There’s something about music from the late 1990s that holds a weird feeling of guilty pleasure. Musically, every decade has their ups and downs but there is something special about the way we simultaneously love and hate the tunes from that particular decade. The latest work by DJ Cummerbund has us conflicted all over again, as he has remixed Smash Mouth’s ubiquitous 1999 hit “All Star”
We can thank a recent post by the A.V. Club for making us realize that the song’s lyrics never really left our memory, with this drastically sadder version of the ’90s hit. The song’s verses always felt a bit sardonic, so it almost makes sense to slow down the normally high-energy pop music and change it to a minor key. DJ Cummerbund has pushed the sad factor even further by peppering in some melancholy piano music and replacing the chorus with a mournful Simon-and-Garfunkel inspired “This is the sooooound of Smash Mouth.” If that all weren’t enough of a bummer, DJ Cummerbund cuts in some sad scenes from popular movies and footage of the late, great Macho Man Randy Savage (a common theme in his videos) to make sure we’re all driven to tears.
If you were to tell me that someone had retooled the song into a sad version, I’d have chuckled about it and been fine if I never heard it. But, having listened to it, I have to admit that it’s almost a bit cathartic. If I were to wager a guess, I’d say the ire we feel for older pop songs comes from a general embarrassment about being so wrapped up in a song or an artist. After all, no one ever really wants to admit that they were so firmly seated on the bandwagon. I was such a Smash Mouth fan that I could recite most albums to you without a musical queue and will, to this day, defend Fush Yu Mang as an awesome pop/punk album. So this sad remix could act as a final valediction, if it weren’t for the fact it has resulted in me currently rocking out to “Disconnect The Dots”
Thoughts on DJ Cummerbund’s remix? Ready to admit that you still love Smash Mouth? This is a safe place: we can talk about it in the comments below!
Image: Smash Mouth
