Revisiting Smash Mouth's Album: Astro Lounge
So, on the loooooooooooong bus ride back to Upstate New York from the Forward on Climate rally in DC, I decided to do something I haven't done since my last trip to California (several years ago now), and that's listen to Smash Mouth's album Astro Lounge from start to finish.
Astro Lounge was one of the first CD's my parents bought for me, when I was approximately eight years old. It's also the only album from that time period that I still listen to today-and it's still about as much fun for me now as it was back then. Of course, these days I know a bit more about it: for example, I now know that it's apparently the only Smash Mouth album that doesn't contain even one curse word (which means it was probably the right choice of an album for my parents to buy for me)! I also know that Smash Mouth, in general, are an alternative-rock band from San Jose, California, and that their music style is heavily influenced by ska, punk, and ska-punk. They've also been compared to Sugar Ray, another alternative-rock band from California (this time from the south of the state)-but all that is slightly off topic.
I'm not entirely sure I can pin down why I still love this album so much, after all these years, and I suspect it has to do with more than nostalgia factor (because you never see me listening to many of the OTHER albums I liked in my childhood). Now that I've listened to the whole thing once again, I have a couple of theories.
One is that the songs just sound really cool, for the most part, in slightly unconventional ways. As its name suggests, Astro Lounge has a lot of really spacey-sounding songs. Not all of them expressly refer to space (off the top of my head, the only ones that refer to something spacey in any context are “Who's There?” “All-Star,” “Satellite,” and maybe “Radio”) but the vast majority of them sound spacey and otherworldly, with lots of beeping, buzzing, and other sounds similar to the sound effects used on blinking lights or high-tech radio systems (it's hard to describe, but if you listen to them you'll see what I mean). This may possibly have contributed to why I liked it so much as a child, because all kids love space, and by and large I was no exception (even back when I was scared of planetarium shows I don't think I ever really disliked space in general-just the shows in particular). It's also why I sometimes invoke songs like them in my writings about Cyrus and Team Galactic in general.
However, the other great thing about the songs in Astro Lounge is that they're nicely organized, in a way that creates “balance”--this album doesn't fall into the trap of concentrating all the really cool songs at the beginning. Instead, they're spread throughout, and if a song I found less appealing came on, chances are one that I really liked would soon follow.
To illustrate my point, I'm now going to run through the list of songs on the album and rate them in terms of liveliness. Terms like “fast” and “slow” are misleading so instead I'll use “uptempo” to describe songs that sound lively and “subdued” to describe songs that sound slower. Also, by and large I'll just be focusing on the sound of the song-the actual lyrical content I'll discuss in more detail later.
“Who's There?” -uptempo
“Diggin' Your Scene” -uptempo
“I Just Wanna See” -subdued
“Waste” -quite subdued
“All-Star” -uptempo (also probably the most famous and enduring song on the album)
“Satellite” -somewhat subdued
“Radio” -very uptempo
“Stoned” -subdued
“Then the Morning Comes” -rather uptempo
“Road Man” -uptempo
“Fallen Horses” -very subdued
“Defeat You” -uptempo
“Come On Come On” -uptempo
“Home” -subdued
“Can't Get Enough of You Baby” -uptempo
Notice how there are no clusters of uptempo or subdued songs-at most, there might be two of the same kind in a row. Then it switches over. Also note that both the beginning and the ending song are uptempo, meaning that the album starts and ends with a flourish (though the latter moreso than the former, since while I sometimes hear “Can't Get Enough of You Baby” in commercials and the like I've never heard “Who's There?” in any context outside of the album itself). This was good for my eight-year-old self because my eight-year-old self thought slow songs were boring and had a tendency to skip them and get onto the fun songs (this was back when I was too young to understand the lyrics, so I had to base my opinions of the songs on whether I liked the sound of them).
Of course, the lyrics play their role too, and to illustrate just what the nature of the ordering of songs on this album is I'm going to have to talk about them too. Bear in mind that I'm not actually going to be giving these songs detailed lyrical analyses because it'd make my childhood cry if I had to go over these songs with a fine-toothed comb and discuss how much they sucked.
And to really discuss the full extent of what this all means I'm going to start from the end of the album and work backwards, because this is somewhat more pronounced after the eighth or ninth song or so.
The first song I'll be addressing is the eleventh song on the album, “Fallen Horses.” This is a song you've probably never heard of before, but it is interesting for a number of reasons. It's easily one of the most melancholy-sounding songs on the album, both in terms of sound and lyrics (the only one that comes close is the fourth song, “Waste,” which I'll get to later). Its tune is somewhat unique in that it actually doesn't sound spacey at all-in fact, I don't think I've heard any other Smash Mouth songs that sound quite like it (it's also apparently the only song on the album that has more than one composer-make of that what you will). Most other slow songs on this album either sound very staccato (ex: “Stoned”) or kind of sludgy (ex: “Waste”) but “Fallen Horses” sounds very gentle. It honestly sounds kind of pleasant, which is probably why I never once skipped it, even as a little kid who got bored by slow songs easily. It also has some of the saddest lyrics on the album, as it appears to be about losing a friend. The subject matter of the song seems to involve the narrator missing a friend, who is now gone (likely dead), and wishing he could be with said friend (there's a lyric that literally goes “Would you help me/If I wanted to die”)-and by the end of the song, he may well have gotten his wish, which is either bittersweet or creepy, depending on how you want to look at it.
Sounds like a bit of a downer, right? Except that it's flanked on both sides by songs that are considerably more fast-paced and energetic. The song that precedes it, “Road Man,” is a very, very ska-sounding ballad, which, I must confess, is one of the songs on the album I've never really liked, only because ballads in the rock music I listen to just tend to be creepy in general. In “Road Man's” case, we have a dissonantly upbeat, bouncy song about a man who's driving a piece of equipment to where his band is performing-but he drives too fast (the chorus goes “Road Man/Slow it down/And you will get there safe and sound/He says, 'no no no the show must go on”). I don't think I need to tell you what happens next.
I'm more interested, though, in the songs that follow. Immediately after “Fallen Horses” we get not one, but two vastly more energetic songs. The twelfth song, “Defeat You,” discusses a scheming, manipulative coward who uses dirty tricks to get ahead. The lyrics in this song are captivating and generally awesome, especially the chorus (“Heeeeeeeey, I know where you're from/It makes it that much nicer to meet you/Heeeeeeeeey, I know what you've done/It makes it that much better to defeat you”). And then that song is followed by “Come On Come On,” which, along with “All-Star,” seems to be one of Smash Mouth's better-known songs (it was featured in an episode of “Kim Possible,” and a clean version ran on Radio Disney for a time). I don't see the point of discussing that song in detail because you've probably already heard it, but just in case you need me to jog your memory, here it is:
Basically, what we've got here is the album taking a slow, lugubrious song that otherwise might bog down the audience and the album, and surrounding it with lively songs to create a small emotional roller coaster and keep things exciting and fun.
Moving along, after “Come On Come On” things slow down again, and we get treated to song #14, “Home.” Despite the name, “Home” is probably one of the most otherworldly and outright eerie-sounding songs on the album (even moreso than “Who's There?” the first song, which is literally about aliens!), with a lot of the melody sounding like something out of an alien creature feature. The lyrics themselves, near as I can tell, are the relatively harmless but still pessimistic warnings that fame and fortune aren't guaranteed, aren't all they're cracked up to be, and don't necessarily last forever (Lyrics like “Lottery/Or poverty/Or a commodity/So what's it gonna be?” and “Whatcha gonna do when the fun stops/When the boat rocks/And the crew gets old?” are particularly telling).
The last song on the album is the harmless, fun, down-home song “Can't Get Enough of you Baby,” whose subject matter is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. This is a song I've occasionally parodied-I once sang a version of it at the end of a summer as a day-camp CIT to show my love for the camp. It also sometimes appears in commercials for Pizza Hut or one of those places (or it used to, anyway).
Of course, there's still the rest of the album to consider. Although I really love the last five songs of Astro Lounge, as they enable a strong finish so many other albums conspicuously lack, the others do bear looking at as well. Song #5 on this album is Smash Mouth's big hit “All-Star,” which is also the first song on the album that seems to have achieved much widespread popularity. It's flanked on one side by “Waste,” which along with “Fallen Horses” ranks as one of the slowest and saddest songs on the album, and on the other by “Satellite,” a piece where the narrator wants someone who's out of his league and is deluding himself into thinking he could have her, even though he can't. This is all information I gleaned from the band's website (which may or may not still be there, since this was several years ago), but the more I listen to that song, the more it fits. “Satellite” is yet another creepy-sounding piece, which has a very airy, staccato sound to it, and features a subdued melody and monotone singing-except for the chorus, which sounds more aggressive and features the lyrics “That's how I know that you are mine,” repeated four times before segueing into the next verse or the end of the song. It's almost certainly intentional that the more that particular line is repeated, the less conviction it seems to have.
In keeping with the theme I've been discussing, “Satellite” is followed by the infinitely more upbeat-sounding “Radio,” which is possibly the most fast-paced song on the album bar “Come On Come On.” I'm a little lost on exactly what this song is supposed to be about-it seems to have something to do with life in show business, but that's the closest I've gotten to an interpretation. But, whatever-it sounds awesome either way. It basically carries itself on raw energy alone.
The next song after that is another slow song called “Stoned,” which is basically what it sounds like (thus making this one of those songs I didn't begin to understand at least until I was in middle school). The best way to sum it up is basically just by showing you the lyrics, which include the likes of “My mind is blown/But it's my own/So deal with it,” and “I'm getting stoned/And what's wrong with that?/The president seems to be just fine.” The melody's kind of neat: it's walking pace and makes use of spacey beeping in the same vein as songs like “Satellite” and “Radio,” which helps to show the narrator's lack of touch with reality.
“Stoned” is followed by “Then the Morning Comes,” which also seems to have achieved some measure of success-it has a music video, and I've heard it in at least one commercial, likely because of the opening bit, which features a beeping alarm clock and a man's voice saying “Good morning” before it launches into the melody. I love this song for its melody but also for its wordplay and flow, which complement the melody perfectly. Lines include such gems as “So push rewind/Just in time/Thank anybody,/You're gonna do it again.” “Then the Morning Comes” is followed by “Road Man,” which is followed in turn by “Fallen Horses,” which thus is flanked by two upbeat-sounding songs on either side; not just one. It's like it's got a reinforced cushion of upbeat songs around it so the audience doesn't get too bored or depressed! But it works!
But what about that other slow song, “Waste?” Well, such is not the case, in that the song that precedes it, “I Just Wanna See,” is actually pretty slow and contemplative in its own right. This may be one of the reasons why I actually skipped “Waste” (and “I Just Wanna See”) as a child-that and it just doesn't have a particularly pleasant melody. Although, the lyrics are quite descriptive, with some interesting figures of speech and imagery (“I'm looking at my watch/At all the time that's been stolen/When I was carrying you/It seems I've tripped and I've fallen”). These days, of course, I'm much more willing to sit through it because I know “All-Star” is coming next, and the fact that “All-Star” is preceded with not one, but two slow songs makes me appreciate its liveliness even more.
Of course, the two slower songs in third and fourth place also sort-of work as a counterbalance to the first two songs, which are both upbeat. “Who's There?” is a great song to open the album, as it reinforces the spacey motif by being literally about UFO's. It also comes complete with a spacey-sounding melody. But the way the song opens is by far the best thing about it, as it involves what could be the sound of a UFO or falling star sailing through the air toward earth before bursting into the song's melody proper (hard to describe but you'll know what I mean if you listen to it). And “Who's There” is followed by “Diggin' Your Scene,” a song I loved right from the first owing to its catchy melody-although the lyrics, once again, are fairly creepy. The narrator of this song is in love with a tsundere (or possibly yandere). He knows the relationship is unhealthy and destructive, but he likes it so he doesn't care. The lyrics are pretty nicely-done overall, but the best part, by far, is the bridge. The lyrics (“Can anybody tell me why we're Springer bound/Why we feel so up, when we're kept down?/On a short leash/Behind a barbed-wire fence/With no chance of parole/On a life sentence”) are shouted rather than sung in the conventional sense, and get gradually louder and more frantic-sounding until that last bit, which is screamed. Truly, this is the song that pairings like YujiXShana, MasaoXMegumi, or EdXWinry were made for (or vice versa, more like).
And there you have Astro Lounge, not quite in order. Listening to the album all the way through, especially on a long trip at night, sort-of takes your mind away-it's like you're on a mission out into space, and “Can't Get Enough of You Baby” represents the joy that comes from a successfully-completed trip and a safe return to your home base at the end. And I guess that's a big part of why it's still so close to my heart.
Astro Lounge was one of the first CD's my parents bought for me, when I was approximately eight years old. It's also the only album from that time period that I still listen to today-and it's still about as much fun for me now as it was back then. Of course, these days I know a bit more about it: for example, I now know that it's apparently the only Smash Mouth album that doesn't contain even one curse word (which means it was probably the right choice of an album for my parents to buy for me)! I also know that Smash Mouth, in general, are an alternative-rock band from San Jose, California, and that their music style is heavily influenced by ska, punk, and ska-punk. They've also been compared to Sugar Ray, another alternative-rock band from California (this time from the south of the state)-but all that is slightly off topic.
I'm not entirely sure I can pin down why I still love this album so much, after all these years, and I suspect it has to do with more than nostalgia factor (because you never see me listening to many of the OTHER albums I liked in my childhood). Now that I've listened to the whole thing once again, I have a couple of theories.
One is that the songs just sound really cool, for the most part, in slightly unconventional ways. As its name suggests, Astro Lounge has a lot of really spacey-sounding songs. Not all of them expressly refer to space (off the top of my head, the only ones that refer to something spacey in any context are “Who's There?” “All-Star,” “Satellite,” and maybe “Radio”) but the vast majority of them sound spacey and otherworldly, with lots of beeping, buzzing, and other sounds similar to the sound effects used on blinking lights or high-tech radio systems (it's hard to describe, but if you listen to them you'll see what I mean). This may possibly have contributed to why I liked it so much as a child, because all kids love space, and by and large I was no exception (even back when I was scared of planetarium shows I don't think I ever really disliked space in general-just the shows in particular). It's also why I sometimes invoke songs like them in my writings about Cyrus and Team Galactic in general.
However, the other great thing about the songs in Astro Lounge is that they're nicely organized, in a way that creates “balance”--this album doesn't fall into the trap of concentrating all the really cool songs at the beginning. Instead, they're spread throughout, and if a song I found less appealing came on, chances are one that I really liked would soon follow.
To illustrate my point, I'm now going to run through the list of songs on the album and rate them in terms of liveliness. Terms like “fast” and “slow” are misleading so instead I'll use “uptempo” to describe songs that sound lively and “subdued” to describe songs that sound slower. Also, by and large I'll just be focusing on the sound of the song-the actual lyrical content I'll discuss in more detail later.
“Who's There?” -uptempo
“Diggin' Your Scene” -uptempo
“I Just Wanna See” -subdued
“Waste” -quite subdued
“All-Star” -uptempo (also probably the most famous and enduring song on the album)
“Satellite” -somewhat subdued
“Radio” -very uptempo
“Stoned” -subdued
“Then the Morning Comes” -rather uptempo
“Road Man” -uptempo
“Fallen Horses” -very subdued
“Defeat You” -uptempo
“Come On Come On” -uptempo
“Home” -subdued
“Can't Get Enough of You Baby” -uptempo
Notice how there are no clusters of uptempo or subdued songs-at most, there might be two of the same kind in a row. Then it switches over. Also note that both the beginning and the ending song are uptempo, meaning that the album starts and ends with a flourish (though the latter moreso than the former, since while I sometimes hear “Can't Get Enough of You Baby” in commercials and the like I've never heard “Who's There?” in any context outside of the album itself). This was good for my eight-year-old self because my eight-year-old self thought slow songs were boring and had a tendency to skip them and get onto the fun songs (this was back when I was too young to understand the lyrics, so I had to base my opinions of the songs on whether I liked the sound of them).
Of course, the lyrics play their role too, and to illustrate just what the nature of the ordering of songs on this album is I'm going to have to talk about them too. Bear in mind that I'm not actually going to be giving these songs detailed lyrical analyses because it'd make my childhood cry if I had to go over these songs with a fine-toothed comb and discuss how much they sucked.
And to really discuss the full extent of what this all means I'm going to start from the end of the album and work backwards, because this is somewhat more pronounced after the eighth or ninth song or so.
The first song I'll be addressing is the eleventh song on the album, “Fallen Horses.” This is a song you've probably never heard of before, but it is interesting for a number of reasons. It's easily one of the most melancholy-sounding songs on the album, both in terms of sound and lyrics (the only one that comes close is the fourth song, “Waste,” which I'll get to later). Its tune is somewhat unique in that it actually doesn't sound spacey at all-in fact, I don't think I've heard any other Smash Mouth songs that sound quite like it (it's also apparently the only song on the album that has more than one composer-make of that what you will). Most other slow songs on this album either sound very staccato (ex: “Stoned”) or kind of sludgy (ex: “Waste”) but “Fallen Horses” sounds very gentle. It honestly sounds kind of pleasant, which is probably why I never once skipped it, even as a little kid who got bored by slow songs easily. It also has some of the saddest lyrics on the album, as it appears to be about losing a friend. The subject matter of the song seems to involve the narrator missing a friend, who is now gone (likely dead), and wishing he could be with said friend (there's a lyric that literally goes “Would you help me/If I wanted to die”)-and by the end of the song, he may well have gotten his wish, which is either bittersweet or creepy, depending on how you want to look at it.
Sounds like a bit of a downer, right? Except that it's flanked on both sides by songs that are considerably more fast-paced and energetic. The song that precedes it, “Road Man,” is a very, very ska-sounding ballad, which, I must confess, is one of the songs on the album I've never really liked, only because ballads in the rock music I listen to just tend to be creepy in general. In “Road Man's” case, we have a dissonantly upbeat, bouncy song about a man who's driving a piece of equipment to where his band is performing-but he drives too fast (the chorus goes “Road Man/Slow it down/And you will get there safe and sound/He says, 'no no no the show must go on”). I don't think I need to tell you what happens next.
I'm more interested, though, in the songs that follow. Immediately after “Fallen Horses” we get not one, but two vastly more energetic songs. The twelfth song, “Defeat You,” discusses a scheming, manipulative coward who uses dirty tricks to get ahead. The lyrics in this song are captivating and generally awesome, especially the chorus (“Heeeeeeeey, I know where you're from/It makes it that much nicer to meet you/Heeeeeeeeey, I know what you've done/It makes it that much better to defeat you”). And then that song is followed by “Come On Come On,” which, along with “All-Star,” seems to be one of Smash Mouth's better-known songs (it was featured in an episode of “Kim Possible,” and a clean version ran on Radio Disney for a time). I don't see the point of discussing that song in detail because you've probably already heard it, but just in case you need me to jog your memory, here it is:
Click to viewBasically, what we've got here is the album taking a slow, lugubrious song that otherwise might bog down the audience and the album, and surrounding it with lively songs to create a small emotional roller coaster and keep things exciting and fun.
Moving along, after “Come On Come On” things slow down again, and we get treated to song #14, “Home.” Despite the name, “Home” is probably one of the most otherworldly and outright eerie-sounding songs on the album (even moreso than “Who's There?” the first song, which is literally about aliens!), with a lot of the melody sounding like something out of an alien creature feature. The lyrics themselves, near as I can tell, are the relatively harmless but still pessimistic warnings that fame and fortune aren't guaranteed, aren't all they're cracked up to be, and don't necessarily last forever (Lyrics like “Lottery/Or poverty/Or a commodity/So what's it gonna be?” and “Whatcha gonna do when the fun stops/When the boat rocks/And the crew gets old?” are particularly telling).
The last song on the album is the harmless, fun, down-home song “Can't Get Enough of you Baby,” whose subject matter is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. This is a song I've occasionally parodied-I once sang a version of it at the end of a summer as a day-camp CIT to show my love for the camp. It also sometimes appears in commercials for Pizza Hut or one of those places (or it used to, anyway).
Of course, there's still the rest of the album to consider. Although I really love the last five songs of Astro Lounge, as they enable a strong finish so many other albums conspicuously lack, the others do bear looking at as well. Song #5 on this album is Smash Mouth's big hit “All-Star,” which is also the first song on the album that seems to have achieved much widespread popularity. It's flanked on one side by “Waste,” which along with “Fallen Horses” ranks as one of the slowest and saddest songs on the album, and on the other by “Satellite,” a piece where the narrator wants someone who's out of his league and is deluding himself into thinking he could have her, even though he can't. This is all information I gleaned from the band's website (which may or may not still be there, since this was several years ago), but the more I listen to that song, the more it fits. “Satellite” is yet another creepy-sounding piece, which has a very airy, staccato sound to it, and features a subdued melody and monotone singing-except for the chorus, which sounds more aggressive and features the lyrics “That's how I know that you are mine,” repeated four times before segueing into the next verse or the end of the song. It's almost certainly intentional that the more that particular line is repeated, the less conviction it seems to have.
In keeping with the theme I've been discussing, “Satellite” is followed by the infinitely more upbeat-sounding “Radio,” which is possibly the most fast-paced song on the album bar “Come On Come On.” I'm a little lost on exactly what this song is supposed to be about-it seems to have something to do with life in show business, but that's the closest I've gotten to an interpretation. But, whatever-it sounds awesome either way. It basically carries itself on raw energy alone.
The next song after that is another slow song called “Stoned,” which is basically what it sounds like (thus making this one of those songs I didn't begin to understand at least until I was in middle school). The best way to sum it up is basically just by showing you the lyrics, which include the likes of “My mind is blown/But it's my own/So deal with it,” and “I'm getting stoned/And what's wrong with that?/The president seems to be just fine.” The melody's kind of neat: it's walking pace and makes use of spacey beeping in the same vein as songs like “Satellite” and “Radio,” which helps to show the narrator's lack of touch with reality.
“Stoned” is followed by “Then the Morning Comes,” which also seems to have achieved some measure of success-it has a music video, and I've heard it in at least one commercial, likely because of the opening bit, which features a beeping alarm clock and a man's voice saying “Good morning” before it launches into the melody. I love this song for its melody but also for its wordplay and flow, which complement the melody perfectly. Lines include such gems as “So push rewind/Just in time/Thank anybody,/You're gonna do it again.” “Then the Morning Comes” is followed by “Road Man,” which is followed in turn by “Fallen Horses,” which thus is flanked by two upbeat-sounding songs on either side; not just one. It's like it's got a reinforced cushion of upbeat songs around it so the audience doesn't get too bored or depressed! But it works!
But what about that other slow song, “Waste?” Well, such is not the case, in that the song that precedes it, “I Just Wanna See,” is actually pretty slow and contemplative in its own right. This may be one of the reasons why I actually skipped “Waste” (and “I Just Wanna See”) as a child-that and it just doesn't have a particularly pleasant melody. Although, the lyrics are quite descriptive, with some interesting figures of speech and imagery (“I'm looking at my watch/At all the time that's been stolen/When I was carrying you/It seems I've tripped and I've fallen”). These days, of course, I'm much more willing to sit through it because I know “All-Star” is coming next, and the fact that “All-Star” is preceded with not one, but two slow songs makes me appreciate its liveliness even more.
Of course, the two slower songs in third and fourth place also sort-of work as a counterbalance to the first two songs, which are both upbeat. “Who's There?” is a great song to open the album, as it reinforces the spacey motif by being literally about UFO's. It also comes complete with a spacey-sounding melody. But the way the song opens is by far the best thing about it, as it involves what could be the sound of a UFO or falling star sailing through the air toward earth before bursting into the song's melody proper (hard to describe but you'll know what I mean if you listen to it). And “Who's There” is followed by “Diggin' Your Scene,” a song I loved right from the first owing to its catchy melody-although the lyrics, once again, are fairly creepy. The narrator of this song is in love with a tsundere (or possibly yandere). He knows the relationship is unhealthy and destructive, but he likes it so he doesn't care. The lyrics are pretty nicely-done overall, but the best part, by far, is the bridge. The lyrics (“Can anybody tell me why we're Springer bound/Why we feel so up, when we're kept down?/On a short leash/Behind a barbed-wire fence/With no chance of parole/On a life sentence”) are shouted rather than sung in the conventional sense, and get gradually louder and more frantic-sounding until that last bit, which is screamed. Truly, this is the song that pairings like YujiXShana, MasaoXMegumi, or EdXWinry were made for (or vice versa, more like).
And there you have Astro Lounge, not quite in order. Listening to the album all the way through, especially on a long trip at night, sort-of takes your mind away-it's like you're on a mission out into space, and “Can't Get Enough of You Baby” represents the joy that comes from a successfully-completed trip and a safe return to your home base at the end. And I guess that's a big part of why it's still so close to my heart.