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Rob Thomas makes smooth return with hot tunes on TODAY plaza

Hard to imagine it's been 16 years since Rob Thomas hit it big with "Smooth," but he's back on the charts and visited TODAY Monday.
/ Source: TODAY

Brace yourselves: It's been 16 years since Rob Thomas broke through big with his song "Smooth," a collaboration with Carlos Santana that won two Grammys in 2000 and is ranked as the second-most-successful song of all time by Billboard.

But the kind of success that song got — it spent 12 weeks at No. 1 on the charts — had a downside in that many, including Thomas himself, got a little tired of it by the end. As he told TODAY during a visit to the plaza Monday, "I really got to the point where I just couldn't hear it again," he said.

Fortunately, things turned around: "One day I heard it, 11 years after it was out, and I was just like, 'Oh, yeah, I'm back into it again!'" he grinned.

He also spoke about his wife Marisol Maldonado's recent health scare; she was diagnosed in July with a lesion on her brain that led to him taking time off from his summer tour. But things are on the upswing, he said: "Now at least the fear is gone, and we just have to go through with the emotion of getting her better."

Rob Thomas on the TODAY Plaza
Rob Thomas with Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie.TODAY

Good luck to both of them!

Thomas' just-released album, "The Great Unknown," is now available in stores and online.

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