Smash Mouth wrote “All Star” to warn about climate change & anti-intellectualism 20 years ago—and we turned it into a stupid meme.

It was the fall of 1998. Guy Fieri was preparing to open his second Johnny Garlic’s Restaurant, while his clone-twin, Steve Harwell, was in the studio with his bandmates wrapping up their sophomore album, “Astro Lounge.” Beyond the studio walls, military tensions were rising in North Korea, Pakistan, and Iraq, and a little company called Google had just opened up in Silicon Valley; but all anyone cared about were Bill Clinton’s blowjobs.

This was the world into which “All Star” was born.

The members of Smash Mouth knew they had an obligation, as all pop-ska-rock groups do, to deliver a totally sick jam that would also save the world from its own impending doom. They hid an idyllic message in the rhythms of the song, resonating in a cleverly diminished chord in the chorus that took root in our heads and found new life as a sonic meme, a viral idea that would spread from person to person to perpetuate its existence.

Unfortunately, we were all too enamored on “Smashups” and other esoteric Internet jokes to heed the foreboding prophecy lodged within that earworm, and their warning unnoticed — until recently, when the truth was revealed.