Day 14 (April 2): Fountains of Wayne - Stacy's Mom

Some blog posts are more fun to write than others. I'm just mentioning this for little reason at all.

Singer-songwriter, and founding member of the pop-punk band Adam Schlesinger died yesterday from complications of coronavirus. He was just 52. He's not the first, and will sadly be far from the last, major public figure to pass away during this pandemic. Hand on heart, though, his is the first that has hit me as a stark reminder of how unforgiving and brutal this virus is.

Though Schlesinger's main contribution to the music industry was Fountains of Wayne, he dabbled plenty in songwriting work for film and television too. Where I, and doubtless many others who were a little too young or not cool enough to get that wave of pop punk, was exposed to the majority of his work was the TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Across the show's four seasons, Schlesinger, co-creator/lead Rachel Bloom and others co-wrote over 150 songs. Not every single one of these was an all-timer, but the rate of funny, sincere and memorable songs was utterly amazing and difficult to really fathom on a network TV schedule. From the tributes that Bloom et al have provided, it seems that Schlesinger was singularly behind the conception of some of the very best songs the show provided, like the fantastic Billy Joel-spoofing ballad "What'll It Be".

I'll put the link to "What'll It Be" below, because it's brilliant, but it felt right to pick Schlesinger's most famous and beloved work of writing as the song of the day. "Stacy's Mom", from the 2003 album Welcome Interstate Managers is a beautifully weird and effortlessly catchy song that has dated into becoming better than it was. It's silly, but it's great silly.

I saw Schlesinger perform a surprise medley with one of Rachel Bloom's comedy songs live at her show at the London Palladium last year, and the absolutely ecstatic reaction from the crowd told you all you needed to know about the song's enduring popularity (it also told this uncultured dipshit to stream the song on Spotify after and pay the band some actual respect - sorry, Adam).

Actually, screw it, I'll put that at the bottom too. Adam Schlesinger was, by all accounts, a talented, funny and collaborative guy who made people happy to the end, and it is a travesty that this fucking virus has taken him away.