Tumblr in the early ’10s. But it’s true. Everybody knows “All Star.” What a lot of people are reluctant to admit is that they love “All Star.” They must, because there is absolutely no way the thing would have this kind of memetic longevity if it weren’t a good song that everyone enjoys. Think of how many shitty meme songs have faded into obscurity, while the beloved ones like “Never Gonna Give You Up”, “Gangnam Style”, and “Fireflies” endure. “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba and “One Week” by Barenaked Ladies — forefathers of “All Star”, according to this oral history — are memes in their own right, but they’re C-list memes at best. “All Star” has had a far greater impact on American pop culture, and is (dare I say?) a far better song. Smash Mouth claims that “All Star” is a hodgepodge of other late ’90s hits, but I don’t hear it. Nothing sounds exactly like “All Star”, and I don’t think anything ever will. I certainly don’t want anything to. That’s the way I like it, and I never get bored… of “All Star.”
Peeling back the layers of irony reveals a masterpiece that I think is long overdue for a critical reevaluation. The years have started coming, and they won’t stop coming. Let’s use them to earnestly, unapologetically, and publicly love “All Star” like I know we all want to.