Fountains of Wayne — “Stacy’s Mom”

A song played at every wedding, at every dance, and in every store, “Stacy’s Mom” has cast a great shadow over the rest of the discography of Fountains of Wayne. Today, Rob is here to shine some light on their prolific careers, commemorating the life of legends including the lead bassist and lyricist for the band, Adam Schlesinger. Fountains of Wayne are clearly a 2000s-sounding band, but their lyrics are reminiscent of bands from Rob’s youth like The Cars, giving them a timeless sound. Later, he is joined by music journalist Annie Zaleski, who shares her favorite songs from their catalog, how “Stacy’s Mom” became a novelty song, and the many different projects of Adam Schlesinger after Fountains of Wayne like ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ and the band Ivy. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Annie Zaleski Producers: Julianna Ress, Chris Sutton, Justin Sayles, and Olivia Crerie CONNECT Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/60songsthatexplainthe90s TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@60songsthatexplainthe90s (00:00) Intro: Starting from the End: Rob’s favorite song from Fountains of Wayne (19:50) This week’s song: “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne (21:24) New Jersey’s prevalence in rock, and the influences of Fountains of Wayne (36:58) The best of Adam Schlesinger’s lyricism (51:08) Fountains of Wayne’s humor (60:58) Interview with Annie Zaleski (77:07) Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style. Upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor, including the show-stopping towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want, all waiting for you at The Home Depot.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Lately, I've had this urge to try to do one of these backwards. So like, we'd start an episode where we usually end and then tell the whole story chronologically in reverse and end where we usually begin, right? Does that make sense? Let's try it. Okay, so where do we usually end? Yeah, we often end with some sort of attempted poignant melodramatic callback to some ostensibly profound thing we talked about way back near the beginning. And then whoever we're talking about, we play my absolute favorite song by them. And that song, my absolute favorite song, suspiciously, that song gets more attention than whatever song the episode's supposed to be about. So let's at least do that.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  Here we have "All Kinds of Time", my absolute favorite song by the phenomenal New York City power pop band Fountains of Wayne, from their third album, released in 2003 and called "Welcome Interstate Managers." It is the startlingly tender delivery of "young quarterback" here. First of all, the triumphant All-American melancholia of this phrase. "The young quarterback..." And the way that the opening lines, "the clock's running down", "the team's losing ground to the opposing defense", these lines certainly aren't wrong, but they're appealingly ever so slightly clunky. There's like a 5% clunkiness to the phrase,

• 3:58Speaker 04

  "the team's losing ground to the opposing defense", "all kinds of time", football announcers like to say, "he's got all kinds of time" when a quarterback goes back to pass and his blockers give him a couple extra seconds to find an open receiver. Just in case you don't watch American football or you're a Cleveland Browns fan and you're trying to forget you ever watched football in the first place. "All Kinds of Time" is a song that knows its sports. It is a song that knows ball, but it doesn't know too much ball. It knows an expertly, precisely calibrated amount of ball. It is a song that knows its charming and oddly poignantly melodramatic sports announcer cliches.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  And crucially, in this song, it is not an announcer, it's not an outside party observing that the young quarterback's got all kinds of time. It is the young quarterback himself waiting for the snap who has this serene realization. We got Chris Collingwood on rhythm guitar and lead vocals. Chris co-founded Fountains of Wayne in New York in 1995 with his college buddy Adam Schlesinger, who primarily plays bass, but he does a lot of other stuff, too. Jody Porter plays lead guitar. Brian Young plays drums. And meanwhile, Chris and Adam write the songs. All Fountains of Wayne songs are credited to Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger,

• 5:45Speaker 04

  John Lennon and Paul McCartney style. But even though Chris sings all of them, as with Lennon and McCartney, there are palpable differences between Chris's songs and Adam's songs. The vivid linear storytelling here and the vivid, wry but sentimental character work, that's how you can tell "All Kinds of Time" is an Adam song.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  So if, say, Randy Newman had written this song, and if Randy Newman were now singing this song. Randy Newman is the best, but even at his most sentimental, there is a delirious, glorious viciousness to Randy Newman, a delicious acid bite. Even when Randy sings "You got a friend in me", I'm like, this dude might push me off a cliff. And that's why he's the best. So you get Randy singing this song, and he will somehow subconsciously convey to you that the young quarterback is fully delusional and totally doomed. Whereas Fountains of Wayne take the phrase "all kinds of time" super seriously.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  But the band also takes the young quarterback's absolute certainty that he's got all kinds of time seriously. The band believes the quarterback, and so you believe the song. Talking to the great songwriter-interview podcast soda jerker in 2014, Adam Schlesinger, talking about the genesis of "All Kinds of Time", Adam says, quote, "It just struck me as a very odd phrase, and I just had this idea of what would happen if you took it really literally." Because really, when they say that in a football game, what they're talking about is that the quarterback has seven seconds instead of two seconds before he got completely destroyed by the other team. So when they say "all kinds of time",

• 7:58Speaker 04

  you're really talking about almost no time, a couple of extra seconds, end quote. We, the listeners, know that the young quarterback's time is fleeting in every sense. On a long enough timeline, we will all be completely destroyed. But we are overpowered by the young quarterback's abrupt sense of zen invincibility. Here's the part that completely destroys me.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  So my favorite part here is "all of it", right? Again, crucially, he looks to the left, he looks to the right. It's not from a TV announcer's perspective or a TV viewer's perspective. It's from the quarterback's perspective. You're in his head. You are first-person POV. And there in a golden ray of light, you drop the phrase "golden ray of light" into any other song, and it's a cheeseball cliche, right? It's new age bullshit. But the singer believes the quarterback, which means you believe the song, which means the golden ray of light is real. It is visible. It is warming you with its celestial glow.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  Once again, Chris Collingwood's exquisite falsetto here. "Is his open man just like he planned?" And then, and then, and then, and then. "All Kinds of Time" is four minutes and 21 seconds long, but it feels much longer. But it also takes place in super slow motion. The whole song takes place in that mythical few extra seconds of pass protection. The young quarterback now sees the world in super slow-mo. And so now, so do we. And the young quarterback throws the ball on the line. "The whole world is his tonight." And there are days when these are my absolute favorite five consecutive seconds of recorded sound.

• 10:16Speaker 04

  The five seconds immediately after, "the whole world is his tonight", the collective held breath here, the football spiraling gracefully through the air, the song itself suspended in midair, weightless, limitless, immortal. And then, and then, and then, and then.

• 10:58Speaker 04

  And then a huge majestic crush of electric guitars. And we have all heard many hundreds of thousands of pop songs that play out like this. Songs that start real quiet, but then get real loud to convey joy, anger, lust, insouciance, catharsis, transcendence. But when the huge majestic crush of electric guitars hits on all kinds of time, you can see so clearly, as though you were watching it on TV, as though you yourself were the young quarterback, you can see the open man in a golden ray of light catch the ball. If I had an ounce of suspicion or cynicism left in my body, I would wonder about the

• 11:42Speaker 04

  line, "The whole world is here tonight." The timestamp there, the time limit implied there by the word "tonight." But no, forget it. Shhh. Don't tell the young quarterback, he only got a couple extra seconds. Let him have this. Let me have this. The highest compliment you can receive as a songwriter, I think, is when you're inspired by a thing, and so you write a song meant to recreate the thing, and it turns out you recreate the thing so brilliantly that your new thing is then appropriated by the original thing that inspired you. Does that make sense?

• 12:23Speaker 04

  If not, then just know that "All Kinds of Time" was eventually licensed by the NFL Network for an ad featuring vintage footage of famous immortal quarterbacks.

• 12:47Speaker 04

  As a Cleveland Browns fan, it would ordinarily really upset me that the chorus there starts with footage of Denver Broncos superstar quarterback and huge jerk John Elway. But I am trying to forget the Browns exist, so it doesn't bother me at all anymore. Adam Schlesinger, writing about his songwriting process for the New York Times in 2013, Adam says, quote, "I could not have been happier," end quote, that the NFL licensed his song, inspired in part by the NFL. You know you've made it when you're inspired by a thing and then your tribute to the thing is so effective that it becomes the thing itself. So that's my absolute favorite Fountains of Wayne song. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.

• 13:33Speaker 04

  Shit, we're doing this one backwards. I forgot. I thought of "All Kinds of Time" instantly on April 1st, 2020, when I got the news that Adam Schlesinger had died of complications from COVID-19. He was 52.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  Shit, this is one reason we don't usually do these episodes in reverse. April 1st, 2020, just a few weeks into widespread US COVID lockdowns. We certainly knew things were terrible, but many of us didn't know how terrible and how long things would be terrible. I certainly didn't know. What I knew as a big part of my job at The Ringer back then was writing obituaries, right? A famous beloved person dies, Aretha Franklin, Tom Petty, Rick Ocasek, Chris Cornell, Dolores O'Reardon, Chuck Berry, George Michael, and I gotta try to sum up that person in the next two to three hours. And always I'd try to just think of the first song that pops into my head when I think of that person.

• 14:32Speaker 04

  And so I hear that Adam died and boom, I think "All Kinds of Time." April 1st, 2020, Bill Withers had died two days before, on March 30th. Kenny Rogers had died on March 20th. Then, April 7th, we lost John Prine.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  And of course, with John Prine, there's like 12 songs you might justifiably think of instantly when you hear his name. But given the tragic circumstances, I couldn't not immediately think of "Hello in There", off John Prine's 1971 self-titled debut album, his first album. John Prine started here and very arguably got even better. I'd somehow never noticed the ferocity in the way John sings the word "day" in the line, "And old rivers grow wilder every day," like he's trying to remind you how much fight he's got left in him. Like he's trying to make the day stretch out as long as humanly possible.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  "Hello in There" is a song John Prine released in 1971, the year John himself turned 25, about how you should be nicer to old people because they're lonely and just want someone to talk to. This is not subtext. It's not that John Prine, an all-time great American songwriter, an all-time great American, a songwriter's songwriter, an American's American. It's not that John Prine can't do subtext, it's that he's so good at text that he often doesn't need a subtext.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  And the tremendous aching sympathy you feel here as the listener for this person, for the narrator who's got all kinds of time and no one to spend it with, the depth and the total physical isolation implied by the phrase "hello in there," as though old age were like being stuck at the bottom of a well. That's the all-time great vivid wry but sentimental character work, to which even most great songwriters can only aspire. But Adam Schlesinger can do it. He could do it. He can do it. Obituaries by necessity are past tense, but we don't like the past tense here. We do not acknowledge the past tense.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  To lighten the mood, while I'm in obituary mode, I tend to seek out someone's funniest, goofiest, most lighthearted work. And in the case of trying to eulogize, trying to present tense celebrate Adam Schlesinger, it sure helps that Adam wrote or co-wrote 157 songs for the fabulous CW comedy series Crazy Ex Girlfriend, including a song called "Gettin' By," where "by" is spelled B-I. Even that much explanation is unnecessary for an Adam Schlesinger song, which often cheerfully and expertly explains itself as it goes.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  The exquisite pitch-perfect audiovisual echo of Huey Lewis and the News here, the relentless upbeat horn-driven technicolor splendor, the white suits and the keytar and the effortless sonorous grace of the four-syllable words "demystify" and "definitely." And singer slash actor Pete Gardner's magnificent sensitive bro mustache. "Gettin' By" is another example of Adam paying tribute to the thing so perfectly that it becomes the thing. Crazy Ex Girlfriend ran four seasons from 2015 to 2019. When Adam Schlesinger passed, series creator and star Rachel Bloom eulogized him on Instagram,

• 19:05Speaker 04

  first saying, quote, "I have so much to say about Adam Schlesinger that I am at a complete loss for words. He is irreplaceable," end quote. But then Rachel adds, quote, "One example of how Adam might have affected your life. Over the past few years, many people have told me that they have used "Gettin' By" to come out. Well, that song was all Adam," end quote. Writing a song that's super funny but not a joke, not a joke on the singer, not a joke on the listener, a song that's super funny in a way that only magnifies the tenderness and sincerity, that is all-time great American songwriter material.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  I am likewise fond of a Crazy Ex Girlfriend song called "What'll It Be (Hey, West Covina)" Sad piano player in a bar. A very explicit tribute to, but not a joke at the expense of, "Pianoman" by Billy Joel. That's another explanation you do not require.

• 20:11Speaker 05

  Back of my hand, but I'm not such a fan of the back of my hand. Cause if you look real close at those little hairs and veins, you're like, hands are sort of gross. It's hard to explain. The point is.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  And then he sings the chorus, which explains the point. That singer and crazy ex-girlfriend star Santino Fountains, the bar towel draped over Santino's shoulders, very important, as is the empty bar he's sitting in, as is the triumphantly dejected sauce Santino puts on the word "explain." Santino was the voice of Prince Hans in Frozen. I didn't know that. Loves an open door. Love that guy. Prince Hans is the bad guy. Hate that guy, but love that guy. Adam Schlesinger cranked out 155 more crazy ex-girlfriend songs, just like that.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  Different vibes, different startlingly vivid emotions, different very explicit reference points, ala Huey Lewis and Billy Joel, that you get immediately. And you get immediately that these are not dismissive parodies, but heartfelt, fully embodied tributes. And maybe hypothetically, on April Fool's Day, 2020, when the world's gone to shit, and now Adam Schlesinger's gone, and everything's even worse now, but you've still gotta try to eulogize Adam Schlesinger, maybe you fixate on the ecstatic, meticulous excellence of all his crazy ex-girlfriend songs. Maybe hypothetically, you're stalling, because you're pretty sure you know the first song

• 21:54Speaker 04

  much of the world associates with Adam Schlesinger. And you love that song, too. The one Adam song, pretty much everyone knows, but as great as that song is, you don't know if it fully does Adam justice. And you don't necessarily know how Adam feels about it. And you can't ask Adam how he feels about it now, even if he's still present tense in your head and always will be. It's hard to explain. The point is.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 55th episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cole and the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne, also from their 2003 album, Welcome Interstate Managers. Stacy with no E. That simple rhapsodic little chord change, that half-step skyward on the line, "You're just not the girl for me." That's the good shit right there. That's the all-time great American songwriter shit. Doing this episode in reverse, the ad break didn't come as fast as I originally thought, but it did come slightly faster.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head. You know what I love about football season? It's the football, but also the football watching food. And nothing hits like a Boar's Head sandwich when I'm watching a game. Really, any game day sandwich better with Boar's Head. Philly cheesesteak, layer up buttery slider rolls with Boar's Head London broil roast beef, American white cheese, and picante provolone. Delicious. Then add roasted onions, peppers, and Boar's Head pub-style horseradish sauce. I love horseradish. And you've got the ultimate game day cheesesteak. They've also got a whole lineup of premium meats, cheeses, hummus, and dips, condiments, and more to serve up on game day. Head to your local Boar's Head deli counter to shop now for game day sandwich inspiration and more, visit boar'shead.com. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905.

• 24:07Speaker 05

  FanDuel is now available everywhere in the US.

• 24:15Speaker 05

  So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are, including these places.

• 24:25Speaker 05

  Make this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Age and location restrictions apply. Product availability varies by market. See FanDuel.com for eligibility. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat, or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what, you're gonna want WeatherTech in your vehicle. Whether you call it fall, autumn, or spooky season, whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the weather's fault, you're gonna want WeatherTech for American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weatherTech.com today.

• 25:01Speaker 04

  Okay. Okay. These days, I don't write as many eulogies, which is a huge relief to me, if you want the truth, but I do feel bad that I did not immediately attempt to do this man justice. But then again, who could do this man justice?

• 25:36Speaker 04

  On October 1st, 2026, we learned of the death of Conrad Lant, better known as Kronos, bassist and lead singer for the majestically pulverizing English heavy metal band Venom. He was 63. He is 63. Kronos was and is and will remain immortal. Kronos was and is and will remain immortal, because Venom put out like 16 rad, full-length albums over the course of 45 years, including their 1982 album called Black Metal, an album so good, they named a whole genre after it. But the single greatest Kronos performance occurred during a Venom show in 1986 at the

• 26:21Speaker 04

  City Gardens Nightclub in Trenton, New Jersey, where Kronos unleashed the funniest barrage of stage banter in rock and roll history.

• 26:33Speaker 06

  What should we do for you now?

• 26:39Speaker 06

  You wanna hear something really heavy?

• 26:43Speaker 06

  You're gonna hear something that's gonna kick your balls off.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  It turns out that the good people of Trenton, New Jersey totally want to hear something that'll kick their balls off. So Black Flag, the also legendary and pulverizing punk rock band, Black Flag, opened this particular Venom show, and a Black Flag roadie recorded Venom's set and cut it down to just Kronos's stage banter. But this roadie also made the sincerely brilliant comedic decision to leave in just the last 10 seconds or so of every Venom song, like so.

• 27:21Speaker 06

  This is a track. It's called "The Chanting of the Priests."

• 27:40Speaker 04

  And I cannot convey to you how fantastic and hilarious and genuinely soothing this rhythm is. The way Kronos goes, "We got a new one for you now. See if you've heard this one. It's a track called Nightmare."

• 27:59Speaker 04

  All right. And then he introduces the next song. It's unbelievable. This is a famous rock and roll document. It has been sampled by the Beastie Boys. It has been issued on vinyl on a seven-inch single by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. If you know that ultra-loud drone metal band, Sun, in print, it looks like Sun with two N's, capital O, then a bunch of parentheses, the ultra-loud drone metal band, Sun, often played the Venom banter tape over the PA before their own shows. It's a fantastic choice. This is a track called Poison.

• 28:39Speaker 04

  All right. Indeed, indeed. Incredible. Ah, I believe Venom are about to play the song called Black Metal. Let's listen in.

• 28:50Speaker 06

  Hell, yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 06

  Oh, Black Metal.

• 29:01Speaker 06

  Okay. You're fucking pretty loud, New Jersey.

• 29:05Speaker 04

  I knew that I had mentioned this Venom stage banter tape before on this show, but I forgot where exactly, so I looked it up. And this came up in the Tupac episode?

• 29:18Speaker 04

  What? I'm sure at the time, I had a perfectly good reason to associate Venom with Tupac, and I'll go find out what that reason was later. Now, comedy is entirely subjective. Comedy cannot be quantified or broken down analytically or reduced to a math equation. And yet I say to you now with absolute confidence that this Venom tape is eight to 10 times funnier because they're in New Jersey. The way Kronos says "New Jersey." Find someone who says your name the way Kronos says "New Jersey." It is eight to 10 times funnier that you, the delighted listener, you get to listen

• 30:02Speaker 04

  to Kronos go, "Okay, you're pretty fucking loud, New Jersey." You get to hear this through the prism of your personal cultural conception of New Jersey, the Springsteen of it all, or the Sopranos of it all, or the Jersey Shore of it all, or whatever. The tomato sauce-rich text of New Jersey as a physical place and a metaphysical vibe, the divine comedy and tragedy of New Jersey, the nobility and ignobility of New Jersey, is an essential ingredient in the Venom tape. You could have been anywhere in the world tonight, but you are here with Kronos at City Gardens in Trenton, New Jersey.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  Closing with "Bloodlust" is crazy work. From Venom, it's fantastic. "Fountains of Wayne" are named after a lawn ornament store in Wayne, New Jersey, that sells fountains and statues and bird baths and whatnot. That store appears in the Sopranos episode as well. Adam Schlesinger was born in New York City and raised in Montclair, New Jersey. "Fountains of Wayne" are a New York City band, but to my mind, they are spiritually also a New Jersey band. A tri-state area band, a bridge and tunnel band, a grizzled commuter band, a big-city swagger mixed with suburban ennui band. Talking to the great Ann Powers in The New York Times in 1999, Adam Schlesinger says,

• 31:43Speaker 04

  quote, "When we were teenagers, we liked listening to Kinks records because we'd never been to England and we got a sense of what it was like to live there." End quote. I have never in my life been to Waterloo Station in London, apparently, but thanks to the immortal 1967 Kinks song, Waterloo Sunset, I nonetheless have a lifelong, vivid, ultra-romantic memory of that place. I can hear it and see it and smell it now.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  And so "Fountains of Wayne" provide that service, the vivid memories of places you've possibly never been service, for New Jersey and Manhattan and Queens and Long Island, and also parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts. This explains, to me, anyway, it explains, why this "Fountains of Wayne" song is spiritually, canonically New Jersey, despite not mentioning New Jersey at all.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  I almost forgot I was doing this episode in reverse. It turns out I can also get distracted backward. Okay, "Fountains of Wayne" put out five albums total, ending with the relatively muted "Sky Full of Holes" in 2011. Their fourth album from 2007 is called "Traffic and Weather," just to keep the grizzled commuter, bridge and tunnel theme going. But from any objective, mathematical, analytical perspective, the single biggest "Fountains of Wayne" song is "Stacy's Mom," from 2003's Welcome Interstate Managers, their third album. Right off the rip, let's say the obvious but necessary thing.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  "Stacy's Mom" is a full-throated, whole-assed, sincerely-loving tribute to The Cars, the great Boston blockbuster, gawky-looking but incomprehensibly cool new wave band, The Cars. This is abundantly clear, even if you're not watching the "Stacy's Mom" video, where the pre-teen boys are dressed up in jaunty mega-eighties suits like members of The Cars. And also, "Stacy's Mom's license plate is 'I Heart Rick.'" This, of course, referring to Cars' frontman, Rick Ocasek, who is immortal even though I wrote his obituary in 2019. I do not wish to discuss any other elements of the "Stacy's Mom" video, which is quite

• 34:39Speaker 04

  frankly pornier than I remembered. Wow, forget about it. I don't need to play you The Cars to illustrate the connection between The Cars and "Stacy's Mom, but I love The Cars and I will seize upon any opportunity to play you The Cars. And so, this is a track. It's called "The Chanting of the Priests."

• 35:11Speaker 04

  I'm sorry, that's incorrect. This song is called "Just What I Needed," off the first Cars album, self-titled from 1978, one of the best albums ever made. So "Stacy's Mom" announces itself immediately as a Cars tribute, a pastiche, but not a parody, not a joke. It is a wry but sentimental homage. It is a full-blown, expertly rendered embodiment of the palm-muted rhythm guitar excellence and gangly but swaggering vampire charisma that exemplifies The Cars' whole deal.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  Also, as a bonus, the "Stacy's Mom" video concludes with a straightforward tribute to the famed "pool" scene from the 1982 Cameron Crowe-written sex comedy "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." If you know, you know, and if you don't know, don't try to find out at work. And to repeat, don't watch the "Stacy's Mom" video at work either. It's not "Stacy's Mom" who will get you in trouble, it's Stacy, who unfortunately for her is a teenage girl in a music video in 2003. It's all I'm gonna say. Don't get involved.

• 36:42Speaker 04

  And "Stacy's Mom," like any other, like every other "Fountains of Wayne" song, is an expertly, fully-realized universe unto itself. It is a vivid and sympathetic character sketch. It evokes a vividly crafted and fully-populated landscape of horny suburban teenagers in this instance. This song is witty without being distractingly clever, and it is cutting without being distractingly mean. The vocal hiccup there, from our horny teen narrator on "P-P-P-Pool," is a splendid detail. The nervousness of the kid echoing the percussiveness of the guitars. The bouncy synthesizer riff as well here.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  The keyboard grounds us in the cheeseball MTV 80s without mirroring us in the cheeseball MTV 80s, if that makes sense. A light touch is crucial. The song floats. The mark of superior craftsmanship songwriting-wise is when a song feels no need to draw undue attention to its superior craftsmanship. The backing vocals here, "Business trip, give me the slip," these are exquisite subtle details in a song composed of so many exquisite subtle details that the finished product as a whole is deliciously and famously unsubtle.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  And "Stacy's Mom" is by far the biggest hit "Fountains of Wayne" ever had. It peaked at number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is the band's only appearance on the Hot 100 at all. "Stacy's Mom" is the reason "Fountains of Wayne" are nominated for two Grammys in 2004, including Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, that's a catchy category name, and Best New Artist, that's hilarious. Yes, "Fountains of Wayne" got a Best New Artist nomination on their third album. The Grammys don't give a shit. You do not exist to the Grammys until the Grammys notice you.

• 39:02Speaker 04

  In this respect, the Grammys are not unlike a baby. The Grammys have no sense of object permanence. "Stacy's Mom" is also the only "Fountains of Wayne" song I've ever heard at a wedding, specifically the time my buddy Mike got married to a lovely woman named Stacy, and "Stacy's Mom," the person, danced to "Stacy's Mom," the song. Great memory, great pre-chorus while we're at it.

• 39:39Speaker 04

  The simplicity here, two chords.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  The unflashy but unfailingly reliable power underscoring all this power pop. "Stacy's Mom" is precision-engineered and unnervingly aerodynamic. There are no seams, no corners, no visible nuts or bolts. Now, if you know exactly one "Fountains of Wayne" song, it is "Stacy's Mom." And the reliably tremendously high quality of "Stacy's Mom" aside, this is one of these deals where devout "Fountains of Wayne" fans feel weird and perhaps even a little aggrieved about this being the only "Fountains of Wayne" song lots of people know. It's nothing whatsoever against "Stacy's Mom" as a song, in my experience.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  Although, you know who doesn't like "Stacy's Mom" very much? The guy who sings it, Chris Collingwood. "Fountains of Wayne" singer and songwriter Chris Collingwood, talking to Rolling Stone in April 2020, shortly after Adam's death. Chris says, quote, "I tried to talk him out of 'Stacy's Mom.' I could see exactly what was going to happen, and when it started happening in slow motion, it just felt inevitable. He was too good a writer to have that be his calling card, and the success of a novelty song means that's just what you are to the public from that moment on, forever.

• 41:08Speaker 04

  It's sad to me that people reading his obituary will all know that song, and only a very tiny percentage of them will ever hear "I95" or "The Girl I Can't Forget." End quote. Novelty song is quite a harsh description of "Stacy's Mom," but I do agree with Chris about a lot of that, including his contention that "I95" is yet another phenomenal "Fountains of Wayne" song that deserves way more attention.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  That's I-95 from the 2007 Fountains of Wayne album Traffic and Weather. And yet, that chorus is so heartbreaking and concise and thorough in conveying the somber but resilient long-distance romance premise of this song that no further explanation is necessary, or even welcome. Novelty song. Do we regard Stacy's Mom as a novelty song? What makes Stacy's Mom arguably a novelty song? The explicit Cars tribute? The gee whiz ultra-hookiness of the chorus? The strategically dorky phrase Stacy's Mom has got it going on? Is it simply slightly too funny or too cute?

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Talking to Rolling Stone, Chris Collingwood says, quote, "I was reluctant to record Stacy's Mom at all, but in the moment, you don't want to kill the session by not being a good sport. There were other things we did, kind of joking around, that we would put out as a B-side or whatever. When it was done, I didn't think it belonged on the album. Even on a record that was stylistically all over the place, that song didn't fit in. It sounded like a different band. I knew it would be a single, and I knew it would be a hit, and everyone else knew it too, but I was the only one who didn't think a novelty hit was a

• 43:27Speaker 04

  good thing." End quote. As a further complication here, Chris is actually responsible for my single favorite element of Stacy's Mom, my favorite exquisite subtle detail of them all. It's his background vocals on the last chorus here, specifically the way he sings the words "waited and waited."

• 44:01Speaker 04

  Every time I listen to Stacy's Mom, I'm really just waiting until the part where Chris sings "waited and waited" with genuinely such conviction, with such a sublime adolescent despondence. It makes the whole song, which is markedly different from "it redeems the whole song." I'm hung up on Chris regarding Stacy's Mom as a novelty song, and a song that sounds like a different band, and a song that didn't belong on the album. I'm trying to decide what that says about Welcome Interstate Managers as a whole, which would still be my favorite Fountains of Wayne album, even if Chris had gotten his way and Stacy's Mom wasn't on it.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  Stacy's Mom is track three on Welcome Interstate Managers. Track four is called Hackensack, which of course is one of the more rhyme-friendly cities in New Jersey. Hackensack is primarily an Adam song, and the very explicit premise here, sad boy stuck in New Jersey who pines for dream girl who has fled New Jersey, is another core Fountains of Wayne conceit. This band is about travel in both the stultifying commuter sense and the lonesome highway sense. The romantic nine-hour I-95 drives we take and the unrequited love road trips we don't take. An extra wrinkle in this song Hackensack is that the dream girl in question is now

• 45:41Speaker 04

  super famous.

• 46:00Speaker 04

  And the line "I saw you talking to Christopher Walken" might throw some people. The jaunty internal rhyme and the flip contraction of "talkin', the pop culture reference of Christopher Walken. Maybe that takes you out of the song. Maybe that's too cute or too funny. Maybe that pushes Hackensack into novelty song territory. But the downcast mood of this song, the palpable loneliness and hometown suffocation, I think any Fountains of Wayne song you can think of is too fully realized and committed and sincere to register as mere novelty, as a mere joke. And the rock band format helps here as well, yes? Fountains

• 46:44Speaker 04

  of Wayne are a rock and roll quartet. They can pass for indie rock or alternative rock or whatever your preferred nomenclature. And so any Fountains of Wayne song will sound like a rock song as much as it sounds like anything else. Should we try and experiment? Should we get an unambiguous, super-duper pop star to sing the chorus to Hackensack to see if it hits any different? Let's try it.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  Katy Perry. Katy Perry. This is Katy Perry doing Hackensack for MTV Unplugged in 2009. And I dig, sincerely, I dig, the way Katy sings the word Hackensack, as though it's the name of an exotic Greek island or a distant solar system astronomers have just now discovered. The very name Hackensack sounds so bizarre coming out of her mouth that it conveys quite successfully the bizarre noble slash ignoble sociocultural aura surrounding New Jersey. Great cover song. I think Katy Perry and Kronos from Venom would have really gotten

• 48:11Speaker 04

  along, by the way. Indeed, indeed.

• 48:38Speaker 04

  All right. Track one on Welcome Interstate Managers is called Mexican Wine, and so much of what makes Fountains of Wayne great is right here. The precision goofy rhyme of United Airlines with high times, the unflashy but super powerful two-chord ascent on the words United Airlines, the rad delicate falsetto vocal harmonies throughout. Now I know why. I disagree with the notion that Stacy's Mom sounds like a different band or doesn't fit on the album. If anything, Stacy's Mom is just too much of a good thing, too hooky, too successful, that it sucks up too much of this record's oxygen. Every band has deep

• 49:23Speaker 04

  cuts and fan favorites and whatnot, but Fountains of Wayne, by virtue of having this one song that got so much attention, the Stacy's Mom breakout only exacerbates the fan favorites problem. I understand why that song is a hit and say Valley Winter Song isn't, but I take it personally anyway.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  Okay. Anytime I hear Valley Winter Song, wherever I am and whatever time of year it is, I can hear and see and taste that snow falling down. The guitar jangle here so gently and perfectly evokes a blizzard, a stultifying blanket of white that makes that New England town both picturesque and treacherous and undrivable. Because the other truly great thing about Fountains of Wayne is that they spin all this majesty out of suburban-type mundanity, where your daily commute is a fraught Odyssean journey, where your greatest enemy is not Poseidon or Antonus or the Cyclops, but possibly simply your

• 50:50Speaker 04

  bullying jerk-off boss who stands between you and the love of your life.

• 51:10Speaker 04

  Hell, yeah. This is Hey Julie, yet another Welcome Interstate Managers fan favorite for its sweetness, its radiant buoyancy, its office-space-type cubicle exasperation that only heightens and deepens the romance. Julie, God bless her, whoever she is, Julie may not have the face that launched a thousand ships, but she does launch maybe one Subaru. I keep saying this name Welcome Interstate Managers like it's a totally reasonable rock and roll album title, which it isn't, unless it's Fountains of Wayne using it. This is a band that writes beautifully and heroically about normal-ass people working normal-ass

• 51:53Speaker 04

  dead-end jobs, conducting their normal-ass, possibly doomed and/or one-sided love affairs with the grandiose rock and roll gestures kept to a tasteful minimum, although Chris Collingwood did write and sing a boppy little grandiosely romantic ditty called Red Dragon Tattoo.

• 52:34Speaker 04

  Working backward. Once again, I forgot we were working backward. The second Fountains of Wayne album is released in 1999 and is called Utopia Parkway, which sounds ethereal and writerly and fake, but it is, of course, a real street in Queens, New York. The casual stupendous power pop excellence of the chorus to Red Dragon Tattoo, the effervescent jangle, the once again angelic harmonies, "So now do you want me", the casual wink of the phrase "I'm fit to be dyed", the relentless delightful tambourine, the brisk little melodic chordal strutter, doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo, on the lines in "You I Confide",

• 53:19Speaker 04

  Red Dragon Tattoo, should have been a hit. Fountains of Wayne on their first two albums are should have been a hit incarnate. These dudes are just firing them off.

• 53:51Speaker 04

  Here we have "Denise", the first single off Utopia Parkway. I saw the Denise video exactly once on MTV. That may have been the single recorded instance of MTV playing Denise. And I remember being so struck by the canny visual presentation here. The car wash setting, the members of Fountains of Wayne as identical jumpsuit car wash employees, the mechanical and mostly immobile, comically dispassionate looks on their faces as they went,

• 54:22Speaker 04

  "I already loved this song Denise, but I see this video and immediately I think, ah, yes, Weezer." The video wants you to associate Fountains of Wayne with Weezer. Fuzzy power pop, geeky but surprisingly muscular, dead serious classic songwriter craftsman, but also just goofy, regular guys. Utopia Parkway has got plenty of songs that can hang with the best of the late 90s crumbling empire alternative rock. But I couldn't help but be drawn to the songs that it seemed like no other 90s alternative band could have pulled off. The song called "Prom Theme", for example.

• 55:18Speaker 04

  And I so distinctly remember playing this song on my college radio station and being like, "This is my kind of band." Fountains of Wayne are extremely funny but devastating, irreverent but fully committed. The swirling string section here and Chris's dreamy slow dance vocal delivery and the tipsy tragicomic detail of "The girls are feeling sick", I wanted to learn to play "Prom Theme" on piano. I wanted to play "Prom Theme" at my wedding. In the end, I did neither of those things, but power pop as a genre is about the things you want to do but won't ever do and the things you don't want to do that you nonetheless spend your whole life doing instead.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  "I love my job, actually, even if my job makes no sense to me anymore." The gleeful slap in the face, the shiv, the nuclear detonation of "Then we'll work until we die" there. At the climax of a song called "Prom Theme", that is the very essence of the Fountains of Wayne, the epitome of their transsubstantiation of the mundane into the majestic. The first Fountains of Wayne record, called simply Fountains of Wayne, came out in 1996. And yeah, it sure seemed like these dudes were primed for alternative rock super fame.

• 57:07Speaker 04

  I have no conscious memory of the "Radiation Vibe" video, but of course, my entire subconscious consists of the quiet verse, loud chorus, grandeur and oversaturated color palettes and cool looking nerdy guys looking directly into the camera vibe of the "Radiation Vibe" video. What a shrewder listener than myself might have realized, hearing "Radiation Vibe" in 1996, is that these dudes are clearly already pop virtuosos, deft chameleons who effortlessly channel 90s alternative rock. Sure, absolutely, but they could just as easily channel, say, 60s teen pop.

• 58:01Speaker 04

  And indeed, also in 1996, Adam Schlesinger famously provides the superb, note-perfect, titular fake hit song for the 60s rock and roll comedy "That Thing You Do", directed by and co-starring Tom Hanks. "When I went to school dances in the 90s, everyone looked and dressed and acted exactly like this, except instead of a live band on stage, it was a DJ playing "Wild Thing" by Tone Loc." You will find "That Thing You Do" in the top five of any self-respecting best fake songs in movie history list. And to my mind, that's because "That Thing You Do",

• 58:41Speaker 04

  the song, actually sounds like it emerged organically from "That Thing You Do", the movie. It is performed by and was composed by the characters, by the band in the movie. "That Thing You Do" echoes the arches so lovingly that it erases the arches from your memory. "That Thing You Do" is not an Adam Schlesinger song, it is a Wonders song. The Wonders, that's the band for the movie. The song is too natural, too fully realized, it is too real to possibly be fake. But meanwhile, my favorite song on the first self-titled Fountains of Wayne record is called "Leave the Biker".

• 59:40Speaker 04

  And this chorus to this song, "Leave the Biker", in 1996, the year I turned 18, this song takes on a delightfully recognizable and already nostalgically comforting shape to me. The lovelorn loser anthem, the vicious and impotent wallflower wit of the line with "Crumbs in his beard from the seafood special", the only element of "Leave the Biker" that is unmistakably 90s is Chris Collingwood's sneery nasal rasp, the lethal slacker sharpness of all his vowels. "He's got his arms around every man's dream",

• 1:00:21Speaker 04

  but I say with 200% sincerity, as the highest compliment I can pay a song or a songwriter. This is primarily a Chris Collingwood song, I believe. "Leave the Biker" sounds like a Weird Al Yankovic original song from any era, any decade of Weird Al Yankovic's storied, unparalleled rock and roll Hall of Fame-worthy career. It has the wit, but also the heart, the jovial silliness, but also the palpable sadness. Fountains of Wayne are the real deal. They are master pop craftsmen unstuck in time, unburdened by time. I knew it the first time I heard them, even if I couldn't articulate it then. And yeah, maybe even now I'm still trying to articulate it.

• 1:01:22Speaker 04

  Here we have another should have been a hit off the first Fountains of Wayne record, this one entitled, Please Don't Rock Me Tonight. And you could pin this vibe down to the 90s as well, I suppose. The ironic 90s alt-rock as 70s arena rock song, that was a thing. In the 70s, we had Kiss. In the 90s, we had that Weezer song about how much they loved Kiss. But the first time I heard Please Don't Rock Me Tonight, in all its swaggering, shrugging glory, I suspect my subconscious made the connection I hadn't consciously made yet. You want to hear something heavy? You want to hear something that'll kick your balls off?

• 1:02:19Speaker 04

  I'm sorry about that. This song will not kick your balls off. That's ridiculous. My first love was the first Cars album, the self-titled Cars album from 1978. The first band, the first album, the first music I ever loved.

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  As a four-year-old, I used to listen to the first Cars record on vinyl while running in a circle in my living room and clutching the paper sleeve to the vinyl record with black and white pictures of foxy ladies and the dudes from the Cars on it. I called it Cars paper, and it is framed on the wall over my right shoulder right now. I say this constantly. I'm not going to look it up, but I'll just assume. I've told the Cars paper story multiple times on this show, in interviews, in conversation, for no reason whatsoever. Anytime anyone asks me, why are you like this? Whatever that question means,

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  however rude or unflattering the question's intent, the answer is, I'm like this because of the first Cars record. And I heard the first Cars record in Fountains of Wayne, and as a consequence, I immediately, permanently loved Fountains of Wayne, long before Stacy's mom made the Cars connection explicit. I get it, that the singer of Stacy's mom doesn't like Stacy's mom. I get that Stacy's mom seems to be everyone's favorite Fountains of Wayne song, but simultaneously, it seems to be every Fountains of Wayne fan's least favorite Fountains of Wayne song. But I will always love Stacy's mom for dropping all

• 1:04:05Speaker 04

  the subliminal action and just nakedly, gloriously paying tribute to my first love and one of my all-time favorite bands. This song makes me a four-year-old again, clutching my Cars paper and running in circles without a care in the world, in a golden ray of light. He's got all kinds of time, all kinds of time, all kinds of time.

• 1:04:35Speaker 04

  We are delighted to be joined once again by Annie Zaleski, critic and author of books on Duran Duran, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Cher, Dolly Parton, and most recently Stevie Nicks, the book Stevie Nicks in 50 Songs. Annie's written for Rolling Stone, NPR, Vulture, tons of places, Cleveland Plain Dealer, of course, and she's the coolest Ohioan I know. Annie, thank you so much for coming back. Thank you for having me. Of course, of course. You wrote a great piece about the 20th anniversary of Welcome Interstate Managers for Stereogum, and you talked about Chris Collingwood, who sang Stacy's mom, like, talking about how much he dislikes Stacy's mom. Like, he didn't want it on the

• 1:05:17Speaker 04

  album, he didn't want to record it at all. You know, he knew it would be a single, he knew it would be a big hit, but he thought it was a novelty hit. And I'm wondering if you personally think of Stacy's mom as a novelty hit, and do you understand why he thinks of it that way? So I definitely understand why he thinks of it that way, because it definitely is a little bit of an outlier in Fountains of Wayne's catalog and on Welcome Interstate Managers. You know, it became a novelty song only because it was so different also than what was going on in music at the time, I think. Right. You know, and because like, new wave was not really that cool at the time. It was the height of new metal, the White Stripes were coming in, you know, they were unabashedly

• 1:06:00Speaker 04

  using synthesizers and the Cars. And, you know, they were kind of winking to retro things, so it had all the, I think, the formula and ingredients to be a novelty song. So reluctantly, I agree with him, that's a novelty song. Yeah, and I felt personally very pandered to, you know, if it is indeed a novelty song, like, it's a Cars song. It's a very explicit homage to the Cars, and I love the Cars. Like, do you personally, you know, whether it's R.E.M. or Duran Duran or something, do you enjoy being pandered to by new songs that are obviously evoking, like, old music that you loved? Like, do you enjoy this sort of thing? Or are you kind of suspicious of it, ever? Honestly, I enjoy it. I know that that's like, I can't help it. I'm like, I hear

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  something, you know, and Fountains of Wayne doubly did so because their music video for Mexican wine from this record ripped off and was, I'm sorry, was an homage to Duran Duran's Rio video. So it was like, they were checking all the boxes for me. So, you know, because I think, because it reminds me of things I love. The song, you know, reminds me of other things I like, so I, you know, I just, I'm inclined to like it as well. So I never complain when a band panders to me. Okay. I mean, I think Chris really worried that this song, that this song being a big hit would distort, you know, the public perception of Fountains of Wayne and of Adam Schlesinger's songwriting, you know, like, this song would change the way permanently

• 1:07:24Speaker 04

  that people think of you. Like, once people know you as a novelty hit artist, like, that's all you are to them forevermore. Do you think Stacy's mom did distort, like, the wider public view of this band even now? I do think it did. You know, I think when you think about it, when you ask the average person, what is Fountains of Wayne, they'll immediately say, oh, Stacy's mom. They're not going to say, oh, it's that band that had, like, multiple studio records that were really irreverent and, you know, and were societal critiques. No, they're like, yeah, that's that band that did Stacy's mom. And so I think, and I think that's common with a lot of artists that have, you know, one hit that just stands above the rest of their catalog, is that they become defined and known by that. So I think his

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

  fears, I mean, because he is such a music fan, he could see it coming. Like, he knew exactly how everything was going to play out, and he was right. Yeah, it's not an exact match, but I think of Jimmy Eat World in the middle, right? Like, it's as a song, like, I understand why that's the song, that's the big breakout, and if you think of one Jimmy Eat World song, you think of that, but that's like my ninth favorite song on that album. Like, where is Stacy's mom for you within the context, you know, of Welcome Interstate Managers? Like, is this one of your favorite Fountains of Wayne songs, per se? So I will, I will never turn it off if it comes on. You know, it is a song that I unabashedly love, but I do like other songs better. You know, my favorite song

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  on the record is Valley Winter Song, which is complete polar opposite, very moody, kind of very, you know, introspective, a little bit, you know, you know, Christmasy almost. And Little Red Light, which is basically their version of a Britpop song. So I, you know, there's other songs that if I'm playing the record, if I'm going on Spotify, looking around, there are ones that I will go to first, before Stacy's mom. It's wild, because it's a really sad record overall, Welcome Interstate Managers, like Hackensack, of course, even All Kinds of Time, which is my favorite. Like, that's a very sad, you know, melancholy song. Even Hey Julie, which I know people love, like, it's a beautiful love song, but it's a beautiful love song about, like, hating your job, right?

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  Like, does it sort of distort the overall impression of this band? Like, this band was like, more like The Smiths than they were like, the Cars most of the time. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's very true that they're very melancholy, and but, but they also have an edge, and I think that's the other thing, is that all of these songs, it's a little bit like, you know, I think of like, Office Space, the movie where everyone is like, there's a little bit of self-hatred, there's a little bit of, you know, you know, sardonicness going on. And so there's a lot of, you know, it's with an edge. There's that melancholy and that sadness, no, no pun intended, Smashing Pumpkins. But there is definitely, you know, Morrissey was self-pitying. I think Fountains of Wayne is not self-pitying. They kind of feel like the world is against them, I guess.

• 1:10:15Speaker 04

  There we go. That's a, that's, that's a beautiful way to put it, actually. I, Chris was talking about this in April 2020, right after Adam Schlesinger died, and then Chris said that really struck me, was like, he deserves to be known as more than a punchline. Like, I felt so terrible, like, for both of them in that moment. Like, do Fountains of Wayne have the same problem that any funny band has? Like, there's an automatic devaluing of bands of songwriters, you know, if they have jokes, if they're funny, if they're irreverent. Does that distort the way we think about Fountains of Wayne now? Oh, absolutely. You know, I mean, I think if you're an act that's known as being funny, you just don't get respect, because people don't think that funny music can also

• 1:10:58Speaker 04

  be good music. I mean, think about how long it took for Weird Al Yankovic to get respect. You know, now he's selling out shed tours and, you know, he's beloved. But for the longest time, it was like, oh, that's Weird Al, okay. You know, they, for some reason...

• 1:11:11Speaker 06

  People can't see that, you know, a band can contain multitudes and be very talented musicians, get critical acclaim and have a sense of humor. It's like people, you know, it's, it's hard for people to realize that can all coexist.

• 1:11:23Speaker 04

  Were you into Fountains of Wayne from the beginning? Like where it back to radiation vibe like 96? Were you on board immediately or was it more of a slow burn?

• 1:11:31Speaker 06

  Oh, I was definitely on board immediately. I, I listened to our, our radio station, 107.9, The End in Cleveland that rocked all of these things. So I remember listening to Sink to the Bottom, Radiation Vibe. And, you know, that was like so of the moment with, you know, then like Ben Folds and Weezer and Not a Surf. And that, but I love Utopia Parkway. That came out a couple of years later. I was in college. Red Dragon Tattoo, Denise and Valium Malls. That was like Holy Trinity on that record. You know, that was just so, I was pretty, so when Welcome Interstate Managers came out, I was ready because I was already such a fan.

• 1:12:08Speaker 04

  I, I would add Prom Theme and make the, the Utopia Parkway thing like a quartet or whatever. That's a good trio of songs, but Prom Theme for some reason has always been my personal favorite. That's fine. I love 107.9 The End so much, like as any Clevelander does. I don't have a conscious memory of hearing Fountains of Wayne on there ever. Like they're a college rock band to me, but did you see them? Like, did they seem of their moment? Like, did you, were they like contemporaries with Weezer? You know, did, did they make sense in 1996, Fountains of Wayne?

• 1:12:42Speaker 06

  They really did. And I think because, you know, the mid 90s was sort of the peak of those, you know, kind of quirky songs that were on the radio. You know, you had when Butthole Surfers was on with Pepper. You know, when you had, um, Primitive Radio Gods, you know, you had all of the Presidents of the United States of America. That was sort of the peak of these like offbeat, offball, you know, oddball songs. And so, and, and because they had such good melodies, because they did love, you know, they were unabashedly writing, you know, radio friendly power pop. So it all made sense to me in my head.

• 1:13:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, you've contributed to a, a great power pop book. Like I, I, anybody who's power pop, for me, I was immediately drawn to, whether that's Matthew Sweets, or the Posies, or anything like that. Like, do you see these guys, Fountains of Wayne, as in the vein of Big Star, the Raspberries, stuff like this? Like, what is the lineage, lineage that gets you to Fountains of Wayne for you?

• 1:13:33Speaker 06

  It's very true. It's, it's, you know, all of that stuff from the late, late 70s. And then you go in the 80s, it's stuff like the DBs, um, which were making just like really a little bit of love-lorn power pop, but you know, something like Let's Active, which is Mitch Easter's band. Um, you know, very kind of a little bit synthesizer, a little bit out of time. Um, you know, all of those, you know, Dwight Twilley, you think of people like this, just writing these songs about love, but in, you know, how love is not working out with these big power chords and these big, you know, big hooks. And so Fountains of Wayne, especially when I heard them, totally in that lineage. Absolutely.

• 1:14:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Uh, you mentioned something to me that's actually, I completely whiffed on this, but it's very important to the Adam Schlesinger catalog is the band Ivy, you know, who are sort of running parallel to Fountains of Wayne. Like, I'm not really up on them, but I sort of know them as just a very sophisticated sort of like lounge pop act that's had a lot of crossover with Fountains of Wayne, but were very much their own thing at the same time. Like, what, what do you love about Ivy?

• 1:14:33Speaker 06

  Ivy, it's interesting is that Adam almost got to kind of indulge in a different side of his sort of pop realm because he was working with two other people, Andy Chase and then Dominique Dorand. And they were basically, first off, it was also a trio. So he obviously, you know, he's very much in a band sort of format and works, but it was almost like, it was kind of like indie pop, but also French indie pop. There was a little bit of, as they kind of progressed, they had a little bit more electronic influence. So it was almost loungy. So it's interesting because it was, you know, it had a lot of parallels between Fountains of Wayne and that the songwriting was really strong, but the influences were definitely different. And it was, um, you know, it just showed his range and how versatile he was, that when they were kind

• 1:15:15Speaker 06

  of working on things, you know, he could do kind of the goofy, you know, 60s ripoff with that thing you do, but then he could do the sophisticated, you know, French pop from the 80s, maybe synth pop. He was just really, you know, he was kind of a voracious music fan.

• 1:15:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was gonna say, like, it really threw me in like a really cool way in 96, like Radiation Vibe and That Thing You Do happening more or less simultaneously. Like, he's just as good at doing a 90s alternative rock song as he is doing like a 60s teen pop song. Like, Fountains of Wayne to me struck me, like they're of their time, they're a 90s band, but they just, they were an alternative rock band because that was the thing that you did at the time. They didn't have to be a 90s alt-rock band. If they'd have been around in the 60s, you know, they'd have done that. They'd have been a 70s power pop band or an 80s new wave band. Like, was there something immediately mutable about Fountains of Wayne? This idea that, you know, they're voracious listeners and songwriters who can do anything and be anything?

• 1:16:15Speaker 06

  I think actually Welcome Interstate Managers is when they really started getting that respect. Because I think, because, you know, alternative music, they were so quirky and they were sort of of a piece with so many other bands at the time. It was like, oh, you know, it's just another band. It was kind of like, you know, Not a Surf had Popular. And it wasn't until the early 2000s that we realized, oh, no, no, Matthew Paws is a devastatingly beautiful songwriter. Yeah. And so I think it was very similar with them is that, you know, they, people enjoyed the songs, they had their cult following, but then, you know, Stacy's Mom, you know, as big of a hit it was, I think drew in a lot of other people who then explored the rest of their catalog.

• 1:16:54Speaker 04

  Are the last couple of records as good for you as the first three? You know, I remember really liking and spending a lot of time with Traffic and Weather and Sky Full of Holes at the time. Like, as I sit here, I can't like think of immediate, like a bunch of songs off those records the way I can from the first three. But like, should we be paying more attention, you know, more flowers for what they were doing toward the end of their career?

• 1:17:15Speaker 06

  I love Traffic and Weather. That is, I mean, that was, like, I adored that record. Like, and so like the title track, you know, is kind of, you know, kind of a little bit funkier, a little bit good. Strap for Cash on that album is hilarious. Like, it's just, yes. They have horns. It's just, it's ridiculous and over the top. And, you know, and Sky Full of Holes maybe isn't quite as over the top, but absolutely. I mean, they, they made such solid records throughout their career. Like, they did not really, they did not make a bad record, um, which is pretty remarkable.

• 1:17:44Speaker 04

  It is. I, were you a Crazy Ex Girlfriend person? Like, at all?

• 1:17:49Speaker 06

  You know, I wasn't because I think I wasn't watching TV at the time. And I feel like that's a show that I would be, it's totally up my alley, everything about it. And it's just, I need to like go back and find it and do a re-watch and, you know, catch up with the rest of the universe.

• 1:18:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, because it seems like that's, as you've been saying, like, he can do anything. Like, he can, he can fit into any emotional or musical sort of theme. Like, he wrote like 150 plus songs and like each of them are distinct, but all of them have that same sort of wit and bites, like you're saying, that, you know, a classic Fountains of Wayne song would have had. I think we both should go back and watch Crazy Ex Girlfriend. That's absolutely.

• 1:18:24Speaker 06

  It's a great winter re-watch. It's gonna be snowing. Just hang out at home and watch that.

• 1:18:29Speaker 04

  There you go. I, just to wrap up, like, I, this is a band with two distinct songwriters and it throws you a little bit that Chris, of course, sings everything. But like, can you tell? Like, is there a tangible difference for you in the Fountains of Wayne catalog between, you know, a Chris song and an Adam song? Like, what is the distinction? Or is the whole point that they're so complimentary that there is no need for a distinction?

• 1:18:54Speaker 06

  I think it's the latter. And I think, you know, it's interesting. I feel like that, you know, and that they had, um, I think they had, you know, kind of like any good songwriting duo, they had that sort of creative tension between them, you know? And so, and I think you kind of, you know, it's interesting to have Chris singing what Adam wrote, maybe, you know, it's interesting because then he's putting his own kind of spin and attitude on it and vice versa. And so I, I think it's definitely, it's that creative tension that always stood out to me. And that made great art. It made for just really, you know, solid songs and solid characters. But that, that's what always stood out to me. But in the, in the best possible way, that they're, um, you know, from, from that creative differences and coming from different places, that's what makes great art.

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  I'm trying to think, is there any one Fountains of Wayne song that you think could have been or should have been as big a hit as Stacy's Mom? Like, is there, is there a clear number to, I don't know if that's Valley Winter's song, or I'm trying to, like, is there another song that deserved like that hit song treatment?

• 1:19:53Speaker 06

  I mean, it's interesting because they, they were always sort of, uh, you know, apart from their time, as much as that they had the radio hits in the 90s, as they went on, they were just kind of continuing to do their thing, even though society and trends kind of moved along. I mean, I do think something from Utopia Parkway, like I think, you know, Red Dragon Tattoo to me should be screaming out of every car and, you know, at, at top volume in the summer. Um, and I think some people did it. I, I, exactly. You know, it's due, you know, um, it could probably become Tik Tok viral at this point. I feel like something like that. I, they're primed.

• 1:20:29Speaker 04

  We need to get the Zoomers into Red Dragon Tattoo. That's a fantastic idea. Uh, thank you so much, Annie. This has been wonderful. Go Guardians. Let's talk again real soon.

• 1:20:39Speaker 06

  It sounds great. Thanks for having me.

• 1:20:44Speaker 04

  Thanks very much to our guest this week, Annie Zaleski. Thanks to our producers, Juliana Ress, Justin Sales, Olivia Creary, and Chris Sutton. Animations and graphics by Chris Calliton. Special thanks to Cole Kutchner, and thanks to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne. We'll see you next week.

• 1:21:16Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Fall is here and Whole Foods Market has everything you need for cozy meals, seasonal treats, and easy entertaining. Elevate your hearty dishes with tasty bone-in beef short ribs or New York strip steaks with no added growth hormones or antibiotics. And as the fall evenings draw in, why not get ahead of cold season with immunity shots, herbal teas, lozenges, and supplements? Make sure you look for sales throughout the month. Shop fall flavors with higher standards at Whole Foods Market.

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  This is US Bank's Cozy Cash Formations with your chief financial playmaker, Fernando Mendoza. You are worthy of financial security. Budgeting is not restriction, it's freedom. You are smart. You are capable. You are giving your money a purpose. You are learning the language of saving, of growing. Now, stream me. Member FDIC Copyright 2026 US Bank.