On Neil Cicierega, Part Two

This week, I’ve copied out a hypothetical chapter in a hypothetical book about Neil Cicierega’s Mouth Sounds introducing why the Smash Mouth bit is so vital to the album as a whole. Hold on tight, because things go off the rails pretty quickly here. I’ve tied in phenomena like Rickrolling, pruane2forever, and 9/11 to accurately assess how they received their reputation in popular culture.

A year before the full album was released, the first “single” was uploaded to his YouTube channel. Titled “MOUTH,” it would eventually reappear on the full release under the name “The Sharpest Tool,” ostensibly due to the track’s similarity in tone to the band Tool. Other fans interpret this later title as a reference to Nine Inch Nails, reckoning that nails would be the sharpest tools one would find in a shed, and they consider the vocal distortion and industrial harshness reminiscent of Trent Reznor’s vocals on Pretty Hate Machine. That, and later tracks like “Rollercloser” and “Closerflies” show his frequent use of the band, whereas the albums have no other connection to Tool. The only song that appears as a sample (or easter egg) on all four projects is, in fact, “All Star.” Other artists come close: the Foo Fighters have two different songs spread across three albums and Talking Heads has four, but both lack one on Mouth Sounds. The song that appears second most often is “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind, followed by a tie between Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week” and Rob Thomas & Santana’s collaborative work “Smooth,” each with three appearances. Of the whopping 82 tracks across the whole project, “All Star” shows up in some form in 16 different songs. Considering one of those albums is (supposedly) devoid of any reference to the band, centering a fifth of the music around one singular bucket of samples must have some significance.

What is it about the music of Smash Mouth that has so captivated the youngest generations? For the youngest Millennials and the oldest among Generation Z, it was the band’s ubiquity in childhood media. “All Star” featured most prominently in 2001’s box office hit animated movie Shrek, serving as nearly an unofficial theme song because of its use in the opening montage that introduces the eponymous character. At the time, Shrek’s impact on the film industry was immense. The public’s idea of computer-generated graphics consisted of short clips; the technology behind the process was expensive, so producing anything longer than a 30 second commercial spot would be a major financial gamble. Disney’s Dinosaur, which released the year before, cost $127.5m to make. This was created in an effort to push the limits of the technology, however, and the story pales in comparison to the visuals. DreamWorks Animation was able to cut a few corners, refine a few techniques, and came out having used half the budget while also hiring a star-studded cast. Shrek became the 4th highest grossing movie of 2001, proving that 3D animated movies weren’t merely profitable, but lucrative. Such a result was further reflected in the awards season, with the movie taking home such accolades as AFI’s Film of the Year, BAFTA’s Best Adapted Screenplay, and the inaugural Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It even received the distinction of being the first animation since Peter Pan to be nominated for the Palme d’Or.¹