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" One of my most cherished memories of junior high is sitting on the bus home from a field hockey game and singing the Lisa Loeb song &amp;quot;Stay&amp;quot; at the top of my lungs with all my teammates. This is such an enduring memory because two decades later, &amp;quot;Stay&amp;quot; is still a damn good song. It brought our tween girl cliques together like nothing else did because there is something universally young and female about the kind of heartbreak and longing Loeb describes in her slightly nasal, lilting voice. Loeb was just another struggling New York City musician when Reality Bites debuted in February 1994, and the song &amp;quot;Stay&amp;quot; hit the billboard charts solely because of its inclusion on the Reality Bites soundtrack, which was a brilliant compilation of mid-&amp;#039;90s sound. In honor of the 20th anniversary (!) of the film, Cosmo spoke to Loeb about how &amp;quot;Stay&amp;quot; came to be and how it changed her life. Tell me about the genesis of &amp;quot;Stay.&amp;quot;  I must have written it in 1992. I wrote it a couple years after I graduated from college, and \u2014 how old was I? 24 maybe? 23, 24. The summer after college I went to Berklee [College of Music] summer school, and it was a song I was writing then. I was influenced by a couple things. I learned Daryl Hall from Hall &amp;amp;amp; Oates was looking for songs. I love his earlier stuff like &amp;quot;Sara Smile&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Rich Girl.&amp;quot; But I found out before I finished writing the song that he didn&amp;#039;t need songs anymore. I think I was going through an argument with a boyfriend at the time, someone I worked with a lot. I recorded at his studio. The main part of the song is autobiographical, which I don&amp;#039;t normally do. I used to play &amp;quot;Stay&amp;quot; along with a lot of the other song I wrote in the &amp;#039;90s in bars and clubs down in the Village in New York, and that was one of the songs that was more requested. I met Ethan Hawke through some of my friends from college. I made music for his plays. There was a group of us who hung out together and saw each other&amp;#039;s shows. Ethan asked me for a copy of my song &amp;quot;Stay.&amp;quot; I gave him a copy I had recorded in NYC, and he passed it along to Ben Stiller [who directed Reality Bites]. What were you doing when you were told it was going to be part of Reality Bites? Did you have a sense that it was going to be your big break? I didn&amp;#039;t know if it was going to be my big break, but I was really excited. I quit my temp job when I found out the song was going to be on the soundtrack. It was something very concrete towards having a music career, which had been bubbling under for three years for me at that point. It was the first thing that made me feel like I was going to be on a bigger level \u2014 U2 and Dinosaur Jr. were on the soundtrack, so it was a variety of bands from different genres I respected. It wasn&amp;#039;t like I was selling out \u2014 it was like being part of a really cool mix tape. In some ways, it played out exactly like I had hoped. All these record companies who were sort of interested in me \u2014 this made them brave enough to actually be more specifically interested.  Once it was started to play on the radio, it was a surprise. I didn&amp;#039;t imagine myself on the radio. I didn&amp;#039;t really listen to a lot of pop radio or watch big Hollywood movies in those days. You&amp;#039;d find alt radio or MTV alt programming or go to the art house movie theater to see more underground movies, so this brought me back to the pop culture world. It kind of made sense because the movie was like that too. It was sort of that era when someone like Ethan Hawke could hit the mainstream. He was in some ways a really big movie star, but he was a real actor. Same with Ben Stiller or Janeane [Garofalo] who had a lot of indie credibility but still were breaking through. What was it like to go from unknown to having a song that&amp;#039;s a top ten Billboard chart hit? It felt pretty natural. It was exciting to not have to do a job I didn&amp;#039;t want to do, because even when I was temping, I took it seriously. The biggest surprises were things like really having the resources to do all the things I had been trying to do already. I could get the clothes I needed to have, the gear I wanted to have. It was just getting to be a professional musician and entertainer. I think the hardest part was dealing with the perception of people close to me, and those who don&amp;#039;t even know me, asking if I was a different person. I was just busier with my work. I was trying to make deals with my band members and make the album we were trying to make. We had a bidding war from record labels. It was exciting to have all that happening, but there was a lot of real work, too. You&amp;#039;ve done so many different kinds of things in the past 20 years. You had a cooking show, you were on a reality show, you make kids&amp;#039; music. Was this how you imagined your trajectory when &amp;quot;Stay&amp;quot; came out?  I don&amp;#039;t think cooking shows or reality shows existed in my mind. I wanted to be an actor when I grew up \u2014 I could imagine doing actual acting, or musical theater was really exciting. I always had a lot of different interests, and I&amp;#039;ve been cautious not to be a dilettante, so [I] focus and focus on the ones I&amp;#039;m better at. Music was working better for me than acting was when I was in college, so I worked really hard at it. I can&amp;#039;t believe 20 years have passed. I am really excited that the song has had staying power [laughs]. I&amp;#039;ve been in phases where I didn&amp;#039;t want to be categorized or known for just one song, but as I&amp;#039;ve gotten older and wiser, I do appreciate being known for one song. I know so many musicians that haven&amp;#039;t had that opportunity to have even one song have some notoriety. It does make a big difference. It&amp;#039;s given me creative freedom. It&amp;#039;s given me so many experiences and led to meeting so many interesting people. I remember meeting David Bowie and Elton John. I met Bruce Springsteen coming out of a bathroom! I&amp;#039;ve been fans of them my entire life. And it&amp;#039;s fun to be a part of an iconic movie. I have to say it was a funny [that] it was marketed as a slacker-generation movie, a Gen-X-people-who-didn&amp;#039;t-know-what-they-wanted movie. Because Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller and all the people we were hanging out with were so driven. What are you up to now? Last year I put two albums out. Actually, I had a baby [in 2012] and put a rock album out [No Fairy Tale]and a kids&amp;#039; book with a CD [Lisa Loeb&amp;#039;s Songs for Movin&amp;#039; and Shakin&amp;#039;], and did some touring and continued to work on my eyewear line. This year I&amp;#039;m in the middle of working on a kids&amp;#039; musical, which I&amp;#039;m collaborating on. I&amp;#039;m just continuing to write music, to make kids&amp;#039; projects, and take care of my own kids. I have a coffee brand, and we give the money to charity, I&amp;#039;m really proud to donate that money to kids going to summer camp, and I love coffee. There&amp;#039;s more opportunities now than there were in the &amp;#039;90s to be able to develop your own businesses and connect other businesses as a musician. It&amp;#039;s acceptable and encouraged to be well rounded.  Follow Jessica on Twitter. Photo Credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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