10 Bands That Everyone Loves To Hate
4. Smash Mouth
From the start, Smash Mouth was never a band you had to take seriously. As soon as you heard cuts like "Walking on the Sun," the band definitely talent, but no real ambitions to be Radiohead or anything. However, Smash Mouth may have been the first ever victims of death by memes.
As soon as the online community picked up on the inherent silliness of "All Star," fans made it a point to ram it down people's throat for the foreseeable future. It's one thing to pair these down to SHREDS videos or just your typical bad song, but it's another thing entirely when you have "All Star" being linked to a Bach chorale or being mashed up with other great songs from our childhood.
On the other hand, it's not like the band are necessarily ashamed of their meme-y reputation. Ever since they have exploded, the memes have helped keep the Smash Mouth name alive, which you can't say for most of the other less-than-nostalgic acts like Sugar Ray.
While the masses might still know of "All Star," the afterglow of the meme has ended up squandering any goodwill the band's future material has, leading many people to just let it fall by the wayside. There are a lot of great bands who rose to prominence in the '00s, but this is the band we wish we could forget, except they won't go away.