Fountains of Wayne commemorated the post-recession bubble with a deft third album about young office workers in the midst of quiet crises — often restless, usually unfocused and probably drunk. Kimberly Butler/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images. Hilarious, tragic. Nearly as good, on the same album: “Lucy Doesn’t Love You.”. With “The Daily Show” writer David Javerbaum, Schlesinger devised this cheeky pitch for Broadway (“It’s no longer only for dudes who like dudes/Attention every breeder, you’re invited to the theater”) with a cleverness that never flags. He received two Grammy Award nominations for “Stacy’s Fountains of Wayne, fronted by the songwriting and producing team of Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood, seemed to have silos full of hooks. Though Fountains of Wayne … The band’s first absolute power-pop masterpiece. Among the highlights of the LP — which also featured a cover of Nada Surf’s “Always Love” — was the impossibly lovely, Schlesinger-written “Work To Do.” Driven by cascading harmonies and jangly guitars, the cautiously hopeful song posits that despite the “long hours and late nights” needed to mend a relationship, that effort will pay off: “If we try, we just might/ Make it all right/ It might all work out somehow.”. Chris Collingwood met Adam Schlesinger in the mid-1980s, when they were both freshmen at Williams College. Why hasn’t this been turned into a movie? Remembering Adam Schlesinger And The Year The Music Died. “I have so much to say about Adam Schlesinger that I am at a complete loss for words,” she tweeted Wednesday night. But the loss feels even more acute when that musician was responsible for as many sun-kissed and life-affirming melodies as Adam Schlesinger. The singer does it only to court a girl, who, you can be sure, will not be moved by the gesture. Here's a sampling of his work in rock, film, TV and more. Here at Rolling Stone, we’re all hoping that he makes a full recovery; according to Schlesinger’s lawyer, “the doctors are doing everything they can think of and they’re cautiously optimistic.”In the meantime, here are 20 reasons we love him, drawn from the many songs Schlesinger wrote, sang, produced, or performed on. It’s not snide — you can’t emulate a band this closely unless you love them. Commercially speaking, “High School Never Ends” didn’t land with as much oomph as “1985,” which went double-platinum and peaked at #23 on the pop charts, but it was still memorable. In addition to his main band, Schlesinger, who died on Wednesday of the coronavirus, formed several side groups and wrote for the TV show “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” as well as the stage. Once again, our narrator is in love with someone who’s dating higher on the food chain — a biker with “crumbs in his beard from the seafood special.” And there’s, you guessed it, another winking Beatles rip at the end. Schlesinger produced and was a Wizard Of Oz-like background songwriting figure for Fever High, the synth-pop duo comprising Anna Nordeen and Reni Lane. A new twist on songs about high school: It’s written from an older vantage of disappointment (“We’ll grow old and lose our hair/It’s all downhill from there”) but builds to a brave, innocent defiance in the chorus (“Tonight we’ll reach for the stars/We’ll rent expensive cars”). Sung to a girl who’s with the wrong guy, by a guy who thinks he’s the right guy. About 300 writers submitted songs for consideration, and Schlesinger’s song won. People who don’t like FOW complain that all it made is cute meta-pop full of references to other bands, but — ehh, you know what, that’s not wrong. Also a co-founder of the indie pop bands Ivy and Tinted Windows, he has balanced band membership with work as a producer/engineer and as a songwriter for film (That Thing You Do!…. He played bass in Tinted Windows and wrote most of the songs, James Iha of Smashing Pumpkins played guitar, Taylor Hanson of Hanson sang and Cheap Trick’s Bun E. Carlos manned the drums. Adam Schlesinger, who co-wrote over 150 songs for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, among many other film and TV songwriting credits, died this week of coronavirus complications. He won three Emmys, a Grammy, and the ASCAP Pop Music Award.He was nominated for an Oscar, Tony Award and Golden Globe for best original song in 1997.. His best known work was writing and co-producing the title song to That Thing You Do!. Schlesinger was game for most anything, including a supergroup. It’s a gorgeous acoustic ballad, with a winking reference to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” after the third chorus, and it sketches out some ideas that came to perfection later in “Troubled Times.”. He wrote and produced three songs for Music and Lyrics, and his music has also been featured i… “He is irreplaceable.” Working again with Javerbaum, Schlesinger won a 2012 Emmy Award for writing the song “It’s Not Just for Gays Anymore,” performed by Neil Patrick Harris to open the Tony Awards telecast. Available with an Apple Music subscription. He was 52. Collingwood adds grainy excitement to his boyish voice as he sings, “We’re gonna sit back, relax, watch the stars/James and Jason, Kirk and Lars.” It’s not mockery, it’s not parody or irony, it’s a celebration of teenage thrills for kids from Bridgeport, Westport, Darien. The guitar intro and his upper-tenor voice mimic Fountains of Wayne; the narrator, who’s stymied by a song he’s trying, phones up a hotline that gives arrangement advice by recommending the tricks that repeat throughout Fountains of Wayne songs. American band Ivy has recorded material for six studio albums, one extended play (EP), and for various compilation albums and soundtracks.Formed in 1994, the musical trio consists of Dominique Durand, Andy Chase, and Adam Schlesinger.After releasing the EP Lately with Seed Records in 1994, the band recorded their debut album, Realistic, which was released in 1995. Adam Schlesinger was a gifted power-pop songwriter who never seemed to run out of hooks. The glammy, exuberant Schlesinger composition “Pretend To Be Nice” in particular stands out: Sung expertly by Hanley, the song features a female protagonist who’s completely exasperated — but still entranced — by a hot-and-cold boyfriend: “If you could just pretend to be nice/ Everything in my life would be alright.”. — Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) April 1, 2020 He was 52. No one ever called FOW the voice of a generation, but no group wrote more songs about the economic tribulations and uncertainty of Gen X. It was written and named for a record executive they’d worked with and his wife. The highlight of its third full album is a shimmering ballad, focused on Durand’s soft-focus voice, which dives into contemporary trip-hop. It was nominated for best original song at the Academy Awards and at the Golden Globes. Photograph: Jason Merritt/TERM/FilmMagic for Superfly Presents Y ou got a sense of the breadth of Adam Schlesinger ’s talent from the tributes. And “Where’s the Bathroom,” a musical theater patter song for Rebecca’s awful mom, played by Tovah Feldshuh, is history’s greatest catalog of passive-aggressive behavior (“I see your eczema is back”). Like Lennon and McCartney, they shared joint credit, even if only one of them wrote a song. Hanson’s vocals add earnest, skinny-tie sweetness to the song’s muscular ’70s AOR rock riffage. ‎Adam Schlesinger is an award-winning songwriter best known to many as bassist for the power pop group Fountains of Wayne. When Ric Ocasek of the Cars heard “Stacy’s Mom,” he thought the band had sampled his own “Just What I Needed.” What could he have made of this, the most blatant, loving, skillful Cars rip-off in the band’s repertoire? Top 40 needed a song about hot moms, and this was the band to do it. Adam Schlesinger’s 30 Essential Songs Hear tracks from Fountains of Wayne, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and more — plus a tune written about the power … Over the course of four seasons, Schlesinger wrote or co-wrote 157 songs for this groundbreaking music comedy, an astoundingly fecund pace, in a huge variety of styles. There are no jokes or clever quips in this power ballad, just a skyborne melody that, in the film Music and Lyrics, brings Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore together, and later, back together. Schlesinger was nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best original song. The movie’s soundtrack — which features songwriting contributions from Adam Duritz, Letters To Cleo’s Kay Hanley, Babyface, and the Go-Gos’ Jane Wiedlin — is also finally getting the respect it deserves. The first song on the first Fountains of Wayne album is lightly adorned power pop that became richer on subsequent albums, while keeping the downtrodden, slightly resentful tone. “’92 Subaru” is an ecstatic rocker that evokes the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove” and revisits the guy from “Red Dragon Tattoo,” who’s now fixing up his junker, on a budget, so he can win back a girl. The resulting duet, which in real life was penned by Schlesinger, is an optimistic song that yearns for new beginnings and romantic inspiration. It’s part John Cheever, part John Hughes. Leave it to Schlesinger to appreciate the somewhat-lost art of a well-crafted TV theme, as he wrote the title song for comedian Kathy Griffin’s Bravo late-night talk show, Kathy. The elegant pre-chorus is another indication of songwriting growth, and Collingwood brings the right amount of pathos and empathy to a lyric about a boy pining for a girl and imagining it will work out. 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