![For three weeks in August 1994, Lisa Loeb's "Stay (I Missed You)" sat at No. 1 on the Billboard charts.](https://media.wnyc.org/i/800/0/h/85/1/lisa_loeb_stay2_wide.jpg)
All this month, Soundcheck is taking a look back 20 years to the summer of 1994. We're looking at the music, of course, but also re-examining the movies, books, and other cultural high points of that summer. Where were you -- and what were you listening to? Tell us your story here.
If you ask the right person, the summer of 1994 might conjure images of a grunged-out, long-haired Ethan Hawke returning home to Winonna Ryder at the end of Reality Bites. The Ben Stiller-directed film starred Ryder and Hawke -- alongside Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn, (and Stiller himself) -- as Gen X 20-somethings struggling to make ends meet, figuring out their lives post-college, and navigating friendships and love. While certainly divisive for some, for many, the romantic comedy's depiction of what it felt like to be young and confused in the '90s was, well, formative. And since then, it's become one of those movies that helped define the so-called "Slacker Era."
The film's soundtrack was possibly even more influential -- thanks to the unlikely runaway success of Lisa Loeb's "Stay (I Missed You)."
Twenty years ago, "Stay" was practically everywhere: Written by Loeb with her band Nine Stories, the song's music video was all over MTV and on heavy rotation on the radio; for three weeks that August, it was a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. And while other songs had longer runs at No. 1 -- Ace of Base's "The Sign," Boyz II Men's "I'll Make Love To You," among them -- one thing made Lisa Loeb different: she wasn’t signed to a label. And for many be-speckled music fans, Loeb's distinctive cat-eye glasses were a watershed moment in pop. In fact, Loeb now has her own eyewear line, with one forthcoming model named for her biggest hit.
In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Mario Correa and Julia Cunningham -- who host Entertainment Weekly Radio on SiriusXM -- share the backstory behind the song and the video (it was directed by Hawke, her one-time neighbor, and co-stars his cat), and reflect on "Stay"'s remarkable durability 20 years later.