Lisa Loeb: An Appreciation

lisa loeb

Fresh off her marriage to "The Tonight Show" producer Roey Hershkovitz, '90s alt-culture crush Lisa Loeb is pregnant with her first child. While she hasn't really been a part of the pop music conversation since the turn of the millennium, Loeb may be one of the most iconic characters to come out of the grunge era. She was a folksy singer-songwriter who got her big break when her song "Stay (I Missed You)" got placed on the soundtrack to the 1994 Ben Stiller comedy "Reality Bites," broke out as a single and turned Loeb into a chart-topping star even though she didn't have a record deal. If you were of a certain age in 1994, Loeb was probably the cornerstone of your celebrity crushes, and if you were an especially impressionable person at that time, she might have even informed your entire outlook on the opposite sex. Loeb wasn't the first woman to wear cat's eye glasses or wear baby-doll dresses, but she was the artist who turned the sexy librarian look into a mainstream attraction.

The video for "Stay (I Missed You)" had as much to do with her success as the catchy, earnest song. The clip, which was directed by "Reality Bites" star Ethan Hawke (a friend who got her onto the soundtrack in the first place), contains no edits, was shot in only two takes in Loeb's New York City apartment. Loeb finally signed a record deal and subsequently had a few more minor hits ("I Do" and "How" among them), but more recently she had two reality shows (one a cooking show with then-boyfriend Dweezil Zappa and the other a dating show). But for anybody who discovered "Stay (I Missed You)" in 1994, she'll always be the sad girl in the apartment with the cat.