This one bums me out so much, I love this guy’s music. As mentioned, he was a founder of Fountains of Wayne but more recently did a lot of music for TV shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. You may recognize his title song from the movie “That Thing You Do.” Guy was crazy talented. He has been on a ventilator for two weeks due to complications from the coronavirus and passed away today. Obviously all deaths from the virus are tragic, and I worry how many more are ahead of us, but I don’t have words for how sad Schlesinger’s death makes me.
Dammit. I had a bad feeling about this.
To me, this song is one of the most perfect distillations of Adam Schlesinger’s genius:
When it starts off, you think he’s taking the piss out of these prom kids. There’s a sort of ironic cynicism to it all…and then the strings come up and Schlesinger puts in the twist on the chorus. It’s not cynical at all. It’s a celebration of these kids, and their moment in time, a moment of the beautiful ephemeral quality of youth. There’s no irony at all, just an almost shocking amount of sincerity and heart.
“But tonight we feel like stars
We’ll play our air guitars
Cause we’re eighteen
It’s a perfect night
To sing our prom theme”
This song–and the lines about being drunk and at a party you don’t want to be at and missing someone desperately–always made me think Adam Schlesinger had somehow spied on my age 25-33 years.
Fuck, this one hurts. FoW was a huge part of my life during a massive transitional part of my adulthood. What hit me hardest though was this:
RIP sir, and thank you.
I know you shared the demo TC but I wanted to share the final version.
I’m so glad you did! That’s just another aspect of Schlesinger’s genius, that he arranged and produced those songs as well, and hearing the full arrangement was great.
Yeah, so much of the music of CXG hit me so hard, and he was a massive part of why. I hope more people discover the show because of this at the very least.
Friend of a friend made a playlist
So sad.
Had anyone heard if he’d had other health issues? 52 is damn young.
He did a lot of fun and entertaining stuff. Didn’t deserve to go so soon.
RIP.
This song means so much to me. I can’t hear it without getting sentimental and lost in memories of pretty much my whole adult life bouncing back and forth between the upper west side of NYC and New England (Cape Cod). Plus it works year 'round but especially during the holidays. Pure magic. I’m raising a big glass of whiskey to Adam’s music and his memory. Rest in peace.
Someone on Twitter made the point that Schlesinger uniquely (other than maybe Billy Joel) wrote songs about suburbanites in the tri-state area who usually don’t get songs written about them.
There are better scenes in cinematic history than this one. There are scenes with better actors, better directing, better cinematography.
But if one of the main difficulties that writers, actors and directors face is making emotions seem real and not acted out for a movie, this scene is pretty much at the top of the list. The bounding, exuberantly pure joy that just radiates in this scene makes it probably my favorite movie scene ever.
And if Adam Schlesinger’s song wasn’t absolutely perfect, none of it would work. The scene needs it playing in the background to provide the pulse.
And one other kinda crazy thing: Fountains of Wayne wasn’t even really Adam Schlesinger’s main band when his career was starting.
Schlesinger’s first band in the early 1990s was Ivy. He and Andy Chase had a shared love of French 1960s Europop and 1980s smooth pop like Prefab Sprout and quirkier stuff like The Go-Betweens. Schlesinger stayed in this band, Ivy, on and off throughout his life, even after Fountains of Wayne took off. And to be sure, Ivy was pretty big in their own right.
And they wisely got Dominique Durand to sing, and they made magic.
Love this song. As a bonus to everything else, you get Eric Matthews playing trumpet, which, hellsyes.
Yeah, I loved Ivy. I always enjoyed FoW power pop tunes, but Ivy was Schlesinger’s real achievement, for my money.
Wow I’ve never heard of Ivy - that song is lovely.
Adam Schlesinger was everywhere.