Song of the Day 1/8: Fountains of Wayne, “Hey Julie”

For a while there, when the pandemic forced most people to work from home and most of the work got done anyway, Americans looked forward to a future free of commuting to offices. Problem was, without workers in an office, middle managers had nothing to do, and it showed. So over the past year those work-from-home privileges have been disappearing, and nothing drives that home like the first full week of work after the new year.

Several songs on Fountains of Wayne’s 2003 album “Welcome Interstate Managers” captured the zeitgeist of the suburban middle class, like this one about an office worker who survives the grind by thinking about his girlfriend. The band’s sole hit, “Stacy’s Mom,” was on that LP, but the follow-up singles failed to chart, even though “Hey Julie” was used in an episode of “Scrubs.”

The song remained in the band’s set list until their demise in 2013. Here’s a live version from 2009.

After Fountains of Wayne broke up in 2013, Adam Schlesinger went on to acclaim writing music for movies and TV before his death from COVID in the early days of the pandemic. Collingwood released a solo album in 2016 under the group name Look Park but hasn’t released anything since.