Matchbox Twenty

Matchbox Twenty grew out of an Orlando band called Tabitha's Secret. In 1995, singer Rob Thomas, bassist Brian Yale and drummer Paul Doucette left to start over, added guitarists Adam Gaynor and Kyle Cook, and signed with Atlantic. Doucette took the name from two words on the softball shirt of a man at the restaurant where he waited tables, and for its first few years the band was Matchbox 20. The debut album was supposed to be called Woodshed Diaries until Thomas and Doucette heard a singer at Café Largo introduce a song as being "for you, or someone like you." They changed the title even though 3,500 copies with the old one had already been made. Yourself or Someone Like You came out on October 1, 1996.

The album grew slowly, one radio single after another. First came "Long Day," then "Push," "3AM," "Real World" and "Back 2 Good" through 1997 and 1998. "Push" and "3AM" never appeared on the Hot 100, because before 1998 a song had to be sold as a commercial single to chart there. "3AM," which Thomas had written with his Tabitha's Secret bandmates, came from Thomas's teenage years living with his mother's cancer. "Push" drew criticism from listeners who heard it as endorsing violence against women. Thomas said the man in the song was the one being abused. "Wow, really? No, it's not about that," was the band's response, Yale said. The album eventually shipped more than 12 million copies in the U.S. and was certified diamond.

Before the second album, Thomas co-wrote "Smooth" with Itaal Shur for Carlos Santana's Supernatural. He was only supposed to write it, but Santana heard his demo vocal and had him sing it. The 1999 song won Thomas three Grammys: Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. The band, now spelled Matchbox Twenty, returned in 2000 with Mad Season, which went 4× platinum. Its single "Bent" reached #1 on the Hot 100, and in its video the rest of the band beats up Thomas as a joke about his post-"Smooth" fame. More Than You Think You Are (2002) brought "Disease," co-written with Mick Jagger, and "Unwell," and it stayed on the radio for more than a year. The band went on hiatus in 2004 and has reunited several times since; their 2012 album North debuted at #1.