BOISE, ID – Steve Harwell, the former lead singer of the rock group Smash Mouth, reportedly passed away at the age of 56 at his home in Boise this past weekend. Per the band’s manager, Harwell passed away due to acute liver failure.
News of Harwell’s severe condition (that ultimately led to his death) was first reported on September 3rd, with reports noting that the former singer was entering hospice care due to liver failure, having been given roughly a week’s time to live over the weekend. However, the timeframe afforded to Harwell obviously didn’t come to fruition, as the former Smash Mouth singer apparently passed away mere hours after the initial hospice reports began circulating.
According to Robert Hayes, the band’s manager, Harwell was “surrounded by family and friends and passed peacefully and comfortably.”
As many 90s music fans know, Smash Mouth came onto the pop culture scene with a meteoric bang with their 1997 debut album Fush Yu Mang, harboring a blend of rock, pop-punk, and ska and delivering the hit single “Walkin’ on the Sun” and the ska-infused War cover “Why Can’t We Be Friends.”
While many bands and artists who see the level of remarkable success from a debut album like Smash Mouth did often fall victim to what’s known in the industry as the ‘sophomore slump’, Smash Mouth managed to achieve astronomical stardom with their 1999 follow-up Astro Lounge.
Between the years of 1999 and 2001, the hit single “All Star” was seemingly unavoidable, courtesy of generous amounts of radio play and being featured in five different movie soundtracks between the aforementioned years (including the movie Shrek). The accompanying music video for “All Star” even featured a then-27-year-old Dane Cook, prior to the comedian seeing worldwide success roughly five years later.
While the band’s self-titled third album never reached the heights of popularity as “Astro Lounge,” the group’s 2001 effort did manage to reach gold in U.S. sales, largely due to the single of The Monkey’s Cover “I’m a Believer,” which was also featured on the Shrek 2 soundtrack.
In the years that followed, Smash Mouth would deliver four more albums, respectively in 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2012, none of which managed to capture the same level of success as the group’s first three albums.
In October of 2021, Harwell wound up leaving Smash Mouth as the group’s frontman following a performance in New York where the singer began slurring his words on stage and purportedly voicing somewhat decipherable threats toward an irritated crowd. In Harwell’s then-announced retirement, it was revealed the singer was combatting a years’ long health complication of cardiomyopathy.
Gregory Hoyt is a former contributor to outlets such as Law Enforcement Today and Red Voice Media, and current host of The Breakdown with Greg Hoyt. Based out of Sierra Vista, Arizona, Hoyt is a staunch and outspoken advocate of law enforcement and first responders, while also harboring the unique experience of having spent nearly 5 years in prison. Since then, he's used his unique perspective to offer support and commentary about the criminal justice system. When not working or combating bad ideas, Hoyt also leisurely studies economics, history, and law.