One Song: “That Thing You Do!” (Shakalabbits)

I still haven’t a clue how the original version of this song didn’t win the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1997. It was duly nominated, but it lost out to “You Must Love Me,” from Evita.

That was, and remains, galling. “You Must Love Me” continued a long, tacky tradition of film adaptations of stage musicals that splice in a brand-new song, in the cynical hope that maybe it’ll earn a nomination simply by drafting in the wake of people’s love for the musical’s original songs (none of which can be nominated, because they aren’t Original to the movie).

I hereby retract my use of the word “galling.” What’s truly galling is the fact that this same disease was partially responsible for one of The Producers’ best songs — “The King Of Broadway,” its show-stopping show-opener — getting cut to make room for a song that even I, a Mel Brooks megafan, can’t recall. Not even with the title (“There’s Nothing Like A Show On Broadway”) right in front of me.

These “just for the movie version” songs are, by their nature, surplus goods. Otherwise, “You Must Love Me” (or something like it) would’ve been part of Evita from the beginning, right?

Whereas “That Thing You Do!” is nearly as important as any of the characters in the story. If it didn’t sound 100% like a hit song — a song so catchy you simply couldn’t get away from it while it was climbing the charts in the summer of 1964 — the whole movie would’ve fallen apart.

1997 was also the year when Lauren Bacall lost Best Supporting Actress to Juliette Binoche for The English Patient. So maybe it just wasn’t a great year for great nominees to win Oscars.

I remember that Ms. Bacall’s reaction was…well, she didn’t mask her surprise very well. She (and even Ms. Binoche) thought the fix was in. The Academy’s voting members, who in 1997 were probably old enough to have made out with their first wives during a first-run theatrical screening of Key Largo, were fully expected to take advantage of what would likely be its last chance to give this bona fide legend a bona fide, competitive Oscar.

I looked up the video of the winner’s name being read. Her reaction wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. I did, however, discover that Best Supporting Actress was presented by Kevin Spacey. So let’s just say that the Academy was full of regrettable choices that evening.

Back to the song. Almost thirty years later, “That Thing You Do!” still holds up. Perhaps because it was “classic pop” from the day it was minted? No, no. A few years ago I discovered this cover, by the Japanese band Shakalabbits.

Dang that’s a sharp reinterpretation. It really moves! It’s been in regular rotation on my go-to playlist since shortly after I discovered it.

This cover could serve as the premise of a remake of the movie, come to think of it.

In the original movie, the song is a plodding, out-of-style ballad, until the band’s psycho substitute drummer gives it a new, blazingly-fast, modern jazz-influenced backbeat. Result: a rocketship to the top of the Billboard charts. In the remake, the original, old-fashioned, 1960s-pop “That Thing You Do!” is the arrangement we already know. It’s transformed by a psycho substitute bassist who speeds the tune’s tempo up even further, and adds his own ska-influenced backbeat.

Shakalabbits released the track more than two decades ago. That Thing You Do! was set in the Sixties, some two or three decades before the film’s release. It just feels like this remake was preordained. Sure, the band broke up in 2017 but…maybe AI or something? Is that a thing?

Well, if you have access to foreign investment and a first-look deal with any streaming platform except for Sling TV, FreeVee, or Pluto, we should talk.

Whoops, I’m being handed a note from my brain:

“If you’re mentioning Lauren Bacall and a band whose name almost includes the word ‘rabbits,’ why not also mention the time Lauren Bacall appeared in a Bugs Bunny cartoon?”

Kind of a tenuous connection. But I’ll at least paste in a screengrab from 1947’s Slick Hare before I post.

Juliette Binoche couldn’t take that away from her. I hope this knowledge gave Lauren Bacall some solace that evening. ⓘ