Adam Schlesinger

It's always been my philosophy to keep a lot of balls in the air. With music, most things don't pan out, so you try to increase your odds by being involved with a million things at once.

Your job as a producer is to make suggestions without putting your ego in front of everything else. Also, I think you want to focus on that artist's best qualities and really highlight them.

I had a job transcribing a biotechnology-litigation seminar. You put headphones on and fast-forward and stop with your feet. There were a lot of 'um's.'

If you're sitting in a place like Martha's Vineyard, I don't think you're going to write a song about a ski resort.

I think I initially started inventing characters in my songs because I didn't want to write directly about myself. Also, as a kid, I loved all the character names in Beatles songs, like Eleanor Rigby and Lovely Rita and Mean Mr. Mustard and Maxwell and Rocky Raccoon.

I think people sometimes confuse 'catchy' with something that should automatically be a hit in today's world. I mean, obviously we write a lot of stuff that's catchy, that sticks in your head. But that doesn't necessarily mean that middle-school kids are going to want to listen to a song about a lawyer or a Subaru or whatever.

With Fountains of Wayne, after 'Stacy's Mom' happened, we started making a little bit more money and getting a little bit more known.

The Mall Of America, outside Minneapolis, is just a mall. Yeah, it's big. So, like, instead of your typical 12 Starbucks, there are 30.

I just try to tell a story rather than present an open diary to the world.

A band can define their own success.

I've never really had the desire to be a front person or a solo artist. I don't really create that much of a hierarchy in my mind.

I don't ever feel like I'm being an actor.