White, which means friendship.“Smooth,” released as a single on June 29, 1999, was a magical song.

Rob Thomas - Smooth Official Music Video - YouTube “Something happens when Brother Rob Thomas sings at the same time with the Santana band and myself in the same room.

Or listen to how the bass and keys seem to coquettishly beckon you forward, or how the track sustains its precise momentum, even as its outro explodes into unbridled chaos.Two years earlier, the 50-year-old guitarist was staring down a mid-career crisis.

Good job!’ I was just like, ‘Oh shit!

But executives at Arista were still worried about the mechanics of selling America on something new from Santana. sakira. Never compare or compete.

For the last six months, I’ve been talking to the people involved in the song’s creation, including Santana, Thomas, and Davis. Yes, Santana himself now describes the experience as a “tsunami of positivity,” devoid of egos and full of “EN.

“I don’t even know anymore.”It also didn’t hurt that 1999’s pop music environment was uniquely primed for a hit of this magnitude. Anonymous. Is it joy?

““I look at the whole moment like it was a giant parade -- the ‘Supernatural’ parade -- and 'Smooth' got to be the first float,” recalls Rob Thomas.

“Just doing your job: You show up at the studio, you've learned the music. So they made a shrewd choice: When distributing the single, they left off the guitarist’s name, marking the CDs simply as “Smooth” and “Mystery Artist.”Just as Ganbarg was nearing a panic, he encountered the first of several lucky breaks that occurred during the creation of “Smooth”: Evan Lamberg, an industry friend, called out of the blue to ask if he still needed songs.

The two agreed that staging a proper comeback would require an arsenal of contemporary hits; and Davis, who signed artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd, believed he knew just how to get them.“Oh, here comes that cannonball guy,” one of them says. From the instant it hit U.S. airwaves in June 1999, the track seemed destined to jackhammer its way into America’s consciousness. Rob Thomas'. Nostalgia?

And there’s not one birthday or anniversary that I don't get a giant bouquet of white roses from Carlos. 1 decade ago. They recorded live, ran through the track a few times, liked what they heard. “He’s cool.” “Smooth” has woven itself into our cultural DNA.

And although haters deny it, the song’s musicianship is slick and impeccable.“Give me half the album and trust that I will find material that is integral to your artistry,” Davis told Santana. It all felt easy, casual.The song turns 20 on June 29, 2019.

“When I say that, I love playing it and I love performing it. We were just kind of in [Shur’s] apartment studio chilling out.”So yes, it is possible to hate “Smooth” for the cynical mechanics of its creation, for its permanent residence in our heads and homegoods stores, for the line about a “Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa.” Yet because the song’s success is self-inflicted through decades of our own weddings and parties and makeout sessions, any hatred is also, by definition, a form of self-hatred.“I believed him a little bit, but I didn’t believe completely,” Santana says of Thomas. “I was just walking down West Broadway and I stopped at a crosswalk, and this car full of hot girls—a convertible—pulled up at the red light and they were blaring ‘Smooth.’ It took me a second to realize what I was listening to. Yet it’s worth pausing for a moment to point out that the musicians on “Smooth” are not exactly a gaggle of toothless vagabonds, busking for quarters. Near the finish line, he hit a wall.“The only thing that I remember is just trying to get it to feel right,” adds drummer Rodney Holmes.

Smooth by Santana song meaning, lyric interpretation, video and chart position.