Adam Schlesinger, who died from coronavirus complications earlier this week, wrote a ton of memorable power-pop anthems with his band Fountains of Wayne and for other bands like The Click Five and the Jonas Brothers over his all-too-brief life. But while the thought made me tear up even more at the news of his passing, I decided 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 group of nobodies from Erie, Pennsylvania into America’s hottest boy band, 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 audiences watching the movie want to hear it four or five times over the course of the film’s 108-minute runtime? But Schlesinger did just that, creating a song that actually charted three decades after it fictionally was supposed to, and with good reason.
My favorite part of it, outside of the loud and “too fast” drum intro that makes all the plaid and poodle skirt-wearing teens hit the dance floor, is the way the chorus and bridge lean minor, a sort of homage to the lovelorn doo-wop that no doubt influenced Schlesinger’s lyrics. (“Well I try and try to forget you girl / But it’s just so hard to do.”) He knew that a memorable chorus doesn’t have to be major or minor all the way through, and whenever the vocalist laments, as in Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom” (“Stacy can’t you see? You’re just not the girl for me”), it’s perfectly fine for a pop banger to sound a little sad. —Bob Marshall
