Adam Schlesinger, who
died from coronavirus complications earlier this week, wrote a ton of memorable power-pop anthems with his musical group
Fountains of Wayne and for other bands like
The Click Five and the
Jonas Brothers over his all-too-brief life. However while the thought made me tear up even more at the news of his passing, I determined to re-watch the 1996 Tom Hanks film
That Thing You Do! on Wednesday night in Schlesinger’s memory.
Among Adam’s musical contributions to the movie is the title track that turns a fictional sort of nobodies from Erie, Pennsylvania into America’s hottest boy musical group, and what a challenge it must have been to write! How do you craft a song that sounds like it was realistically written in the mid-'60s while also making modern crowds watching the movie wish to hear it four or five times over the course of the film’s 108-minute runtime? Yet Schlesinger did just that, building a song that actually charted three decades right after it fictionally was supposed to, and with good reason.
my main go to segment of it, outdoor of the loud and “too fast” drum intro that makes all of the plaid and poodle skirt-wearing teens hit the dance floor, is the way the chorus and bridge lean minor, a categorize kind of homage to the lovelorn doo-wop that no doubt influenced Schlesinger’s lyrics. (“Well I and attempt to forget you girl / Although it’s just so hard to do.”) He knew that a memorable chorus doesn’t have to be major or minor all of the way through, and once the vocalist laments, as in Fountains of Wayne’s “
Stacy’s Mom” (“Stacy can’t you visualize? You’re just not the girl for me”), it’s properly fine for a pop banger to sound a little bit sad. —
Bob Marshall