Song of the Day 4/2: Adam Schlesinger and Mike Viola, “That Thing You Do”

To properly honor Adam Schlesinger, the most prolific pop tunesmith of his generation, would take a month or two of Songs of the Day. He wrote dozens for his best-known project, Fountains of Wayne, which he co-founded with college friend Chris Collingwood, but that was just one facet of his brilliance. He had another band, Ivy, fronted by a French chanteuse, and belonged to a one-off supergroup, Tinted Windows, that included guitarist James Iha of Smashing Pumpkins, drummer Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick, and one of the Hanson brothers. He co-wrote scores more songs for the TV show “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” the “Josie and the Pussycats” movie, and was most recently working on Broadway projects for Sarah Silverman and Fran Drescher. If you ever want to feel inadequate, check out his Wikipedia entry.

One of the first songs that got Schlesinger nationwide attention was the title song of the 1995 Tom Hanks movie “That Thing You Do!” about a one-hit wonder band set in 1964. Schlesinger’s task was a tall one: Write a song that would no only sound like a hit from that period, but one that would stand up to repeated listening by the movie audience. he made it sound effortless. This is him playing it live in 2010, with guitar and vocals by Mike Viola, who provided the voice for the lead singer of the movie band The Wonders.

His biggest hit was, of course, “Stacy’s Mom,” which reached only No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2003 but immediately entered the power-pop pantheon. It was promoted with this iconic video which, like the song itself, was an homage to Ric Ocasek and The Cars (check out the Ocasek lookalike kid and the car’s license plate).

Schlesinger and Collingwood, like Lennon and McCartney, always shared writing credits but composed separately. When someone asked Collingwood how to tell which songs where whose, he said, “Usually, a rule of thumb is if one of our songs has a New Jersey reference, or is about high school, that’s one of Adam’s.” This one, from “Welcome Interstate Managers,” is both.