Revisiting Smash Mouth’s Get The Picture?

OK. I found this CD at the bottom of a drawer in my childhood bedroom on a visit to my parents’ house one weekend. You have to understand, I listened to this album a lot when it dropped. I was in second or third grade, and I was at the absolute very beginning of starting to give a shit about the music I listened to. And if I remember right, I asked my mom to buy it for me at Target or somewhere one day. Bless her for saying “sure.”

I had a tiny baby radio-cd-cassette player—a Christmas gift for books on tape and kids’ music, if I remember right. Probably Harry Potter, Disney, Raffi, Laurie Berkner, possibly even some of my mom’s Christian worship for kids albums. When I was little, music was either Jesus jams or classic rock on FM radio with my dad. We’ll discuss the Jesus jams another time, but you can imagine in which direction I eventually gravitated. But, before I finally dipped my toes into the Beatles, the English Beat, Billy Idol, and (in the single greatest moment of my young musical life) the Clash—in other words, before I cared as much and in the same way as I do now—there was Smash Mouth’s Get the Picture.

Maybe I’m just self-loathing enough to ruin this deeply nostalgic album for myself. Maybe I’m bored, and maybe I’m fascinated by the idea of what made me enjoy this album so much in the first place, aside from (you guessed it) Shrek.

I don’t regret it, though.

Because this doesn’t totally suck. The positivity and pop melody aspects hold up in a weird, sparkly kind of way. But it’s funny how the exact songs that I didn’t get as a kid are the only ones left that I like on this thing. Greg Camp, the lead guitarist and primary songwriter of the band, is a pretty versatile dude. These songs sound distinct from each other in some unexpected ways. You get some new wave, some ska, some old school pop, and even a few punk rock references. Yeah—I still like it. I still fucking enjoy this middling mid-career album by an arguably middling band. Yeah, they dropped their “Greatest Hits” two years later, dead in the cultural water. San Jose never recovered. This album has a 61 on Metacritic, man.

I remember thinking it was insane that he was allowed to sing the lyric “Why the hell we waitin’ in line?” on the song “105.” I had to listen to that one discreetly, so my Mom didn’t hear the cuss. And now, it’s one of the weaker songs on the album for me. Of the faster tracks on the album, only “Whole Lotta Love” really stands out—might be it sounds the most similar to their older hits. “Hot” on the other hand is a buzzsaw-tier buzzword level cringe disaster of a lyrical nightmare, and I could do without “Hang On” and “Always Gets Her Way.” There are times where the band takes such a relatively straightforward approach, and it feels so schlockily filleresque as to almost be insulting. More forgivingly, it could just be that they’re trying to do twelve different sounds on eleven different tracks, and the disjunction of it all is suffocating.

This shit is a monument to suburbia. To the culture that embraced the early digital commercialization of excess. More than a few of these songs are testaments to nameless, trope-tacular female love interests. In “Fun,” these lovable bros just “don’t get why the planet’s so upset.” In retrospect, not the best look—could’ve had something to do with the invasion of Iraq. Or maybe everyone else was just a major buzzkill. It’s the cultural byproduct of white flight—not just sonically, not just physically, but psychologically. It’s escapist in its picture perfection. And I do think I get the picture, by the end of revisiting this thing. It’s just like he says in “Seventh Grade Dance.” “It’s just another day in the suburbs, where behind every cloud there’s a big ball of burning sunshine.” Sure, it’s optimistic on the surface. But in another sense, those clouds are every bit as real.

But, you know what? Who gives a shit.

Because with all that said, and almost against all odds, I maintain that it’s got its moments, man. Whereas I used to find “Spaceman” slow and dull, I get into its cosmic stoner pop coaster vibe now. The complexity of the anti-nostalgia in “Seventh Grade Dance” hits a hell of a lot harder now that I’ve actually, y’know, been through seventh grade. It’s, uh—been a while. But it works better now. “Fun” is, well, fun. The unabashed balladeering on “Looking for a Wall” is actually kind of nice now, whereas lil me thought it was gross and corny. It still is, but I get it now. And the line “We need a new planet” definitely has a spooky, prophetic-in-retrospect sense to it, even though it’s an aggressively average “we need another fast-ish track” closer to the album. 

This album is peculiar in the same way that a lot of early post-9/11 art and pop culture is. It does kind of represent the positivity of the 90s’ last desperate attempt to retain relevance in the far darker first decade of the new millennium. Also, the Ranking Roger feature on “You Are My Number One” is ludicrous, ridiculous, laughably awesome.

This is punk style again, by the way. Ironically rocking the Smash Mouth look is going to come back. Mark my words. It’s going to be awful, but I’m going to ride the wave. Get ready.