Adam Schlesinger has organized his life the way I like to think I would if I were an incredibly talented musician

Let’s be in a power-pop band with a friend from college and also a hipster New York band, and also let’s write a musical and do pastiche songs for movies, and also let’s collaborate with comedians on a TV musical, just seems like an unstoppable insistence on doing fun shit

If I were a killer bass player who could sing harmonies I would totally be up for a supergroup with a guy from Hanson, a guy from Cheap Trick, and a guy from Smashing Pumpkins, that sounds like a blast

None of which would mean much if some of the Fountains songs weren’t among the most deep and thrilling and perfect songs of our time, in a mode that literally no one else is working in, like if Stephen Sondheim decided to spend 20 years really deeply studying the Raspberries

What they did better than anyone else is capture the uses to which people put rock and pop music: to psych themselves up for a big presentation at work; to accompany them on long boring drives on I-95; to romanticize their disappointing lives and ordinary feelings

The songs contain the reality and the romance at the same time; they capture the doubleness of our experience in a way that really nothing else quite does

Their name seems like a kitsch joke and when I heard “Radiation Vibe” I assumed it was a one-hit wonder but instead their music has stealthily become one of those things that keeps you company through your entire adulthood; thank you Adam Schlesinger and I hope you get well soon

God damn it. RIP Adam Schlesinger, thanks for everything

“All Kinds of Time” hits especially hard right now but I’m going to let this perfect little piece of soft-rock bliss console me for the moment https://open.spotify.com/track/0jhHCOAfZrVcUdV6b0Xqej?si=7Kk7njEkS-qXctG63Nwxrg

Who else could have identified (a) that Huey Lewis and the News had a distinct sound, and (b) that the sound could be joyfully applied to a bisexual coming-out anthem https://open.spotify.com/track/5DQQwqn9nJXoyLFKVm94lM?si=U-9lMKslRK-gSpwuRwh56w

When they needed someone to write an absolutely plausible early-’60s hit record, like the movie doesn’t work unless you can hear the song half a dozen times and be more psyched for it every time, they called Adam Schlesinger https://open.spotify.com/track/4O6ZaZrRCFfiZZKjnrXqlk?si=VeTARxZHTRKR2r__0c8VVQ

God damn this whole stupid business, which has cost us so much already and will cost us so much more