About

"Smooth" is a 1999 soft rock collaboration between the American Latin rock band Santana and pop rock band Matchbox Twenty's vocalist Rob Thomas. While the song was a huge commercial success and met with universal critical acclaim upon its release, "Smooth" gained online notoriety in the early 2010s with an ironic fandom rooted in 90s nostalgia.

Origin

On June 29th, 1999, the single "Smooth" was released, spending a total of 12 weeks in the top position on the Billboard Hot 100 that year. A music video for the song uploaded to the SantanaVEVO YouTube channel accumulated over 40.9 million views and 4,300 comments within three years (shown below).

Spread

On November 5th, 2009, The Onion^[12] published an article titled "1999 Collaboration Between Carlos Santana, Rob Thomas Somehow Standing Test of Time." On February 27th, 2011, the GuitarJamz YouTube channel uploaded a instructional video for playing the song on the guitar (shown below). Within six years, the video received more than 900,000 views and 1,800 comments.

In January 2012, the @RobThomasWeathr^[4] Twitter account was launched, which posts lyrics from the song as if they were weather reports (shown below).

On March 6th, 2013, The Onion posted a satirical news segment about "Smooth" sweeping Grammy Awards on YouTube (shown below, left). On April 28th, 2014, YouTuber Neil Cicierega uploaded a mashup of "Smooth" with the 1988 new age song "Orinoco Flow" by Enya (shown below, right).

In September 2015, a Kickstarter^[1] was launched to fund an event titled "SMOOTHcon," described as the "first annual celebration of the masterpiece "Smooth." On September 8th, a Facebook^[2] group titled "Smooth – Santana feat. Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20" was created, which garnered upwards of 7,400 members in the next year. The following day, BuzzFeed^[6] published a quiz titled "How Well Do You Know the Lyrics To "Smooth" by Santana Ft. Rob Thomas?"

Copypasta

In December 2015, Twitter user Nicholas Kula created a shirt on RedBubble^[7] printed with the phrase "I'd Rather Be Listening to Grammy-Award Winning 1999 Hit Smooth By Santana Feat. Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty" (shown below, left). On July 26th, 2016, Twitter user @corihealey^[8] posted a photograph of a person wearing a similar T-shirt with the caption "Man it's a… hot one" (shown below, right). That day, Rob Thomas retweeted the picture, which gained over 3,500 likes and 1,900 retweets over the next month.

On July 27th, 2016, Redditor JMets6986 submitted a post asking where the "I'd rather be listening to Smooth" joke came from to /r/OutofTheLoop.^[3] The following day, The Daily Dot^[9] published an article about the T-shirt. On August 4th, Instagram^[10] user cardchronicle posted a mug with the "I'd Rather Be Listening" copypasta printed on the side (shown below).

On August 15th, the NBC Sports YouTube^[11] channel uploaded footage of a Spanish dressage competitor performing a routine to "Smooth" at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. On August 23rd, 2016, Vox^[5] published an article about the song's resurgence in popularity online.

Search Interest

External References