The Click Five's "Just the Girl": As Perfect As Pop Gets

We've all been there: the song that knocks the wind out of you with its changes, that makes all the hairs on your arm stand on end. You can't press repeat fast enough after it's over. In the summer of 2005, The Click Five's "Just the Girl" was one of those songs.

The Boston group threw it back to the suits-and-shaggy-haircuts looks of The Beatles with some sugar-high songs to match. If there's something familiar about "Just the Girl" and its effortless melody, that's because of its songwriter, Adam Schlesinger. In the '90s and '00s, Schlesinger was one of the forces behind power-pop group Fountains of Wayne, who had an out-of-nowhere hit two years earlier with "Stacy's Mom." (Schlesinger was also a dependable writer for film and TV, contributing the title song to That Thing You Do! plus tunes for the Josie and The Pussycats movie and the cult-favorite series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.)

"It was really cool for us, because...at least me personally, I've been a Fountains of Wayne fan for years now," guitarist Joe Guese said of recording Adam's songs on debut album Greetings from Imrie House. "To get handed basically an unreleased Fountains of Wayne song, it's something really cool."

The Click Five had their biggest hit with "Just the Girl," going all the way to No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. They attracted a diverse fan base during their time together - likely the only band that both opened for the Backstreet Boys and co-wrote with Paul Stanley of KISS. Though none of their songs reached the peak of "Just the Girl," it's a song that conjures up wonderful memories more than 15 years later - and more than a year on from the tragic passing of Schlesinger due to complications from COVID-19 in 2020.