The uphill battle to write and release one of the biggest songs in music history.


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#smooth #carlossantana #robthomas

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By the mid to late 90’s It had been over a decade since guitarist Carlos Santana had a hit song with his self named band, but his band would reemerge in 1999 with the song Smooth. It wasn’t just a hit song, but one of the most popular songs in music history. But the path to even get Smooth out became a major obstacle. Infighting between songwriters, record labels and even Carlos Santana hating the song when he first heard it nearly stopped it from coming out. Today, let’s talk about the uphill battle to release the song Smooth.

While hard rock and so called grunge bands dominated the earlier part of the 90’s, by the later part of the decade it was all about bubblegum pop like Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys while faceless rock bands like Matchbox 20, Third Eye Blind and collective soul became popular. By this point in time guitarist Carlos Santana had not had a hit for quite some years, despite still being signed to a major label in Polygram. Prior to releasing his comeback album in 1999 with Supernatural, the group’s past four albums hadn’t even went gold.

In 1997 Santana was scheduled to play a show in New York City and Radio City Music Hall and the guitarist at that time Arista Records head Clive Davis to come to the show. The two had a long history as Davis had signed Santana to their first recording contract 3 decades prior when Davis worked for Columbia records.

The guitarist would be reminded by his kids who were teenagers by the late 90’s that they rarely heard their father’s music on the radio anymore, except for the track blacks magic woman and oye coma va. The guitarist knew he was about to be dropped by Polygram and enlisted Clive Davis to help him to stage a career comeback Davis would tell Rolling Stone watching the guitarist on stage in New York that night in 1997 : It was only when I was in Radio City, watching him play, seeing him still the dazzling virtuoso, seeing the younger members of the band with whom he was playing, that it triggered thoughts about the growth of the Hispanic population in America. And I saw a very diverse audience there: ethnic makeup, racial makeup, age makeup. I started thinking, “Wow, I wonder if Carlos could come back?” We agreed to meet in Beverly Hills. Santana had found a new home in Arista Records and

it was at the meeting in Beverly Hills that both parties each agreed to bring seven songs into the studio. Davis would tell Esquire “Give me half the album and trust that I will find material that is integral to your artistry.“The other half of the album will be whatever you want it to be.”. B.B. King would serve as the inspiration for Santana’s comeback album.. The blues guitarist had put out an album in 1997 called Dueces Wild, which was panned by critics, but it had a brilliant blueprint for Santana’s next album. Deuce’s Wild featured a number of guest artists including Tracy Chapman and D’Angelo and Bonnie Raitt. The album also sold more than the average BB King album and so Arista Records had something similar planned for Santan’s comeback record. The label soon started scouring magazine interviews with both older rockstars and newer acts to see who mentioned Santana as one of their influences. About a year and a half later by early 1999 the album had seen quite a bit of progress enlisting the help of Dave Matthews, Eric Clapton, Lauryn Hill and CeeLo Green to name a few. But it became apparent to the label that they were still missing that one song that needed to be their huge radio hit out of the gate. Pete Ganbarg, then an A&R executive at Arista Records. Would tell Esquire “I had this kind of dread in the back of my mind that even though we had a great album, we didn't have a first single that would open the doors for us,”


It would be another A&R exec at Arista and friend of Ganbarg who introduced the team working on the new Santana album to an up and coming songwriter named Itaal Shur who had previously written a few hit songs had a new song he was working on called ‘Room 17.’ Shur pitched the song to the team at Arista and Santana as a potential huge hit trying to capture the same vibe as Santana’s past hits including Black Magic Woman and Oye Co