Since Smash Mouth's single "All Star" sang the lyrics "She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb/In the shape of an "L" on her forehead," teenagers everywhere have used this symbolism to tease each other.

The garage grunge group Smash Mouth, named after the football player and coach Mike Ditka's term "smash mouth football," began in 1994 in San Jose, California. Childhood friends Steve Harwell and Kevin Coleman, the vocalist and drummer, respectively, recruited Greg Camp and Paul De Lisle to play with the group. Though Harwell and Coleman were bar circuit virgins, the group had an instant chemistry that local clubs couldn't deny. Though it took two years to get a major break, their lucky day came when the Bay Area radio station KOME played one of the band's singles and invited the boys to join their heavy lineup (which included No Doubt, Beck and 311) for their Kamp KOME Music Festival. This unsigned band was garnering loads of attention, after which they signed with Interscope Records.

Smash Mouth revealed their 1997 album, Fush Yu Mang, to the world and filled the radio waves with their suburban party anthems. One of their biggest hits, "Walking on the Sun," led the album to go double platinum, and the boys started a tour with Sugar Ray, Blue, Third Eye Blind and others. For their follow up album, Astro Lounge, a singles from the soundtrack Can't Hardly Wait appeared, in the shape of a Mysterians version of "Can't Get Enough of You Baby."

As the band started to slump toward the one-hit-wonder mess, they vowed to defy the critics and worked feverishly on their third album, stepping outside of their comfort zone to create more rock tracks. The album debuted and proved critics wrong when its debut single "All Star" hit the charts and proved the boys had matured and worked on their sound. Since then, they have released three more albums together.