Adam Schlesinger Dies From COVID-19
• UPDATED: We were deeply saddened to learn that musician/songwriter Adam Schlesinger, best known as a member of one of our favorite bands, Fountains of Wayne and an Emmy-winning songwriter for TV’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, has died as a result of coronavirus complications. He was only 52.
Over the course of his prolific career, Schlesinger has been nominated for Academy Awards, Tony Awards, Grammys and Emmy Awards. In 1997 he was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for co-writing the impossibly hooky theme song for one of our favorite films, the Tom Hanks-directed That Thing You Do! Yesterday, Hanks tweeted this tribute, saying, “There would be no Playtone without Adam Schlesinger, without his That Thing You Do! He was a One-der. Lost him to Covid-19. Terribly sad today. Hanx.”
Schlesinger was also a 10-time Emmy nominee, winning three for his work on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, for which he served as Executive Music Producer. In 2018 he won the Emmy for “Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics” for the song “Antidepressants Are So Not A Big Deal,” an honor he shared with the show’s star, Rachel Bloom, and Jack Dolgen. The other five Emmy nominations came for his contributions to the Tony Awards, Sesame Street and A Stephen Colbert Christmas.
Fountains of Wayne, the band he co-founded with Chris Collingwood, (and named after a lawn ornament store in Wayne, NJ, near Schlesinger’s hometown of Montclair), earned two Grammy nominations in 2003 — for Best New Artist (eight years after the band’s actual 1995 debut) and for Best Pop Performance by a Group for what became the band’s biggest hit, “Stacy’s Mom.” His lone Grammy win, though, came in 2010 for Best Comedy Album for his work on A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift Of All. Schlesinger’s other notable musical collaborations were with his other band, Ivy, which released six albums between 1996 and 2011, and Tinted Windows, his one-off 2009 supergroup, teaming up with Smashing Pumpkins’ guitarist James Iha, Hanson’s Taylor Hanson, and Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos. The New York Times, Rolling Stone and Variety have a more extensive look at Schlesinger’s legacy.
