Song of the Day 6/15: Lisa Loeb, “Stay (I MIssed You)”

Using popular hits in TV ads is nothing new, but I’m frequently surprised at the songs that turn up in commercials. This tune, for example, an inescapable hit in 1994, and singer/songwriter Lisa Loeb are now peddling car insurance for Geico. The connection to car insurance is tenuous — Loeb sings the song’s first line as “So…you got a crack in your windshield” — but it fits with the company’s trend of mining the ’90s for nostalgia value.

Back in 1994, “Stay” was included on the soundtrack for the Ben Stiller movie “Reality Bites,” a lucky break that happened for Loeb because her friend and neighbor Ethan Hawke was cast in the film as a singer in a band. He suggested she write a song for his “band,” and while the one she wrote wasn’t chosen, producers did like the one Hawke sent along. The song was chosen as the lead single from the soundtrack LP — that was a thing in the ’90s, when most youth-targeted movies released soundtrack CDs to maximize cash flow — and climbed all the way to No. 1, the first time an act without a recording contract accomplished that feat.

Loeb gives much of the credit to Hawke, who directed the video for the song. “He wanted something that was like me telling a story, singing straight to the camera like I was having a conversation or an argument with someone and that’s what he captured in that one-take video. And that was such a different type of video at the time that it stood out on MTV and VH1.”