Rob Thomas “Chip Tooth Smile”
The narrative is the easy part. It’s a rags to riches story — a tale of inconceivable success and equal backlash. A chronicle full of conventional tropes — the broken home, the lives saved by Rock and Roll, the friendships threatened by success, the trappings of fame, the break up and the redemption. The story of Matchbox Twenty may not be well known — most people, including their fans, couldn’t name four of the five founding members — but it’s absolutely familiar.
Rob Thomas was born in an Army hospital in Germany but, following his parents divorce, he bounced between Florida and South Carolina. He was raised by a grandmother who gambled and bootlegged and a mother who drank too much and disciplined with too much force. By all accounts, it was a chaotic childhood, full of booze, drugs and petty crimes. By the time he was seventeen, Thomas was out of high school and in county jail.
Eventually, though, he managed to regain some footing, hooking up with local musicians and fronting a couple small time bands — the kind that play covers to drunk locals and a smattering of tourists in Southern beach towns. None of it was anything special, unless you were Rob Thomas and came from where Rob Thomas came from. And, in that case, playing music, having a band, writing songs and getting paid to perform — that was very special. By the early Nineties, he wasn’t exactly on the straight and narrow. He wasn’t on the fast track to fame or fortune. But Rob Thomas was moving forward.
Eventually, momentum returned the fledgling singer-songwriter to Florida, where, alongside Brian Yale and Paul Doucette, Tabitha’s Secret was formed. Tabitha’s Secret was a short-lived, moderately successful local band, distinguished primarily by Thomas’ kind of alternative, kind of pop songs and his semi-soulful vocals. They were a minor event, save for the fact that three fifths of the act would go on to become Matchbox Twenty — the most commercially successful, critically scorned Adult Alternative act of the Nineties.
Born in 1995, Matchbox Twenty was “discovered” by producer Matt Serletic who, in turn, promptly landed the group a deal with Atlantic Records. In the days of “high Alt” — after the Hootie backlash, after Kurt’s suicide — expectations for Matchbox Twenty were modest (if there were any expectations at all). Somewhere in between the fumes of Grunge, the funk of Jam band culture and the wake of Indie, however, something was happening. It started around 1993, with the Counting Crows, whose loose jangle and yearning ballads were deemed a more palatable alternative to the H.O.R.D.E. contingent. Next, the Counting Crows’ success begot the warm embrace of The Wallflowers and The Goo Goo Dolls. The success of each of these bands was predicated on the idea that their music could be programmed on multiple radio formats — beginning on Modern Rock to establish authenticity, next on Adult Alternative to accentuate the lightness of their pleasure and, finally, on Pop radio, the land of Gold and Platinum sellers.
The idea of being simultaneously Alternative, Adult Alternative and Pop was a novel one, but also a potent one. There was Fastball and The Verve Pipe and Live and Everclear, all of whom could be credibly described as Alt bands or Pop bands or Adult Alternative Rock bands without really being any one of those things. An ungodly sum of money was spent to ensure that six Third Eye Blind singles climbed up the charts of all three radio formats (note: they did). And, right after Third Eye Blind, we had Marvelous 3, fronted by Butch Walker, as the can’t miss successors, waiting in the wings. Upstairs, at our sister company Atlantic, who’d been burned by the anti-Hootie revulsion, the team was less hopeful about their Adult Alternative contenders — a five piece from Orlando called Matchbox Twenty.
What happened next was a surprise to most everyone. Marvelous 3, the sure shot Alt Rock band with the charismatic lead singer and the undeniable first single (“Freak of the Week”), proved to be completely deniable. Meanwhile, that other, much lighter and much less alternative band, whose album had been out for months doing a whole lot of nothing, started to get some radio play. And then some sales. And then more and more of both. And then, one day, seemingly out of nowhere, Matchbox Twenty were everywhere. “Push.” “3AM.” “Real World.” Every turn of the dial. MTV. VH1. At the mall. In the restaurants. On elevators. In 1998, sales jumped from hundreds, to thousands, to millions. And then, in 1999, Rob Thomas wrote and recorded “Smooth” with Carlos Santana, and America freaked the fuck out.
Though their breakthrough was unexpected, Matchbox Twenty’s early success was not hard to understand. Nor was it particularly hard to explain. For half a decade, we’d acclimated our ears (and eyes) to guitar forward, though not quite aggressive music made by men in their twenties and thirties who had a lot of feelings to share. But, like all new things, the alternativeness of Alternative Rock had a shelf life. The early adopters defected. And the market that remained was less interested in difference or defiance. In fact, they were united less by a common esprit de corps than they were by MTV and radio station programming. Over time, Alt Rock regressed to a mean. Where there were once “Losers” and “Creeps,” there were now dudes on spring break moshing to Better Than Ezra and Vertical Horizon. And while both behaviors appeared silly — even at the time — it was not hard to see how we got from there to here.
In 1999, Matchbox Twenty was here. They were also there. And Everywhere. They were what happens when you took Pearl Jam and added Counting Crows and then subtracted out all the weird, rough, hard to digest parts and replaced them with Hootie and Goo Goo Dolls. They were a Pop imperative that arrived after all of the edges of Alt were sanded down and all of the angst of Grunge had been bought, repackaged, sold and resold.
At the time, however, none of that was a particularly big problem — the singer sounded a little like Eddie Vedder and a lot like Adam Duritz. There were still guitars in the front. They looked sufficiently brooding. They even had earrings! So, while they were not critically appreciated, the success of Rob Thomas’ band was not specifically problematic. Hootie had walked this path so that Matchbox Twenty could run. And we’d had our Alt slow boiled for so long that we’d mostly forgotten what it tasted like anyway.
But “Smooth” was a bridge too far. The inconceivably popular song that Rob Thomas wrote for Santana had almost nothing to do with Alt. It was a Latin Pop song — functionally a Salsa — with a Carlos Santana guitar solo on top. To be clear, it was (is) a great track — the sort of song that makes global Pop stars out of artists. The sort of song that could get played on literally every radio station on the FM dial. But also the sort of song that could inspire a violent backlash.
If they were a nominally Alternative, platinum selling band before “Smooth,” Thomas’ collaboration with Santana made Matchbox Twenty a certified diamond sell-out by the end of the millennium. “Smooth” sat atop the Billboard Hot 100 for three months straight and was named the biggest hit of the Nineties. Literally, the most played song of the decade. It was the feel good song of the summer and fall and winter that became the most inescapable hit of its time. Eventually it was the butt of jokes and implicit confirmation — at least among critics — that Rob Thomas and his band were craven sell-out pop stars disguised as an Alt Rock band.
“Smooth” was not the end of Matchbox Twenty (far from it), but it was the start of the backlash that would define them to such an extent that they were only able to muster three more albums. Similarly, it was the necessary beginning of Thomas’ turn away from a complicated Rock (band) stardom and towards a less complicated, (solo) Pop quasi-stardom.
Though the story of Matchbox Twenty — much like their music — is completely accessible, and though the backlash against them was predictable, I find the enduring hostility towards them to be a mystery. On the one hand, I do not like the band — am not a fan. I would even go so far as to say that they annoy me. But, also I suspect that my feelings are a product of biases more than they are an honest criticism of their music. Matchbox Twenty are the easiest of easy targets — five talented enough white dudes who became extraordinarily popular making pleasing music that was familiar and pleasant but, ultimately, not much more. Is that it? Is that my criticism? Is that what the hostility is all about?
The most frequent charge against Matchbox Twenty is that they are bland. Their music is described as “beige” among those who like either black, white or all the colors in the rainbow. That being said, I’m not convinced that being “bland” is a sufficient criticism. While they received far more radio airplay, I don’t know that they are any more bland than dozens of other Nineties Lite Alt bands who endeared themselves and still enjoy success as nostalgia acts. Also, you know who else could be bland? Jackson Browne. And The Eagles. Also, chicken can be pretty bland but I eat it all the time. Same with eggs. I’m not sure why blandness inspires so much derision.
The second indictment against Matchbox Twenty is that they killed Alternative Rock — that they obliterated any pretense of defiance, weirdness or eclecticism that separated its practitioners and their fans from everyone else. This case rests on the premise that Matchbox Twenty either snuffed out a flame that was burning or redirected a movement in the wrong direction. Obviously neither suggestion is particularly true. Matchbox Twenty was much more the symptom than disease. They arrived years after Hootie, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Dave Matthews Band, Counting Crows, Gin Blossoms, Del Amitri and — do I really need to go on? Matchbox Twenty was much less a death knell and more a last second kneel down at the end of a game.
Which brings us to the last, but still fairly common, charge against Rob Thomas’ band — that they were disingenuous, possibly craven poseurs. I guess the idea here would be that Matchbox Twenty were fake Alt — sheep in wolfs’ clothing. That they exploited Alternative tropes in order to position themselves nearer to the zeitgeist. The evidence for this case relies, I believe, on Thomas’ angsty vocals, his earrings and the fact that they were a two (sometimes three) guitar band — all signs of Alt-Rockness.
Now, if those charges were successfully argued, I guess Matchbox Twenty could be found guilty of something like criminal derivativeness or malicious copycat-ness? But, in truth, they dressed much more like Chandler and Ross than like Kurt and Eddie. And their guitars were far more palliative than offensive. Rob Thomas openly admits that Lionel Richie, not Paul Westerberg, was the songwriter he most admired. So, no — Matchbox Twenty were not poseurs.
What’s really the issue then? It’s not their story — which sounded sympathetic when I first read about the band in the Nineties and perhaps even more so now as I write about them. It’s not as if the guys are a bunch of scoundrels — Thomas, for his part, seems to be a decent, charitable and self-aware (not to mention talented) human. No — Matchbox Twenty were simply, obviously, what comes out the other side of a drain full of Grunge and Lollapalooza and MTV Spring Break and half a decade of record labels drunk on compact disc money. And though it might not seem so, that last sentence was not written pejoratively. To say that Matchbox Twenty was a product of their times is so obvious as to be banal. And that would almost be the end of the story, except for the fact that they are not understood to be that way. They survive as either genial Nineties nostalgia or, more frequently, as the subject of jokes and tirades.
I’m sure there’s a faction out there that simply loves Matchbox Twenty — after all, they sold tens of millions of albums. But, I don’t know anyone in that faction. I am also certain that there’s a slice of the market that simply likes a bunch of Matchbox Twenty songs and feels good when they are played — nothing more or less. That makes sense to me. What makes less sense is the significant and strident plurality that, to this day, despises the band.
Ultimately, I’m convinced that the true source of our allergy is a fear of the unknown. For five years, Matchbox Twenty was both ubiquitous and completely anonymous. We knew the name Rob Thomas, but that was it. Nobody knew anyone else in the band. We could not have recognized them if they personally introduced themselves while playing their instruments. Similarly, we could not place their music. We knew that it was not Alternative Rock but we either could not understand or not accept that it was truly, deeply Adult Alternative Rock — a format that had just been invented and which meant literally nothing to anyone outside of the music industry. Matchbox Twenty were neither fish nor fowl. They were genre non-binary. And that undefinability inspired discomfort which, in turn, inspired vitriol.
While I had been guilty of my share of Matchbox Twenty eye rolls, I was also guilty of not really knowing. I could not shake their mystery. More specifically, I could not shake the mystery of Rob Thomas. I had read all the facts (Wikipedia) and heard all the songs (four Matchbox albums and four Rob Thomas solo albums), but I still had zero clue. Was he more Adam Duritz or Ed Kowalczyk or Stephan Jenkins? Or was he closer to the Eighties Adult Contemporary Arena Pop stars who resisted categories and melted our hearts? I was honestly unsure. But, the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that Thomas was less Grunge and less Alt and much more Phil Collins and Lionel Richie.
Generally speaking, time is the enemy of Rock and Roll. But it’s a dear friend to writers. Time furnishes us with perspective and evidence. Time reveals lies and truths. And, also, as Rust Cohle suggested, time is a flat circle. I had every one of those benefits afforded to me when I followed my investigation to its logical conclusion — to Rob Thomas’ 2019 solo album, “Chip Tooth Smile.
The last Matchbox Twenty album (to date) arrived in 2012, which means that, for seven years, Rob Thomas co-existed as a solo artist alongside his band. The distinction was commercially awkward — perhaps especially so for Kyle Cook, Brian Yale and Paul Doucette — but creatively clarifying. Matchbox Twenty remained in their Adult Alternative lane while Thomas gradually inched closer to Pop. Over the course of three solo albums, each of which was made with Matchbox Twenty’s producer, Matt Serletic, Thomas maintained his trademark earnestness, his say it all and say nothing at all lyricism and his knack for hooks that please many and excite few. Nevertheless, you could hear an evolution. Less Duritz, more Timberlake. Less strums and more beats. And while he was not making dancefloor bangers, you could almost feel Thomas’ urge to tap his feet and wiggle his ass.
By his fourth solo album, the sum of those small changes was obvious — the subtle metamorphosis was complete. At the age of forty-seven, two decades removed from “Smooth,” Rob Thomas made his first unabashedly Pop album. And by “Pop,” I really mean “Pop R&B.” And, by “Pop R&B,” I probably mean “Adult Contemporary R&B.” Which is all to say that, as much as Rob Thomas moved away from the sound of his former band, he moved towards something equally hard to pin down.
While it might be genre fluid, I can confirm that “Chip Tooth Smile” is thematically singular. It’s an album absolutely obsessed with the passage of time — an album about fewer tomorrows than yesterdays. About wishing you knew then what you know now. And a bunch of other completely hackneyed but deeply true cliches. It is also the first album wherein Thomas did not work with Matt Serletic. In a strange coincidence, and as if to confirm that time is indeed a flat circle, Thomas teamed up with writer/producer Butch Walker.
Yes, that Butch Walker. The guy who makes hits for Pink and Weezer and Taylor Swift. The guy who, back in 1997, was the frontman for Marvelous 3 — the sure thing buzz band that fizzled while a no name, faceless, Adult Alternative band from their sister label made their improbable ascent to the top of the charts. Thomas and Walker signified the sliding door nature of Alt Rock stardom. They were functionally opposites. Walker was hip and oozing charisma. Thomas less so. Walker loved Power Pop. Thomas liked his Pop less powerful. Butch was was the guy to bet on while Thomas was the underdog. Back then, the universe corrected our assumptions. In 2019, the universe was going to make things right.
Together, Walker and Thomas made an exceedingly competent, eminently likable album that would nest very comfortably alongside Ed Sheeran, Pharrell, Imagine Dragons and Justin Timberlake. Guitars take a back seat. Vocals are doubled/tripled up (though I don’t think autotuned). Beats have the bite of Pop. And synths do a lot of the heavy lifting. Of the twelve songs of “Chip Tooth Smile,” only two exceed three and a half minutes and none stretch past four and a half. Everything about his album (politely) shouts “radio friendly.”
The album’s opener, "One Less Day (Dying Young),” is both an on the nose headline and a nifty piece of Pop songcraft. Aas is the case with most Butch Walker tracks, the hook is rock solid, but, like most of the biggest hits of the Eighties, it’s the rhythm that gets you. What starts as a trot becomes a canter and then a gallop. And it’s not just the subtle acceleration. It’s the neatness of the beat — a gated reverb effect that instantly calls to mind Phil Collins and Hugh Padgham.
And, just in case we didn’t get the stylistic reference, the next track, “Timeless,” is quite literally a word salad of Eighties hits (Night Ranger, The Police, David Bowie, The Eurythmics), decorated with some smokey Bryan Adams (by way of War on Drugs) guitar and punctuated with the drum breakdown from Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” It’s a clever trick and a decent song. But, most of all, it’s a statement of purpose. Two songs in, we know exactly what “Chip Tooth Smile” is interested in. And it’s not the Nineties.
Though there’s a sheen of synth and clap of rhythm that binds the album together, if you listen closely, you can detect two distinct gears. One is just slightly louder, bigger and bolder, in the neighborhood of Imagine Dragons — music well suited to score sports highlights on Youtube. “Can’t Help Me Now” fits this bill to a tee. And “I Love It” has enough stomp in the beat to resemble The Black Keys or E.L.O. But the best of this breed — in fact the best song on the album — is “Early in the Morning,” which combines the synth and drums of Eighties Collins with a convincing Soul singer; one who sounds as much like Hozier as he does like the guy from Matchbox Twenty. It’s all very slick and calculated, but it’s also affecting in a way that I never really expected Rob Thomas to be.
The other gear, which is actually a lower gear, features guitar and less interesting beats. It’s easy to consume and easier to forget. “The Worst in Me,” for example, sounds like something for spring breakers drinking margaritas in Florida if those spring breakers were actually middle-aged and full of regret. “Breathe Out” is literally Rob Thomas singing mindfulness instructions over acoustic guitar and the pitter patter of a rhythm. “Chip Tooth Smile” buckles when it gets too soft or too slow. “It’s Only Love,” however, is the exception. Still softer. Still slower. But, the strings and the payoff in the final verse make for the sort of climactic moment that plays well behind wedding videos and romantic Tik Toks. It’s cloying, but it’s also pretty darn effective.
“Chip Tooth Smile” was not a Rob Thomas reclamation or a renaissance. It didn’t produce any hits. And I can barely find any reviews of the album — outside of streaming services, it has virtually no digital footprint. And now, having spent the week with Thomas’ music, in general, and this one, in particular, I still don’t know whether — deep down — he’s a Pop star or an accidental Rock star or an Adult Alternative has been. But I can confirm that the Collins, Richie, Sheeran zone suits the singer quite nicely. If I were trying on a sweater at The Gap, and if I had the choice, I’d take most anything from “Chip Tooth Smile” over “3AM” or “Push.” Maybe that Matchbox Twenty weren’t the problem — maybe the Nineties were the problem.