![]() It’s not the most beloved song Adam Schlesinger wrote, but it may be his most loving.Īnd while the final line of “Utopia Parkway” is from the viewpoint of its wide-eyed hero, it could very well be about Adam Schlesinger himself: “They’ll never know what hit them when I’m gone. “Utopia Parkway” reminds you that no big dream ever truly ends - that you can always be on your own, and on your way, even if you never arrive where you’d once hoped. Maybe it’s that longing that’s kept Schlesinger’s tune playing on a loop in my head all these years. “It ties in all these different places and characters because there’s such a sense of longing about it.” ![]() It’s even there in the song’s very title, which Schlesinger took from a five-mile stretch of roadway in Queens: “The name is so evocative,” he told The New York Times in 1999. And every line in “Utopia Parkway” holds out that same promise of workaday greatness. The “Utopia Parkway” album had been inspired by albums like Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and The Kinks’ “Muswell Hillbillies,” both long-form documents of working-class yearning. Even when he was writing about repeat-offender screw-ups, Schlesinger couldn’t help but view them with affection: The 2011 gem “Richie and Ruben” recounted the exploits of a pair of doomed, scheming would-be businessmen, told from the perspective of their equally doomed investor, who just can’t stop giving them money. And now he's blaming everyone, 'cause he's always been a victim. Or they were wide-eyed suburban kids cruising down the Long Island Expressway, hoping to find salvation at a rock ‘n’ roll laser-light show ( “Laser Show”). To be heard using force is all that occured to him. Schlesinger excelled at touching, wryly observant tales of everyday-Joe ennui, and his characters were always uncomfortably recognizable: They were white-collar drones who were passed out at Port Authority, yet still vowed to someday “get shit together” ( “Bright Future in Sales”). Songs like the Gun Song and Meet me at Tommys are brash but brilliant. It’s long been a joy-buzzer I can press whenever I need it.īut you don’t just lose yourself in a song like “Utopia Parkway” - you actually cast yourself in it. The Gun Song Lyrics CZOLGOSZ It takes a lot of men to make a gun Hundreds Many men to make a gun Men in the mines To dig the iron Men in the mills To forge the steel Men at machines To turn the. They dont beat around the bush with their lyrics. When my father, a huge Fountains of Wayne fan, died two years ago, just those first few seconds of “Utopia Parkway” could cheer me up for hours. I’ve put on “Utopia Parkway” to wake myself up I’ve played it cool myself down. ” Yet “Utopia Parkway” is the Schlesinger song I’ve likely listened to the most in the last 20 years - the kind of album-opener that prompts me to hit the “repeat” button again and again. Schlesinger, meanwhile, would find even more success on stage and on the small screen, writing numbers for such musicals as “Cry-Baby” and shows like “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The ten tracks on the release work well as a whole as each song on the release seems to beg.
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