Lisa Loeb Looks for Love
| What’s a nice Jewish girl like Lisa Loeb doing on a reality show like this? | Loeb — a singer-songwriter perhaps best known for her chart-topping single, “Stay (I Missed You),” featured in the 1994 movie “Reality Bites”— now stars on E! network’s “#1 Single,” where her goal is to find a man. |
Some might wonder how hard it could be for a beautiful, talented, smart and famous woman to find that special someone. Loeb told the Forward the answer: Just as hard as for anyone else.
“It’s easy to meet people. With my job, I get to meet new people all the time,” she said. “But I do feel like it’s important to find the right one.”
After ending the second of two consecutive six-year relationships, Loeb, 37, told a friend that her busy touring schedule was interfering with finding someone new. The friend, who works for a production company, said that Loeb’s situation seemed like a great reality-show idea. Along with her other friends and her family, Loeb thought otherwise — at least at first.
“I didn’t want cameras in my personal time while I was trying to deal with something that’s real,” she said. “I only agreed to do it after we’d put together a little crew and actually went out and tried to film some dates and see what it felt like for me to do that.”
For Loeb, having her private life in public view has proved to be a learning experience.
“I realized there are a lot of other people going through what I’m going through,” she said, adding that in many ways the show mirrored what she already enjoys about her career. “The highlight of what I do for a living is I get to share with people and they get to share with me.”
Loeb is seeking someone intelligent from New York or Los Angeles, 30 to 45, funny, sensitive but not wimpy, adventurous yet family oriented, no diets and no fake hair, and he must love cats.
And be Jewish — or at least open enough to take an interest in what “has become more and more important in my life,” she said.
A Dallas native, Loeb grew up in a Reform household and was bat mitzvahed and confirmed, but she said she only recently developed a strong bond with Judaism; what she once said and did by rote has taken on new meaning: “Now when I go to services… I feel more at home, I feel like I actually connect to the traditions. And if there are things I don’t understand, I feel a curiosity.”
Loeb, who is now promoting her recently released album, “The Very Best of Lisa Loeb” (Geffen Records), feels that the TV show turned out well.
That’s nice, but inquiring minds want to know: Did she find true love?
“I can’t tell you what happened,” she said, “but I learned a lot about what I’m looking for and the experience of dating.”
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