Top Ten Songs by Counting Crows

Counting Crows, led by singer / songwriter Adam Duritz, burst onto the alternative music scene with their debut album “August and Everything After” in 1993. Since then, they have released three other full-length studio albums of new material (Recovering the Satellites in 1996, This Desert Life in 1999, and Hard Candy in 2002), a “best of” compilation (Films About Ghosts: The Best of Counting Crows in 2003), and two live albums (Across a Wire: Live in New York in 1998 and New Amsterdam: Live at Heineken Music Call in 2006). A new full-length studio album, tenuously titled Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, could be released as early as 2007.

Most of Counting Crows’ music is serious and somewhat sad, even their more upbeat songs have a hint of melancholy in them, although they are not considered to be part of the emo genre. Adam Duritz’s lyrics elevate the ordinary to the extraordinary, and are the main reason I enjoy their music so much.

I’m listing the top ten Counting Crows songs in order of album release date, and, when choosing two songs from the same album, in order that they appear on the album. Each song will have a brief description as well as my favorite lyric included in the list.

1. Anna Begins – August and Everything After (1993)
“And every time she sneezes I believe it’s love / and oh lord / I’m not ready for this sort of thing”.

Anna Begins is a song about the moment when you realize that you’ve fallen in love with the person you’re with and how scary and beautiful it is all at once.

2. A Murder of One – August and Everything After (1993)
“There’s a bird that nests inside you / sleeping underneath your skin / when you open up your wings to speak / I wish you’d let me in”.