They mentioned the Knickerbockers as one example.Yeah, once they settled on it, I spoke to him many times. They would show it on TV a lot, and because it’s a music movie it withstands repeat viewing a little better than other movies. And then I went in and did a demo with Mike Viola singing and my friend Andy Chase who was in the band Ivy with me.He’s just a much better singer than me. I went to the set. "There would be no Playtone without Adam Schlesinger, without his That Thing You Do! I wasn’t a part of those negotiations for credits on his side. He was a One-der. And I couldn’t believe how many times the song was in the movie. That Thing You Do!’s success hinged on that song—something peppy, something snappy, something that unrepentantly evoked the optimism of an age.The film’s producers put … I had some friends at the company and they told me about this movie. They were looking for a song and said I should take a shot at it. That’s pretty incredible. Sometimes you see music movies and it’s just painful how off everything is. Hanx© 2020 Billboard. The Monkees are as much of a real band as many of the bands I’ve worked with, you know?
In fact, the demo that we made was so good that the producers really couldn’t beat it and they ended up hiring Mike to come out and sing the lead vocals in the movie, because nobody could sing that song as well as Mike.My parents were not really into pop music at all. We had a piano in our house growing up, so I played piano and as I got older I discovered more things and my taste broadened a lot.There is some kind of weird relationship there, I guess. I played them for a few people, including Mike Viola, and everybody pointed to the same one as their favorite. I didn’t really listen to anything else except the Beatles when I was really young. I didn’t really anticipate any of this, and that was the culmination. I’ve stayed friends with [producer] Gary Goetzman and all the people in the Playtone label. "That Thing You Do" is the titular song appearing in the 1996 film of the same name. But the Beatles were definitely my first real love, and all I listened to in my formative years.In general, I like having songwriting assignments and I like having deadlines. [Laughs] Well, the Wonders really are a non-existent band, so I think that the Monkees would win.I had just gotten my first publishing deal around that time. Written by Adam Schlesinger, the song is performed by the fictional 1960s band The Wonders, who are the focus of the film. They were all sort of related to each other, but they were all slightly different. They listened to classical music and jazz. It just sort of found its spot in popular culture and hung around for a long time, which is great.That was just another surreal moment in a string of surreal moments at that period of my life. Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for That Thing You Do! They all write and they all play. That Thing You Do! I just took it as an assignment and decided it was worth spending a couple of days on for a shot at something like this.Usually what happens with me is that I’ll get the initial idea on day one, or many a couple of competing ideas, and then I’ll spend a couple extra days to refine it a bit and finish it. I thought it was a really cute, charming movie and I think it was very well done and very accurate in terms of the music stuff. I approach these things the same way: I just try to make good-sounding records and write good songs. All Rights Reserved.The Biz premium subscriber content has moved to Billboard.com/business.To simplify subscriber access, we have temporarily disabled the password requirement. The Oscar nomination was just nuts.The description was that it was supposed to be an American band in 1964 that was blown away by the Beatles and was imitating them. I never really thought about it. - Original Soundtrack on AllMusic - 1996 - This is the soundtrack to the Tom Hanks-written… Like, oh my God, enough of this song!We were young guys in our twenties and he had the initial thought of “I don’t want to be known for this, I want to be known for my own music. As the onscreen story goes, “That Thing You Do!” became a perfect pop song by accident. He was amazing, but really the whole thing is just because he had the confidence in his own ears to pick a song by an unknown guy to base his movie on. So I don’t know. The attention to detail was really impressive. Lost him to Covid-19. But we’ve gotten older, and he’s since come to have a very different attitude.There wasn’t one particular moment. So I focused on that one. Terribly sad today. It was just one of those things where the movie never fully went away.