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Music

Smash Mouth and Smashing Pumpkins Have 'Shrek'-Related Beef Now

According to Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins were offered the final scene of the ogre romance before Smash Mouth. Now, San Jose's chillest dudes are miffed.

Billy Corgan, a man who will not reveal whether or not he had sexual relations with a shapeshifter, has lately been answering fans' questions on Instagram. Earlier this week, per Josiah Hughes at Exclaim!, a seemingly innocuous query took an odd turn. When Corgan was asked by a follower if he had seen "the hit movie Shrek," he responded not by directly answering, but by upending the childhoods of an entire generation. "SP fact: we were offered the end credit song for Shrek 1 but the offer was withdrawn and given to Smashmouth [sic] (who had hit with Monkees song)," he wrote. The track that the Pumpkins had been asked to provide, Corgan said, was "Untitled," the last single they released before going on a lengthy hiatus in 2000.

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If we choose to believe that Corgan—who considers Alex Jones a pal—is telling the truth, Shrek's final seen was almost a radically different thing. Rather than a chirpy and immediately recognizable pop song to unite kids and parents after 90-odd minutes of animated japes, the movie would have closed with a dreamy psych-rock jam. Children would have seen a cartoon gnome lip-syncing to Billy Corgan, exhorting his lady love to "turn me on." Eddie Murphy, as Donkey, would have had a hard time singing along. For Smash Mouth, "hit with Monkees song" would not have been hit at all.

Yesterday, Hughes took to Twitter to ask Smash Mouth for their thoughts on the matter. They were not best pleased.

This is a good and nourishing beef.

Follow Alex Robert Ross on Twitter.