Santana Songs - Smooth Lyrics

Santana - Smooth

Santana - Smooth Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Supernatural
Released: 1999

Smooth Lyrics

Man, it's a hot one
Like seven inches from the midday sun
Well, I hear you whispering in the words, to melt everyone
But you stay so cool
My muñequita, my Spanish Harlem, Mona Lisa
You're my reason for reason
The step in my groove

And if you said this life ain't good enough
I would give my world to lift you up
I could change my life to better suit your mood
Because you're so Smooth

[Chorus]
And it's just like the ocean under the moon
Oh, it's the same as the emotion that I get from you
You got the kind of lovin' that can be so smooth, yeah
Give me your heart, make it real or else forget about it

But I'll tell you one thing
If you would leave it would be a crying shame
In every breath and every word
I hear your name calling me out
Out from the barrio
You hear my rhythm on your radio
You feel the turning of the world, so soft and slow
It's turning you round and round

And if you said this life ain't good enough
I would give my world to lift you up
I could change my life to better suit your mood
Because you're so smooth

[Chorus: x2]

Or else forget about it
Or else forget about it
Let's not forget about it
Give me your heart, make it real
Let's not forget about it
Let's not forget about it
Let's not forget about it
Let's not forget about it
Let's not forget about it

Writer/s: SHUR, ITAAL / THOMAS, ROBERT
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Smooth

Rob Thomas from Matchbox Twenty wrote this with Itaal Shur, a songwriter and producer who has worked with Jewel, Robi Rosa and Maxwell (co-writing his first hit, "Ascension (Don't Ever Wonder)." Shur said in a Songfacts interview: "I was already active in the music business. I had some hit records with Maxwell and I was already touring the world with Groove Collective, so people knew me more in the underground scene, but I wasn't as big as Rob Thomas, of course. My manager at the time told me that Pete Ganbarg, who was working at the time at Arista, he was looking for music for the new Santana record. At the time, I had my own band and was performing a lot around the city. I jumped at it because I grew up with an older brother who hipped me up to Classic Rock and I always loved Santana.

I went up to the office and I wanted to hear what they had first to see what kind of direction they were going for, and when I went up there I heard the Wyclef track, I heard the Dave Matthews track, I heard a couple of other tracks, and I realized there wasn't the kind of track that was, in my opinion, a standard Santana groove like Black Magic Woman, Oye Como Va, Evil Ways. So I went home and wrote this track on guitar with all the arrangements called Room One Seven. It was about this couple that meet after a long time and have a little tryst in the hotel room.

I brought it to Arista and they loved the instrumental and they liked parts of the melodies, but they didn't like the lyrics - they thought it was a little too sexual for Santana - so they asked me if I wanted to work with Rob Thomas. I didn't know him; I'd heard a little bit about Matchbox Twenty. He happened to live at the time in Soho very close to me. He came over and he had already written the verses to the instrumental that Arista gave him. I had a chorus that had the same melody: 'Room One Seven on the seventeenth floor. Take the elevator and I'll meet you at the door.' He didn't have a chorus, so before he came, I changed the words around to, 'Give me the ocean, give me the moon, give me something hot to make my body move,' and this turned into the chorus that we all know."

Thomas sang lead on this, but when he was writing it he thought they were going to use someone else. He and Shur would try to figure out who they would get to sing it, but then Arista contacted Thomas and asked him to do it.

Many of the lyrics are Thomas' ode to his wife, who is Puerto Rican ("My Mu Equita" translates to "My Little Doll" in Spanish). She ended up in the video.

The song's co-writer Itaal Shur told us: "The guitar solo from my demo, Santana copied that solo, which was a huge compliment and all the breaks were also on my demo. It was really weird, my demo was kind of like a template for the live band to play. They sped up the song two beats: it was like at 1/13 and went to 1/15 and it went from A Flat Minor to A Minor. They played it as a band and recorded it all live, pretty much. Me and Rob, when we were writing the song, the verses were fine, but we went through about 4 or 5 changes with the record company; from like, 'Give me the ocean, give me the moon,' 'You're just like the ocean...' Pete Ganbarg, who if it wasn't for him this song wouldn't have come together because he put me and Rob together, he said some really good comments about the lyrics - he was an English major and really picky about lyrics. It was a really good collaboration."

This won Song Of The Year, Record Of The Year and Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals at the 2000 Grammys. Supernatural also won for Best Rock Album and Album Of The Year.

Clive Davis is a legendary record executive who was the mastermind behind this album. Santana had not had a hit since "Hold On" in 1982, so Davis teamed him up with contemporary musicians like Wyclef Jean, Everlast and Lauryn Hill to make sure the younger generation took notice. The result was a wildly successful album that went over well with Santana's old fans and created a legion of new ones. This was the first single, and it spent 12 weeks at #1 in the US.

Santana has the distinction of waiting the longest between his first charting single and first #1 hit. In 1969, "Tango" hit #56 in the US, and 30 years later this was #1.

The trend of aging rockers calling in hot young artists to give them contemporary appeal became known in the music press as "The Carlos Santana Effect," thanks to his Supernatural success.