Rob Thomas was the lead vocalist and primary lyricist for the band
Matchbox Twenty. He was born on February 14, 1972 on a military base in Germany, but spent most of his young life in Florida and South Carolina. He was married in 1999 to model
Marisol Maldonado. Rob Thomas has become one of the more recognizable names in the mainstream music industry for both good and bad reasons.
In my experience, there are a large number of people who thoroughly despise this man. Sometimes based on musical grounds - they don't like his work, or they dislike his lyrical content. There isn't much you can do to sway someone when they don't like someone's musical creations, but I do have my own take on his
lyrics and the way in which he writes them.
It seems to me there are a large number of people in the world who are depressed, or at the very least,
emotionally unstable now and then. A lot of these people find it comforting to identify with someone else who feels the same way. There are also varying levels of intelligence in humans. Someone has to write music for the
people who don't understand themselves enough to figure out how they are feeling. While some people find his
simplistic breakdown of emotions and feeling to be a bit nauseating, I think that it is kind of impressive that Rob Thomas can present complex emotional concepts in a way that almost anyone can understand.
Aside from all of this, he has worked with many prominent artists, most notably (and recognizably)
Carlos Santana for the song
Smooth. While it can be argued that
Yourself or Someone Like You (the groups first major label release) has been a high point for the band, it doesn't seem as if his career has any intention of slowing down in the near future.