YMMV / Counting Crows

• Awesome Music:
  • "Mr. Jones", of course!
  • There's a lot throughout their whole discography. Even the cover album. (If you didn't think the world needed a zydeco cover of Pure Prairie League's "Amie", you obviously haven't heard Counting Crows' version.) And for listeners suffering dissociative mental disorders, this band might actually literally be a life-saver.
  • Their live album Across a Wire, covering material from their first two albums, has two sides - one with melancholic acoustic renditions, the other with fist-pumping rock renditions. They're both superb, and probably better than the studio versions.
• Covered Up:
  • "Big Yellow Taxi".
  • They were at the receiving end of this for their song "Colorblind". Mostly overlooked when first released (it never charted anywhere), it became a hit in the British Isles for Leona Lewis in 2011.
• Funny Moments: Adam flubs some of the lyrics on Across a Wire, and fills in by scatting or just saying "forget!" instead of the actual line.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • One outside their actual music is the attention Adam brings to several charities near the end of Across a Wire (one to benefit sufferers of HIV/AIDS, one for abuse victims, one an environmental charity).
  • From a musical standpoint, "A Long December" manages to be both this and a Tear Jerker. "There's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last."
  • Across a Wire as a whole, really, particularly the acoustic disc, despite the bleakness of some of the material. Much of the album consists of what are essentially warmer counterparts of some often rather harsh material. Even the instrument tone feels somewhat comforting.
• Narm: The yell at the very end of "Rain King". Earlier in the same song, the line about "in the belly of a black-winged bird" can be this to some.
• Narm Charm: A lot of their music is really melodramatic and pretentious, but still beautiful.
• Nightmare Fuel: Some of the images in the booklet for This Desert Life could qualify as this.
• Signature Song: "Mr. Jones." For those who know the theme from Shrek 2, "Accidentally in Love" could also qualify.
• The Woobie: Adam Duritz has clearly been through some shit in his life to write the kinds of lyrics he does; "Anna Begins" and "Goodnight Elisabeth" are both about relationships he's had with girls that went horribly downhill due to his rockstar lifestyle. Then you have "If I Could Give All My Love Away -or- Richard Manuel Is Dead", about one of his childhood idols dying, and then "Hanging Tree" which is about his grandmother not even recgonizing him by the time she died.
  • The two main characters of the "Palisades Park" music video are a definitive in-universe example; one becomes a transgender and runs away from home after their girlfriend cheats on them, while the other one has been looking for them ever since.
  • Honestly, most of his characters qualify, too, particularly Maria (then again, Duritz has admitted she’s his Distaff Counterpart, so that’s not really a coincidence).
    But the girl in car in the parking lot
    Says, “Man, you should try to take a shot
    “Can’t you see my walls are crumbling?”
    Then she looks up at the building
    Says she’s thinking of jumping
    She says she’s tired of life
    She must be tired of something.
  • And Margery in “Another Horsedreamer’s Blues”:
    Trying to hit the big one one last time tonight
    For drunken fathers and stupid mothers
    And boys who can’t tell one girl from another
    So she takes her pills, careful and round
    One of these days she’s gonna throw the whole bottle down
    But she’s trying to be a good girl
    And give ’em what they want
    But Margery’s dreaming of horses.

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