Tag: Brian Young

My Sunday Song – “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne

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For My Sunday Song #449, we re going to look at the super fun song “Stacy’s Mom” by the band Fountains of Wayne. The single was released on May 19, 2003 and is off their album ‘Welcome Interstate Managers’. The song was probably the biggest mainstream hit for the band where it went to #21 on the Billboard Hot 100 and it received massive airplay on MTV as Stacy’s Mom was played by Supermodel Rachel Hunter and who didn’t enjoy watching that.

The song was written by bassist Adam Schlesinger and vocalist Chris Collingwood. The song was inspired by a childhood friend of Adam’s who thought his grandmother was really hot. Take that and add a little Mrs. Robinson and you have the song. “Stacy’s Mom” is about a teenage boy who was dating Stacy and loved to spend time at Stacy’s house out by the pool in hopes Stacy’s mom was around. He fantasized that her mom was into him and now that he is older and not the boy he used to be, he could be the man around the house for Stacy’s mom since her dad was no longer in the picture. It is a typical boy fantasy transformed in to a brilliantly executed song.

The song is pure Power Pop and New Wave. So much so in fact the opening riffs is almost identical to The Cars’ classic “Just What I Needed”. I mean…I.D.E.N.T.I.C.A.L. They actually played the opening riff and it was not a sample despite what Ric Ocasek might have thought. The song is a blast. It is so catchy and you instantly get swept in the excitement. It is full of joy and I love the handclaps towards the end. It is one of those bright and sunny songs that feels like Summer and will put a smile on your face.

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Human Clay – ‘Human Clay’ (1996) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Series)

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic72 Comments

After the disappointment of the last Talisman album ‘Life’, Talisman went on an indefinite hiatus. They technically weren’t broken up, just doing separate things…sort of. Guitarist extraordinaire, Frederik Akesson, did leave the band to pursue something more heavy with a band called Eyeball. Jeff Scott Soto and Marcel Jacobs thought stuck together. They wanted to put something out that would hold over the Talisman fans until they could decide what was going to happen with Talisman.

Out of that came the band Human Clay. You would ask, why not continue Talisman. The answer was simple. Jeff was needing a steady income and reforming Talisman at the time was not a viable option as he had committed to doing his 70’s tribute band Boogie Knights. This wouldn’t allow for touring. So, they stuck with the Human Clay idea and recorded between December 18th, 1995 and January 10th, 1996. They decided to grab a bunch of old material that they never released with Talisman and put together an album. They didn’t have a drummer so they used a drum machine instead (which I don’t usually like) and then Marcel handled all the other instruments with some minor exceptions. The production on the debut album is not that great as they didn’t have much of a budget, but I will try to focus on the songs and not the production value…much.

If you are curious as to how they got the name Human Clay, well, I will tell you what I know. They liked the name Human as part of the band name as Jeff’s a fan of Human League and they tried a bunch of different combinations and each one seemed to already be used by another band. Soto says he also liked Andrew Dice Clay so they took the clay part. The Human Clay name wasn’t being used by another band so they went with it. Not very exciting of a story and I am not sure how much of it is true or just the Soto trying to be funny.

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