That Thing You Do http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Music/That-Thing-You-Do-Original-Soundtrack/0074646782828

Artist: Original Soundtrack

• Includes liner notes by A.M. White.
  
• Personnel: Mike Viola (background vocals).
  
• Audio Mixers: George Massenburg; Mark Wolfson; Bob Clearmountain.
  
• Recording information: The Complex, Entourage, Mix This, O'Henry's, Ocean Way.
  
• Editor: Alex Gibson.
  
• The soundtrack to Tom Hanks' exuberant movie about a one-hit-wonder rock band from the '60s called the Wonders is a nearly-perfect study of early-'60s rock style. The bands on it are all fake, but the sounds are authentic, from the vintage wall-of-sound production of "Hold My Hand, Hold My Heart," performed by a girl-group called the Chanterellines, to the epically sad Burt Bacharach homage "My World Is Over," by Diane Dane, to the outer-space surf guitar of the Saturn 5's "Voyage Around The Moon."
  
• The Wonders themselves sound like they could have had at least two or three hits from the evidence here, but there's no arguing with the one they got. "That Thing You Do!," written in real life by Adam Schlesinger of the New York rock band Fountains Of Wayne and sung by Mike Viola of the Candy Butchers (and now a pop hit in real life, to boot) is a Beatles homage that ranks with anything by the Rutles or Badfinger. The "I Want To Hold Your Hand" beat, the wistful power-pop melody, the sweet'n'sour harmonies, the dizzy middle-eight--it's all so blissfully dead-on that we have to assume they ended with a 7th chord, instead of a Beatlesque 6th, just to avoid litigation. This pop is so perfect it's actionable.