Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger who wrote 'Stacy's Mom' dies from coronavirus aged 52
American singer-songwriter, record producer and guitarist Adam Schlesinger died on Wednesday at the age of 52. According to reports, Schlesinger’s lawyer Josh Grier said that the cause of death was complications from coronavirus.
Schlesinger is best known for his work as a member of the band Fountains of Wayne and as an Emmy Award-winning songwriter for Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna’s musical comedy series ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’.
As per Variety, Schlesinger had on Tuesday morning reported as being “very sick and heavily sedated” by his attorney, Grier, who added that he had been in an upstate New York hospital for more than a week at that time.
Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood met as freshmen at Williams College. In 1995, they formed Fountains of Wayne, an alternative rock, power-pop band, which immortalized itself in popular culture with its 2003 Grammy-nominated single ‘Stacy's Mom’ -- a song about a teenage boy’s infatuation with a friend Stacy’s mother.
The New York Times described the band’s music as “hummable pop” with inspirations that derived equally from The Kinks, Big Star and The Cars. The band was supposedly named after a lawn ornament store in Wayne, New Jersey, near Schlesinger’s hometown, Montclair.
Schlesinger’s talents, however, went beyond the band with a cult following. He was an EGOT contender. Schlesinger had been nominated for Oscars, Tonys, Grammys, and Emmys, and won the latter two. In 2018, he was nominated for two Emmys for his work in ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’; he won in the outstanding original music and lyrics category for the song ‘Antidepressants Are So Not A Big Deal’ that he shared with Rachel Bloom and Jack Dolgen.
Of the 10 Emmy nominations he received in his lifetime, five were for ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’, where he served as an executive music producer. For writing the theme song for the 1996 film ‘That Thing You Do!’ that was directed by, and starred Tom Hanks, Schlesinger was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.
Per The New York Times, Schlesinger worked with David Javerbaum and wrote songs for the 2008 Broadway musical ‘Cry-Baby’, based on John Waters’s 1990 film of the same title. Schlesinger and Javerbaum were both nominated for a Tony Award that year for the best original score. They worked together again in 2015 on the play ‘An Act of God’.
More recently, Schlesinger had also been collaborating with comedian Sarah Silverman on a stage adaptation of her memoir, ‘The Bedwetter’, which was scheduled to begin performances Off-Broadway in April at the Atlantic Theater Company, but was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Schlesinger was divorced and is survived by two daughters.