AJR Cover Fountains of Wayne’s ‘Hackensack’ to Honor Adam Schlesinger

AJR have shared a cover of Fountains of Wayne’s “Hackensack” in honor of frontman Adam Schlesinger, who died in April from complications related to COVID-19.

“Fountains of Wayne have been one of our biggest inspirations as a band,” AJR said. “With a song like ‘Hackensack,’ to be able to write about the most mundane suburban lifestyle and turn it into something important and emotional is exactly what we try to do in songs. We were so upset to hear about losing Adam Schlesinger to COVID-19, so we wanted to do this salute to one of our favorite songs of all time.”

AJR released their third album Neotheater in April 2019, and recently released a new single “BANG!” Last spring, the brothers told Rolling Stone how their song “100 Bad Days” came together.

“The most successful songs we’ve written have come from doing one very specific thing and it’s going in there and playing Wii Tennis,” frontman Jack Met said. “And then we just kind of talk. Half of our brain is focused on winning the game and the other half is focused on kind of shouting out what randomly comes to our mind in our subconscious. Twenty minutes of that we come up with a great new idea and we run out and record it. I think that has a 98% success rate for sure, Wii Tennis.”