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.