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E48: Signature Themes (with Leila Sales)
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In 2024, author Leila Sales wrote a piece in SPIN magazine, entitled "Movies, Monkeys, Maria: Counting Crows’ Most Signature Songs, by Theme".
In this episode, we have a great time interviewing Leila about her "scientific analysis", her history as a fan, and whether "THE spreadsheet" could be updated!
For more information about Leila:
https://leilasales.com/
and here is a link to the original article:
https://www.spinmagazine.com/2024/01/signature-counting-crows-songs-lyrical-themes/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Lila Sales' Counting Crows Journey
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Sullivan Street again, Chris, where we are going to talk about big picture, counting crows themes. And I guess in some ways, um not big picture, small picture, the words that repeat over and over again. I'm really excited about this. and we And this was triggered by, in a good way, by the by the article by Lila Sales. And Lila, welcome to the podcast. Thank you.
00:00:25
Speaker
Hi, thank you for inviting me. So the article came out in Spin Magazine in 2024, so only a few years ago from today, called Movies, Monkeys, Maria, Counting Crows' Most Signature Thongs by Theme. And as you kind of talk about, well, we'll get into this when we talk about how it came to be, but I thought it was really cool that it was in Spin Magazine, right? And you kind of...
00:00:50
Speaker
mentioned this in one of, I think, the social media or whatever, because I was like, see, Counting Crows are still relevant. They got ah they got a feature in Spin Magazine. And then it got picked up by other news sources, or other aggregators, I guess, right? Because i I saw it, I think, on Yahoo News, and I thought, like, Yahoo ah put the piece out or something. And i was like, oh, no, Spin Magazine.
00:01:09
Speaker
ah But Lila, welcome to the podcast. And before, obviously, it's mostly about your article, and and we're going to, yeah, and our thoughts about the, and by the way, it's very scientific, spreadsheets and all, and that's kind of yeah I have to admit, that's kind of that is a great hook of the piece, like the spreadsheet part. A really big spreadsheet. Yeah, and um reminds me of something I do. Anyway, but first let's talk about, obviously you are at least somewhat of Counting Crows fan to do this. We didn't talk about yet how big of a fan or you just noticed these themes and you thought it was interesting. So ah please talk about your history as a fan of Counting Crows. Yeah, I, you know, I consider myself to be a big Counting Crows fan, though I think my knowledge is nowhere near as complete as yours is. um But yeah, I me see. I got into the Counting Crows when I was in high school. I was born in 1984. So I was not you know, I was not aware of their first albums as they were coming out. ah My father bought me recovering the scott the
Exploring Counting Crows' Concerts and Themes
00:02:10
Speaker
satellites. He got the CD at a yard sale maybe when I was in middle school. And I ignored it because my dad had got it from me and I was in middle school and I was like, anything he thinks I should like, I won't like, I'm not going to engage with it. um
00:02:22
Speaker
But then when I was in high school, I um i went to a ah small all-girls school. There were only 61 girls in my graduating class. And I decided that I was, and this was in the era of ah Napster and um and I had gotten a CD burner. And so it was just really, it was like a free for all of music. um You know, whatever you could find was yours. ah And so I decided I was going to make a mix CD that was going to have a song for the name of every girl in my class.
00:02:55
Speaker
And, or at least as many of them as I could find. And so I started doing, research, which was a lot of just like logging on to Napster and typing in names, you know, typing in Emily and seeing what came up. um And that's how Mambo and number five keep coming up. yeah That's what I want to know. Anyway, I just japanese heard that song recently, so- and a lot of as As soon as I said that, I was like, wait, were any of the girls in my costume?
00:03:23
Speaker
And um i'd like I found a few bands this way ah who, you know, it's like I could have known previously, but that's the thing about being 15 or whatever is it's like there are so many bands out there and you know, and then you discover them for the first time and you're like, hey, it's...
00:03:38
Speaker
you know, has anybody heard of the Smashing Pumpkins? Anyway, that's how I came across um Anna Begins. And, um and so I just downloaded that song because it was, it had the name Anna in a And then I listened to it and I,
00:03:54
Speaker
And I loved it. Like, i loved that song. um And so then i was like, what who is this band and what else have they done? And then I realized I owned one of their CDs. um And so I started listening to that. And then I i then i went and got um and got August and Everything After. and i just became my...
00:04:14
Speaker
you know, my favorite or one of my absolute favorite albums, um, for the rest of high school. You know, I just have memories of driving around in my, uh, 1988 Toyota Corolla, uh, with the windows down. Cause there was no air conditioning, ah blasting murder of one until I literally blew out the speakers in the car and never replaced them because who had the money. um Yeah. And then, ah you know, I, what summer, summer of, what was that? 2002, I guess, after I graduated from high school, I was working at an overnight camp in New Hampshire. And ah the only place you could go, you know the only place that was within an hour's drive or whatever was the Walmart. So when the counselors got the nights off, we would just
00:05:01
Speaker
drive to Walmart and roam around. So I remember going to Walmart the night that Hard Candy came out and um and buying it. And that was then just, you know, my my anthem for that summer.
00:05:13
Speaker
um Oh, that's great. well Chris, one of the first fans, there might have been others, but one of the first fans that became a fan from a non-single Yeah. Right? That Anna Begins. So that's pretty interesting, right? Because most people would have either gotten some exposure from the radio or MTV or whatever. Right. Yeah. It's interesting. It's interesting way in also because i as I'm thinking about it, like there aren't a lot of other songs that use the name Anna, right? I mean, it's not it's like one of the only one I could do when I could think of on top of my head. Yeah. And definitely in the title, you type Anna into Napster and that's what you're getting.
00:05:48
Speaker
Have you been able to see them, ah not that it matters for this, live at all? Yes. I've seen them a number of times. Okay. um And um they're so you know they're so great live. And I think particularly after I like after i listened to the you know the acoustic album Across um across a Wire, i or I guess, it is it all acoustic? Is it acoustic and live? Half acoustic, right. So the half acoustic, half the electric and... Yeah. um And I was like, oh, they just do really cool stuff with their songs live. You know, it's not like I also in high school, I think my other favorite band at the time was Matchbox 20 and who I saw when I was in high school. And they really just like they played their songs kind of straight. That's, you know, it's like you get a really, um you know, it's like
00:06:38
Speaker
a really faithful representation of what you hear on the album when you see it live with the County Crows. was like, yeah, I talk about this in the, in the article, or at least I referenced it a little of like, you know, 12 minute long versions around here. And it's like, you never know what direction it's going to go in Yeah. Did you get to see that tour when they toured together? Was that like a big moment for you?
00:06:56
Speaker
No, I think that was before. I think I was too young at the time. i have No, later. that The 20... Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, I did see that. I saw them at, um I think, Jones Beach um in in New York. Yes, I saw that one. but Because I know I had, again, through Napster, I have this like really janky recording from like sometime in the 90s of them singing...
00:07:18
Speaker
Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys. It's a terrible recording. It's like, um but I was like, but my two favorite bands, they did something together. Yeah. Yeah. No, I... um Oh, that's cool. So this sounds like something. So this article, again, it's it's on a spreadsheet, trying to find the common themes. And and obviously, i guess it one reason I like this is something that I would have done but just didn't do. Like, I have all my concert on a spreadsheet. This is the kind of thing i get into. And you kind of hint about what... Actually, you say this in the article, too. But but this is almost one of the reasons I love The Crows so much. It's because of these recurring themes. And you feel like...
00:07:57
Speaker
Because because your your own personal life has recurring themes, right? Totally. Unless you're just totally one of those people that forget what happened yesterday and block it out at all past relationships or something like that.
00:08:10
Speaker
um So, yeah.
Analyzing Themes in Counting Crows' Music
00:08:12
Speaker
Which is interesting, Eric, also, because we noticed, right, when we did um the last episode we did was about the demos that they did for the oh yeah for the first record. And some of those songs that, you know, obviously didn't end up being on the first record, um you can start to see the germs of these things that will recur for, it you know, like, yeah just, it's always been there. Somehow this is like deeply ingrained. These words and these concepts are just sort of like, he's just been fleshing them out for 30 years in different. like Yeah. Which I love. i i like, I love that so much. There's something that feels almost like, um, like religious about, you know, like looking through a religious text, uh, uh, you know, where it's, you have, uh, you know, just where you have these sorts of, um,
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, these the same words that get used over and over again in these different contexts and um different, you know, phases of life and what and then you get to just like see their meaning kind of develop and every time you add a new layer of meaning onto it.
00:09:08
Speaker
Yeah, I even said that I'll do it into the woods, but I haven't said that Chris for the most recent album, I thought there was one or two spots where I thought they were going to make a past reference and they didn't. And then I was almost disappointed. Now, maybe Adam would say, well, if you're predicting it, then it's not as fun anymore. yeah um So lila then how did this? so Yeah. So what I guess what came first and how did you get this idea into Spin and Magazine?
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah. So, ah sorry, my cat wants to say that. the idea for the spreadsheet was something that I had since college. So 20 years now, because I think it was right. It was at that point there were.
00:09:50
Speaker
three albums out, is that right? Yeah, was before four albums. There were four albums out. um And i and I noticed, I was like, wow, he sings a lot about sleeping and a lot about rain, which were two things that were very important to me also when I was like, those were those were themes that were really meaningful to me. and i think And I was like, and also the color blue. Those were the three that I noticed. And so I started making just a list, you know just in a document on my computer, or I was like, I'll just list. There wasn't anything particularly scientific about it but i was like, every time I hear him reference one of these three things, I will add it to this list on my computer. um
00:10:26
Speaker
And then set that aside for, know, 15, 20 years. And then in 2023, my good friend Rebecca and I, Rebecca is also a huge Counting Crows fan. And she said, she said, come out to LA, which is where she lived. And they were playing at...
00:10:49
Speaker
ah a casino somewhere outside LA. And ah she's like, come out here and we'll go to that show. and is is that the Highland show at Yamaha? Yeah, Yamaha. Yeah, that's where i yeah that I went to that show. well What did you say that was in 2020? 23. Yeah. Yep.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yep. So we went to that and, you know, and I'd seen them a number of times, but being in that show was just making me think again about, you know, this list that I had started 20 years prior. And, um, and then i was like, you know what? Cause I'm a, I'm a writer, right? That's my job. Um, and, and i was like, I could write this as a piece. And then when I realized that it was, uh, 30 years after, um ah after August came out, and I was like, oh, this that's the hook, right? Because you always want to you know, to sell a piece, you need some sort of hook of like, why now? So I could pitch it and say, like, we're coming up on a 30-year, what are you doing for County Crow's 30th anniversary? um
00:11:54
Speaker
And what you should be doing is publishing this article by me. um In fact, by the time that I heard back from Spin and they were interested, it was early 2024, but it was fine. They were still, ah they're still into it. And that's even a greater hook because this is about a retrospective and about recurring themes. Right. So an anniversary is, a you right? Like, like Will Hodge that we talked about did a great piece about just recording of August because it's the 30th anniversary, but this is in particular, like you want to say, Hey, it's been 30 years and these things keep coming up. Right. Yeah.
00:12:24
Speaker
Yeah, 30 years and it's still relevant. So yeah, so this editor at Spin, Ryan Reed, picked it up and he just like, know, he thought it, I don't think it's that he was such a huge founding crows fan. I don't think he is. I think he just thought it was a funny concept and, you know, it's so ah like hyper focused um just like this podcast so right yeah yeah i spent so long on this uh spreadsheet it was real you know where it was like i was like you could stop doing this and you know particularly i was doing it before i even before spin had even agreed to publish it so i was like this is could just be all wasted time like you really you know the sheer number of hours i put into it if you were ah if you were monetizing it i was probably like getting you know like a cent per hour or something So I realize we've been talking about the spreadsheet, but I guess for those that don't know about it, I guess explain what you did yeah your quote unquote scientific method. Although I guess you did kind of bring a scientist in later. did. But for your original, ah yeah, how did you set up the spreadsheet and what does it do?
00:13:32
Speaker
All right, so the spreadsheet has going across the top on the X axis, if you will. um It has the title of every ah original song ah released by the County Crows on their albums or EPs. um And so that is a total of 76 songs, I believe, at the time that I came out with this. So you go across and it goes 76 rows across. And then on the Y axis is...
00:14:02
Speaker
is um like about 25 different elements that I noticed came up a number times that I considered to be canonically counting crows elements. So, and I divided them roughly into blocks. So the first seven are different colors. So there's a line for blue, gray, white, red, blah, blah, blah. The next four are lines for location, street, city, state, country.
00:14:31
Speaker
Then we have three lines for, um, time, I guess. So one is time of day, the next is day, the next is month. And then there's just kind of like a catch all area that has all the rest of them of just particular words that came up a lot, like um angels and ghosts and birthdays in Hollywood.
00:14:51
Speaker
Now I will say that, um and I think you, I, you know, we can, Chris and I will talk about maybe a couple of things that we've, that maybe it's wrong that we think could have been added, but but maybe wouldn't make the count. But, um but just to be clear, these were right. These were what you, you know, listening to these albums so many times, these are the things that you felt kept coming up, yeah which yeah, I, and they all kind of make sense. I, ah maybe i'll even Maybe I'll even mention some of the ones, then we can go into the specific what came up. But you you talked about the the three main themes, the colors, locations, and time. yeah And then I guess I'll quickly, it'll take a second. I'll run through the other 20. So the other ones that you thought, two of them were first names, so Maria and Elizabeth. Then we have Rain, Angel.
00:15:39
Speaker
the ocean or sea, right? what Water, ah like the circus slash carnival, ghost, ah royalty, birds, birthdays, trains, skin, bone, sleeping, dreaming, Hollywood, outer space, Western imagery, ah movie and film, and monkey. Yeah.
00:15:59
Speaker
Did you, were there any in here that when you saw them that maybe surprised you or that you initially were like, nah, that surely doesn't come up that often? I was actually surprised that blue was by by so far out in front of colors. Because obviously there's a lot of colors and I was just not thinking that blue would be 50% more than the closest one. Yeah. and And part of it's that blue comes up in a lot of different ways, like blue rain, blue eyes, and different ways where it's not...
00:16:27
Speaker
the color like saying blue but like it's it's blue it's it's a modifier um but it did strike me and I had to actually go back bit I'm like where's the blue oh and you're finding them in a couple places so I just I never processed that that was so far out front interestingly There's maybe three that wouldn't have come to that. I guess when I read that as a... Well, all right. so Some of it's the way I think. So I probably... But you're right. Maria and Elizabeth are the names I would have put. Part of me would have said, oh I'm only going to pick the name Maria because that clearly was more than Elizabeth. But you're right. Elizabeth comes a lot. So the only surprise to me was, and I don't know how the count came up, was maybe Bone...
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, let's see. Bone, four times. Okay, Western imagery, which I'm not sure how you classify that. Yeah, a little broad. That came up six times. Oh, okay. i did I should have written down, for some of them I wrote, why, so...
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, now you have to scroll through the sheet and cross-reference it with one of the Oh, and royalty, that's the other one. I know what you're saying, the reigning king. Yeah, but I probably wouldn't... I'm going to say it wouldn't come to mind for me. Yeah. So these might be all correct, but I wouldn't have come up with royalty, bone, or Western imagery. But all the other ones... royalty, when you think about it, though, again, like the queen, and even like obviously reigning king, but in Elizabeth, right, the...
00:17:49
Speaker
I'm the king of California and she's the queen of the rain. You know, yeah. If she's the queen of California, I'm the king of the rain. but yeah No, yeah. As I said, some of these probably are, they probably are all correct. I just, that that that's just the way my mind works. But everything else I would have, I probably, and what movie film is a good, that's a good, um although I guess you could put book. I'm guessing he has, ah you know, because he's he was the english right ah English major, right, Chris, or literature major or something like that. Yeah. I know that the Henderson thing, right? The rain cave, that's based upon a book. so Or just more like art more generally. There's a little bit of like, ah ah obviously when I dream of Michelangelo comes to mind, there's a lot of just sort of references to
00:18:29
Speaker
pieces of art, I think. And that yeah might even add to that. yeah but Yeah. Which makes sense, right? I think most artists are inspired by their artists. So i just, i just ah you know, control F'd through my complete list of Counting Crows lyrics that I used to make this. No, the literal word book is used only twice. Oh, okay. So obviously you don't, you know, it's like there can be, initially when I made this, I was just doing control F for specific words. Yeah. yeah It wasn't really sufficient because, um, cause sometimes things are not, you know, the reference to something is not actually, i don't know the exact word. Um, so right. There are other book references that are not going to be the literal word book.
Evolution of Themes Across Albums
00:19:11
Speaker
So what was the what was one example of the Western imagery again? Not to focus on that one. Like I see Elizabeth has has one tick. Yeah, tell me here. Let me look at my, tell me tell me a song that had it. Good night, Elizabeth.
00:19:22
Speaker
And Cowboy.
00:19:27
Speaker
Oh, I mean, listen, this is probably like we grew up to be cowboys. We couldn't all be cowboys. Oh, right, right, right. So cowboy stuff. Right, right, right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He does. Oh, right. So that's, it's funny. When I saw that, I was kind of waffling. Right. No, because 1492 has cowboy. Cowboys. Cowboys.
00:19:44
Speaker
Cowboys says a lot about cowboys. So no, you're right. Okay. yeah But then I did it a little broader because it wasn't Cowboys alone was not yeah like, I think that was only a couple songs, but then there were a few other words that just fit in so naturally with cowboy that. Yeah. um Yeah.
00:19:59
Speaker
Cool. So, um, so the look, uh, where's the location thing? Okay. Right. So you had the, right. So you had, eyes i see, I see. Right. And you had the locations separate so we can talk about, and then you even mentioned here, I guess I'll, I just had some things highlighted that you said, no surprise, a lot about California, at the time mentioned in nine songs and n LA, which of course is part of California and Hollywood, which is part of LA, which is part of California. Yeah. So I have an observation there. So if you take a look, obviously there's a lot of cities early on as as well. But yeah starting with Somewhere Under Wonderland, every song released yeah has either a city
00:20:38
Speaker
or a very specific reference to a place. The two exceptions that don't directly mention a city are Bobby and the Rat Kings, which mentions the city, which as a New Yorker, that's clearly, it's New York. Yeah, absolutely.
00:20:52
Speaker
Also told Bobby and the Rat Kings, let's assume that's how it works. And Boxcars, but specifically references Grand Central Station. But all of the other ones mention a city. So, like, legitimately, you can't find a song post-2014 that doesn't have a city in it. And I had not processed that, but that is kind of amazing. Like, it's always been about specifics. But, man, this is, like, very – like, this is a geography lesson the last – Right. Three albums. Right. well And that's so cool. that's i hadn't I hadn't really, you know, when I wrote this article, I did not do anything with um
00:21:31
Speaker
ah like patterns in terms of the time of his songwriting of saying like, what are, you know, i think i think maybe there's one thing I mentioned in an album where it's like, okay, you know, he mentions this one thing um three times, but it's all in one album. So, ah you know So that was just like a passing phase and doesn't really count for the purposes of this article. um But yeah, i hadn't looked at like the the idea that the cities got more frequent um as we got further into it. But yeah, you can see it's like... um right In the first album, there are three songs that mention a city by name.
00:22:06
Speaker
In the second album, there are two songs that mention a city by name. And you're right. I think you hit in the article. um i could be wrong. but that that ah okay so he he met Of course, because he lived in California so long in his formative years, both as a college student and as a younger adult. But as far as... the like um the variety of places, it's it's pretty diverse, right, across the U.S., from Omaha to Texas to anywhere in between. Although it made me think, reading the article, i was like, I don't think he's ever mentioned Pennsylvania or Philadelphia, and that very much upsets me. No, no. That feels personal. Yeah, i got ah he's got all you know so many other references to others, to cities and states. Really? Delpy is a hard word to Brian. I know.
00:22:58
Speaker
But you're right. And so is Pennsylvania. Philly is easy. guess Penn C or you just have to be Philly. I'm from Boston and he does have a song where mentioned Boston, Walkaways. Yeah, Walkaways. Exactly. Which I love. It's such a short song he still managed to mention my home city. So But yeah, I will say a funny thing. So when i um when I wrote this article and it came out in Spin, I was very proud of it. And I posted it to the Counting Crows subreddit. and And the first response that I got was somebody saying like, I've already noticed an error. Oh, I love that. The first response, which was that, and they were right. um i had um i had classified, where is it?
00:23:42
Speaker
uh in perfect blue buildings i classified virginia as a state um because i i had not really looked at it in the context in which of course it's a street um and i have now fixed this on the spreadsheet um but i just love that was the it was so it was so the internet what i was like okay great point i did get that one thing wrong but like i spent so much time working on this but do you have any other thoughts about this do you have any and you know like that's our opposite it's like Was there anything you liked or just that one thing you hated? oh i
00:24:16
Speaker
i thought about that this week because that Reddit is fairly positive because think the moderators try to keep it positive. But but i um someone I was i like trying to look at something else I posted in in the past and I noticed one of the top comments because i refer to the Count of Crows shorthand as the crows because to me they are the only crows. and it's I'm not going to say Count of Crows. ever Someone's like, is that what we're referring to them now? And then someone else is like, yeah, no, we're not.
00:24:40
Speaker
And I was like, I am. You can have your own podcast and don't call kind crazy. Call it if you want. Yeah. yeah see i decided not to give a snarky response, but I wanted to. ever It's never worth getting into snarky responses on the internet. so like Thanks for the feedback. So good stuff. I do want to talk about – had some other – of course, we have a lot of comments. But why don't you at least talk about the the methodological help you got from somebody named Ryan – I don't know.
00:25:09
Speaker
McAuliffe or something? Yeah. So I don't even know this dude. Have never met him. um But um so I um I was doing some
Statistical Analysis of Lyrics
00:25:20
Speaker
work and continuing to do some work with this ah AI powered storytelling game, which is called Hidden Door. And the people who do that are, they're like really good at,
00:25:33
Speaker
I don't know, LLMs and ah things that I don't understand because I'm just a writer. And so i I do, I advise them on like storytelling stuff anyway. But so I decided that I wanted to um have somebody do like proper analysis of these words because as I say in the article, I was like, it's not...
00:25:52
Speaker
you know, like, is it remarkable that ah rain comes up in whatever it is, 28 songs or something like that? And the answer is like, well, only if that's unusual. Like, is that statistically noteworthy? I don't know. If, ah you know, if most song, like if, if 25% of all songs are actually mentioned the word rain, then it's not particularly remarkable that Adam Duritz is doing it, you know, like, the word the comes up in every song but that doesn't mean anything um so i sent over a complete document right so i i reached out to my contacts there and they said like oh here's someone here's someone on our team or who we know who uh who does this sort of thing and he just did all this for me
00:26:35
Speaker
basically just for free. He was like, I don't even really know or care about the counting crows. But he was like, I love to do statistical analysis, so let's go. um so he ah So I sent over the ah full lyrics document, and he compared that to ah this LLM that had just sort of like the frequency of every word that is used across, um I don't know, American English, I guess, like, you know, all written works, whatever they use to put together the LLMs.
00:27:07
Speaker
And right. And so then he created this, ah this document for me. which is, I have it pulled up here that you can't see it. it's And it shows like which words are used disproportionately. um So like the first one on it um is not useful. The first word on it is bumming, as in bumming around, um at which it was used like
00:27:32
Speaker
44,000 times more frequently than it's used in ordinary conversation. was like, that's not, it's not relevant. And then also like the problem with this statistical analysis that he had done, I realized as soon as I looked at it was that um it accounts for ah like, if ah if a word is used a bunch of times in the same song, um it counts every one of those instances, which is not actually relevant for what I was doing. I was just looking at like a per song thing. Anyway, so so, okay, so that, like, I didn't really care. Next was the word all right, which was used 1,000 times more than it is in usual conversation. Again, I was like, he just repeats the word all right a bunch and it doesn't doesn't matter. That's kind of interesting, though, because that is a word I think about
00:28:16
Speaker
With the crows, like, um, really it's, ah but that he did, well, especially interestingly, because it doesn't come up as much. I'm thinking about it I'm thinking about like live versions of good night, Elizabeth, where he literally says it's all right.
00:28:27
Speaker
a lot. Um, but I think there's something to that word of being like, am am I all right? It's all right. Like there's a, that's a, is somehow resonant. I don't know if I have more, on that but that's interesting. Yes, well and but but you're also getting at the point there of like how, yes, in Goodnight Elizabeth, he says he uses the word all right probably like 10 times, you know? So maybe more than that. So it already is like ah kind of like artificially upping the prevalence of that word in Counting Crows songs, right? Yeah. Like bumming. Bumming is really a song. um but then ah But then we get to things that are... So aquarium um is used... ah Comes up in County Crow's songs more than 500 times as frequently as it comes up in like the general body of work.
00:29:20
Speaker
I think that's just because aquarium as a word doesn't come up that frequently. Of course. In the bodies of work. like How often does it actually... come up Where does a quick the word specifically aquarium come up actually? um I think earthquake driver.
00:29:33
Speaker
oh yes, yes. And in the chorus of earthquake driver, you're right. yes so it's It's repeated a few times aquarium. Yep. And it's literally only in that one song. So again, it's like I wasn't going to add that to the spreadsheet because it's just one song. yeah make It doesn't make it. And in that one song, he says it ah five times. But like, OK, that doesn't mean anything. OK. Scarecrow used 186 times as many as frequently. ah Just because that song. Yeah. Probably. Yeah.
00:30:06
Speaker
Dislocation, Spaceman. And then we got to Dreaming, which is used 125 times as frequently. and I was like, that one resonates with me. that that right So that was so i was sort of I was looking both at, like here are the numbers, but also I was using like i had to use my own interpretation. um Right? Which is where that's, right? That's it. I feel like. Yeah, I think you did the right.
00:30:31
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think you did the right thing. Well, yeah, you just pointed out a point too, and now things will change, but you have to program AI to write what you're looking for, and then, like you said, interpret the results and massage certain things. Yeah, you have to actually listen to these songs in order to interpret this long list of words. Yeah. But it seems you're saying that...
00:30:51
Speaker
In a sense, right relative to the average usage of English, the theme that comes up the most in Counting Crow songs relative to the rest of things is dreaming. right yeah that dream Adam Duritz has an interest in dreaming yes that exceeds by 125 times what other people do, which also seems kind of surprising. You'd think people... i don't know, dreaming's a...
00:31:13
Speaker
It seems like a ah not uncommon concept, but um he's, yeah. But and again, that was one of the things that I was surprised at too, was the frequency of sleeping and dreaming. And again, knew it was, knew it was,
00:31:28
Speaker
you know, a theme, obviously, but didn't, hadn't really processed how much it dominates even something like rain, which of course we think about, you know. Right. mean, rain king is right there, but you know. And then, and then again, looking at this list, you know, it's like, okay, so dreaming 125 often, the word itself. um Slumber,
00:31:48
Speaker
the word twenty two times as often um the word Dream is used 10 times as often. um and then, of course, we get to sleep further down here. um But yeah, no, he's really, really into dreaming and sleeping. Well, and even the theme about angels, some of that relates to the dreaming, right? Because in Angel's Silence, the angels, I don't know if this is what he believes in general, that they come more when you are sleeping.
00:32:21
Speaker
and they And they do things. So that fits into that as well. And in terms of alts, right? the The round here one, did you think that you were dreaming? I said no, which I didn't think. yeah But like that's a very... love that.
00:32:32
Speaker
Yeah, and that's, a it was a great one. It's like very, that one's very resonant to like the overall theme of the work to me. I think that one's very like, if you were trying to define and try to play like, hey, this is what this guy seems to think about. Something like that is pretty on the mark. Did think that you were dreaming? I said, sometimes I don't know.
00:32:50
Speaker
He doesn't know if he's dreaming is and you know i i really like the I spent a lot of time with the when I was in college, I spent a lot time with the liner notes on hard candy. and um all of which or Many of which were just him talking about how like he couldn't sleep.
00:33:09
Speaker
um And as a college student who was like very overstressed, that really resonated with me, just sort of you know where you're just sleeping weird times and um and therefore everything seems um yeah kind of kind of like soft and fuzzy around the edges. you know It's not- Yeah.
00:33:27
Speaker
um yeah I like the one observation you make. It's such a minor thing, but I also agree with you that you, I think it's the only one you mentioned that you, a theme that you thought would show up more, but didn't, which is birthdays. I kind of agree with you. I also would have thought the same thing, but nice but you're right. i The only one that now comes to mind specifically mentioned birthdays is, um is a God of ocean tides. Right. When he talks about birthday cakes. Right. um Maybe that's it. But yeah, in my mind, he would have, ah that's why I didn't, uh,
00:34:00
Speaker
mentioned that you know as as as as an odd one if you will uh when i listed them so no but totally like when when when we first listened to god of ocean times my friend rebecca and i were like oh there he is like talking about birthdays again and then when i was doing this article i was like wait he doesn't actually talk about birthdays i guess you mentioned in a hanging tree and dislocation so i wouldn't have i don't even remember that off top my head and then a little bit yeah ah Hanging Tree is I got a pair of wings for my birthday, which is right but that's ah also an Angels reference, maybe. right maybe Yes, yeah maybe. there were wings, I was like, is it Angel or is it birds? had to that's um Honestly, though, I feel like you guys have hit upon a really great trivia game that you actually are exceedingly good at, where it would be like, okay, what is like what's the birthday reference in Hanging Tree? Go. And like...
00:34:47
Speaker
Oh, that is, yeah, that that would be, that would be pretty good. like I'm not as good it as you are where I'm like, I guess there's a birthday reference in Hanging True, but I have to like look at the lyrics to remember. Isn't that a reference to getting, I don't know, is that a reference to like Icarus getting too close to the sun or isn't it Icarus that has the wings and I could be wrong.
00:35:04
Speaker
Well, that's where it's interesting. Like, again, even some of like the dreaming and stuff, like there's actually a bunch of stuff on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, like insignificant, I think you could say too. kind of everything in Cowboys and 1492 where I don't know if he says dreaming in those ones, but like they're very, um to your point about sort of like everything's kind of fuzzy.
00:35:23
Speaker
Yeah. Like that's what I get from those lyrics is like everything's pretty fuzzy. Yeah. You know. um there's a hallucinatory yeah aspect to them. That's the word I was looking for. Hallucinatory. Yeah. Oh, so let's, let's mention. So ah Chris, you, and I'll mention mine and there probably would be more. Is there anything that if you put on, if you made this list off the top of your head that you would have added to the blue instead of maybe some other things, the only three. And again, I wish I gave it more. so I don't know why, because it doesn't matter. Well, i give more thought this week, but the ones that come would be wire.
00:35:58
Speaker
Yeah. And the kind of the balancing thing, right? Because it's ah i mentioned um you know a couple a couple times, right? ah yeah Omaha and then... um Elizabeth. comes ah Yeah. And then also a Tuesday in Amsterdam. Because like some a wire and Stevens Green. Oh, and it's in Round Here. Did you say that? Yeah. No, I didn't say it. So so it does come up ah quite a bit. And that's that's one of the... um Yeah, now I thought it was going to come up again. That's why I said on the new album, because I think he says on Virginia Threat across the garden or something, but I thought he was going say across the wire. but I think I should add wire. I'm looking right now, and I'm counting. I'm up to five already. Okay, wire. He likes those wires. Six. Six.
00:36:37
Speaker
Six different songs. Okay. No, there's more. You're right. why are you in there So you put rain. i Part of me, I don't know if it's mentioned that much, but as are clouds mentioned much? And then I was like, maybe that's in with the rain a bit. So maybe that should have been rain slash clouds. I mean not that this is, you know, unless we do an updated list for the 40th anniversary of the crows something. The word cloud, I mean, I'm completely game. The word cloud is only used twice. Okay. So there you go. One apple seeds lament and you can't count on me.
00:37:06
Speaker
Okay. ah the But so the other theme that i don't might only be mentioned like three or four times would be either fade or fading, which ties into the hallucinatory. Yeah. Not only daylight fading, but there's a lot about fading.
00:37:20
Speaker
yeah So yeah, it'd be interesting where that how how much count you get on that one. Again, you'd have to do fade or fading. Right. But I'm guessing there'd be like six references yeah or something like that. Yes. I i think i think that's right. And I i want to... like I feel like I can i can update this spreadsheet, right? Who would slap It's my spreadsheet. I'm going to add a wire. Version two, wire it wire and fading. I mean, listen, I already fixed the embarrassing Virginia mistake, so why not? ah ah Chris, were there any things that came to mind for you or not really? one that comes to mind is... is um
00:37:56
Speaker
religious imagery explicitly, which it would be a hard one, I think, to certainly, because I'm just thinking about like Virginia through the rain mentions Gethsemane, which is, as you were saying, garden. It's the garden of Gethsemane. Right, right. Okay. When I drew up like Elangelo. I don't think I would have recognized that word as being a religious one. I don't think I know that word. I had to look it up. yeah It's the garden where Jesus ah gets betrayed, i think, right, by Judas.
00:38:22
Speaker
There's a garden. of It's right before Jesus gets crucified or something. There's a reference to garden. But that's part of the thing, right? It's like, even questions like is something like, is when I dream of Michelangelo or 14, not Angels of the Silences, are those, or even just references to angels, are those religious
Interpreting and Theorizing Themes in Songs
00:38:39
Speaker
references? Right. Maybe sometimes.
00:38:41
Speaker
um When I dream of Michelangelo is explicitly referencing the Sistine Chapel, right? But is... you know, is, is, I don't know, like that, that there's kind of a, a bit of a, ah question around some of that, but. All right. Virginia Truth Reign also mentions Moses.
00:38:57
Speaker
Okay. That, that I would have recognized. as palmma yosis yeah But you're totally right, Chris. There is, there is the, the like human decision-making element here, which again is where it's like, like you're looking at the word, but you do have to look at the word in context and be, Right. Like I was saying earlier with wings and feathers. Okay. Those come up a lot, but is it, are we talking wings and feathers in the angel context or in the bird context or neither?
00:39:20
Speaker
Or neither. Or yeah. Like, or even i always think about like, it it took me even processing it as, as when I was, when I was younger, was like, Oh, Sullivan street, New York. And you're like, no, no, He lived in San Francisco at the time. Yeah. I also lived in New York. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I still think, I mean, again, I'm walking down Sullivan street. I still yeah think i so sing it to myself. Yeah. Yeah.
00:39:38
Speaker
um I bought bootlegs. I bought Counting Crows bootlegs on Sullivan Street. That's a real thing that happened at Generation Records in the village, which I think, I hope is still there. I'm not quite sure. How often do I go buy CDs? you know Sorry, you just said, and because I don't think we said this on the podcast, especially given that the podcast is called Sullivan Street. But Sullivan Street is, it right, I think of it in the New York, and it's not that big of a street, right? Isn't it only like five blocks or something? Yeah.
00:40:02
Speaker
Um, and then I just remember, yeah, anyway, I had a, I don't think I ever said that maybe i did once at a particular imagery of like having a not great date. Not, not that the date was not charming, but I was just like, yeah, she's not interested. And this was a waste of ah a thing. And it was right at Sullivan street. And of course, like you're leaving and getting a little depressed about your mid twenties or something.
00:40:23
Speaker
Luckily the Italian restaurant was good. Uh, but. Well, if you look at you know if you look at the body of work holistically, right? it's like that he literally, he goes on to do a song about Washington Square, which is he walks from Sullivan Street. So if you're not looking at the like passage of time and where he was in his life, if you just looking at it all as one, like, yeah, yeah did it makes sense. He said where from, Chris, but maybe you just said it. what was is It was either, I think, in Baltimore or Berkeley. It's San Francisco. because It is San Francisco. Yeah, take the way home because he's driving ah his girlfriend at the time home or something like that the story. But the way home would have to be, if it's leading to Sullivan Street, it's leading to Sullivan Street in San Francisco because okay that's where that would be occurring.
00:41:04
Speaker
I literally just always pictured him walking down Sullivan Street in the village. Then you said driving, and I was like, driving on Sullivan Street? Yeah. Who would do that? Yeah. It'd be a terrible idea. Oh no, Lila. Even though I kind of always knew that because I, cause especially cause he didn't move to New York until around the hard candy time that I, but I rewrote history in my mind to be the Sullivan street in New York, especially because of the references to Washington square, et cetera. Generation records still open. Go in the basement. Maybe you can find some counting crows bootlegs.
00:41:34
Speaker
um I mean, you could also get them all online now and don't like, don't pay for bootlegs, but also like if it's $2 now, I mean, Grab a CD. And if it keeps an independent record store in business. Yeah. Yeah. I actually, it was actually interesting going back to things. I was looking at Bobby and the Rat Kings where I was talking about the city thing. And i always realized like he's, I always envisioned that song occurring in New York City. yeah I envisioned it happening at the Hammerstein Ballroom, but then I realized looking at that, was like, no, no, he's got to get back to the city by 10, which means he must be out someone they must be outside the city in the song. Weird. So maybe they're on Long Island or in Jersey or something.
00:42:11
Speaker
um but and So anyway, i' but anyway just it's not going to change how I listen to the song. I'm still going to envision the Hammerstein Ballroom as where the concert is taking place. Right, right, um yeah. Which is very mean. yeah. Joey's got to run for the train. Says he's trying to make it back to the city by 10. Okay. Yeah. I guess you're right. I don't know why. you're You're absolutely right. I don't know why I was thinking L.A. for that song. It makes no sense. But um but again, this is again, this is why, you know, yeah it's the weird thing of like there's so many specifics in these songs, but at the same time, we're all just interpreting them. Absolutely. um It means he must be really good at writing songs. I think that's a good conclusion we can come to. i i definitely feel like that's a that's a good take home.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah, and I had that video in my mind because I don't think the video i think the video might have been shot in L.A. or some of it, and not in New York. i wanted question I have a question for you, Lila. You have you have a a very specific reference in the article to that Miami ah is not the best song named for a city, but it's your favorite.
00:43:06
Speaker
What is the best Crow song named for a city? ah Raining in Baltimore. ah yeah That's probably, yeah, I'd agree. I I, I personally prefer, I'm more likely to queue up Miami. Um, but you raining in Baltimore is probably the, yeah, I love raining in Baltimore. If you listen to our like ranking, probably Miami might've won, at least with the people that have been on this podcast. Cause cause raining in Baltimore, cause Miami was, was voted, I think the best song or tied for best think it best on the record yeah song. And then raining Baltimore might've been, you know, a little lower than that. So you ah you have an interesting, um I almost wanted to joke, a crow's conspiracy theory, which that's that's just more being me being funny. But one thing I never, and I'm not sure I agree with you, but I like the hypothesis, which is... like I know where you're going, but on. Is it the Maria reference? Yes. That's what I was thinking of. So talk about this. I kind of like this. So talk about this a little bit, about the Maria could stand for more than you think. mean, listen. All right. I've never done any... ah
00:44:04
Speaker
I never do any research into what these things are actually about. Like, that is weirdly not interesting to me. um So, like, I was listening to an episode that that you all did recently, um and you were talking about Mrs. Potter's Lullaby, which I love. That's one of my favorite songs. um And it and And you were like, oh, he could have changed the name, but no, he chose to, you know, he it was very obvious about the fact that it was about Monica Potter. And i was like, I don't know who Monica Potter is. And I don't care, right? Like, this has been one of my favorite songs for 20 plus years. It has never occurred to me. Google, like, who is Mrs. Potter? It doesn't, like, and that doesn't matter to me. So, and i so so yes i think that... um
00:44:44
Speaker
one could probably quite easily with actual knowledge about Avendurts' life, prove or disprove who each referenced Maria or Andy or Elizabeth or whatever is. But that is not something that I personally have ever heard. Oh, no, and I don't know any of them either, except for that Anna, he's mentioned a lot of times, this is this woman from ah Australia.
00:45:05
Speaker
who you Who we met backpacking. That's the only one. But was her name really Anna? I guess it was, right? I i didn't know if you changed her name. But he definitely met her backpacking when he was in Europe. And he knew, partly because it was backpacking, that it was going to be temporary. Okay. But the other ones, and i have no idea. But but talk about the the the link to the...
00:45:23
Speaker
The theory that I truly made up and have ah tried neither to confirm nor deny um is that um in Butterfly in Reverse, Duritz mentions somebody named Marianne. So what I posited here is what if...
00:45:41
Speaker
the Maria of ah there's a piece of Maria in every song that I sing. What if she, what if that's short for Marianne, which could mean that, okay, it's the same person in butterfly in reverse, but also couldn't it be possible that ah Anna could be a nickname for Marianne as well? In which case, as I say here, the song Anna Begins will also be a Maria song.
00:46:02
Speaker
Plausible. Yeah. false No, I like it. Thanks for coming with me on this little ride. The the backwards piece right is we don't, so I believe you has said that Marianne, is short, is is actually, it's a rubb like Mary Louise, his friend Mary Louise Parker. Right.
00:46:17
Speaker
But what we don't know, what we what we'll never know, and many people have tried to do research and figure this out, we have no idea who the hell Maria is. If she's a he has said, he's just said something like, but you know, Maria is me or something, but that's, there's a great, and I wish I could find it, it's like probably buried in the internet somewhere. There was ah like a long thing, someone wrote like,
00:46:37
Speaker
Pages and pages. Like, just... The amount of time you spent on this spreadsheet, I think this person spent... He spent trying to figure out who Maria is. And his his strong belief is that Maria is a real person and that she's specific. And... I don't know. I don't... It it seemed reasonable to me at the time. But again, there's nothing that prevents...
00:46:56
Speaker
ah Mary Ann from also being Maria Maria in which case Anne slash Anna could also be anyway sorry right no again we don't like all of these things are open and all of these things are just they could be dot connecting Maria could be three different people who knows I don't know Right. And that's the beauty about it. Sort of going back to what I was earlier about like the sort of like like interpreting a religious text, right, where it's like um it's, you know, it both is and is not the real thing. Like, you know, yeah, Maria could be an actual person. It can be an amalgamation of a bunch of people, everybody who he's ever loved and lost. ah It could be ah himself. It could be the concept of loving somebody. And and probably at various points, it actually has been all of those like all of those beings are stacked on top of one another.
00:47:43
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I mean, and like the fact that he dense condenses down like Mary Louise into Marianne, which is Maria, right, is notable. Not that again, not to say that it's not the same person, but the fact that that's where he goes to when he's trying to talk about this is to a variant on Maria as opposed to anything else that he could have used to fit that re meter, you know, um is interesting. that's yeah Yeah. That's why I love that line. There's a piece of Maria in every song that I sing like that. There feels like something very self-aware about that.
00:48:13
Speaker
I mean, by the way, I agree with another one of your hypotheses. Well, no, wait I guess we're going to close with that. I wanted to talk about when you said to most the most Counting Crows song, so we won't do that. Oh, by the way, another – one thing that surprised me, this is totally random. This is such the most nerdy esoteric thing ever, that in Goodnight l LA – Yeah.
00:48:31
Speaker
yeah I was really surprised, and now looking at lyrics with more surprising here. Heart on a Wire, also another Wire reference. um Also, ah so there's no specific time mentioned. In my mind, it was, because I was like, good night, LA, you don't mention any time of day. it's because he doesn't actually say, he just says the 38 hours and yeah and how the daylight's coming, but doesn't actually say, um it does mention blue and gray, so more colors there. Yeah. The other thing that I was almost going to add to your list, it reminds me of the circus and carnival, but it could be in somewhere else is spinning.
00:49:08
Speaker
Because I know in wheels, spinning in wheels, because I know it's mentioned in St. Robinson's, it's mentioned here about spinning and wheels. And so I don't know why, maybe because they're both mentioned in St. Robinson, I think. So I don't know why I think of the circus and carnival is spinning, right? Because of ride or something like that.
00:49:24
Speaker
But um that's maybe a little... yeah No, spinning does come up a lot. I think the word dizzy comes up. Okay, right? That could be spin. That's a good one. I wouldn't have thought of that. That's true. um And oh a bird of another bird bird reference and a sea reference in Goodnight LA. Who would have known Goodnight LA? Right, because Mrs. Potter is so like on the nose. I'm like, oh, all these themes come up. But Goodnight LA is the sneakiest because it also is about sleep and... um and wires and there's a train reference station to station do you do you have that on your thing oh my god i don't know if i do i might need to add it okay so good night la i do take a look at that one what it says right now is that good night la has a couple of five counting cruise elements the ones that i have in here are sleeping birds ocean slash sea la gray blue so no there's nothing about train i did not mark trains i will add trains Yeah, there we go. So, yeah, anyway, that's kind of funny. Well, there's, again, there's an argument about the time of day there, right? Because, like, you know, the daylight is coming is not a time of day, but it's almost like a reference to a time of day. I almost think you can put that as a time of day one also. That's one of my... So, who would have known? Goodnight LA, one of the sneakiest Cat and Cruise themes, heavy...
00:50:43
Speaker
I will say the the other one that really the other thing that really surprised me was how many times Tuesdays come up. I hadn't even thought about that. And then again, this is where my brain goes. I listen to so many live shows. But there's an alt, which apparently he worked on with Courtney Cox. It's like unbelievable song. Barely out of Tuesday.
00:51:00
Speaker
And around here. So there's another Tuesday. but something about tuesdays i don't know there's like that's a much more meaningful it's almost all weekends otherwise there's a lot of saturdays and sundays um tuesday's the only weekday we get other than there's one monday what's our one monday all my love gotcha and is there any am i wondering i'm barely out of tuesday if there's any other any other references yeah today's because it's uh He woke up, to no, he woke up Tuesday morning. He's, did he do say Wednesday in that?
00:51:36
Speaker
Seen seven hours of Wednesday. Yeah. Um, So you guys, um so anyway, in retrospect, Goodnight l LA maybe you could even sneak into the top three. But um so why don't you, ah I actually like, well, and it gets an unfair advantage because Mrs. Potter is is one of the, is Chris one of the only songs of Counting Crows that has four verses? don't know if we've ever talked about that. So it gets a little unfair advantage for having more lyrics. It has so many lyrics. It's so long. it um
00:52:11
Speaker
Yeah, like both both in terms of time, it is longer than many of their other album recordings in terms of lyrics also like, like less of that time is spent on the chorus than in many other songs. It's very lyrically rich. And so yes, it's like, of course, he's gonna fit in like all of these themes. And Jeff Harkness has said on this show, and we agree with him, that, I mean, you could definitely argue that Mrs. Potters has not only the themes, but you could make a strong argument that it's his best lyrically written song that he has. So I kind of would vote for that, as the most Counting Crows song. But why don't both of you, and we'll start with you, Lila, what you wrote about what might be the most Counting Crows song of all Counting Crows songs, as you wrote. I mean, think it probably is Mrs. Potter's Lullaby, but I do think it's worth noting that Palisades Park has, out of the qualities that I selected, it has 12 of them, which is crazy. Again, it's a very long song, so he just has time to get to more of them.
00:53:13
Speaker
um That's true. And then you also listed Round Here and and um and Rain King. Did you put Mr. Jones too? no i guess... yeah i mean Here's the thing with Mr. Jones. If you count every color separately, it's dominating, but I don't count every color separately. I just counted it as one of like, you mentioned colors. Okay.
00:53:34
Speaker
So then we just have colors, Maria. um And I don't know, is that it?
00:53:44
Speaker
Maybe that's it. Yeah, because there's no there's there's no specific location. Well, there I mean, he's at the bar, right? He's down at the New Amsterdam, which is a bar, but you have street cities, so there's not like a... Right. I do not i did not count Amsterdam as a city in that particular one, so I didn't get that wrong.
00:54:03
Speaker
Right. No, no, no. that's it Yeah, that's a... um
00:54:09
Speaker
yeah it's It's mostly just, yeah, it's it's the ct it's colors mostly, um I think, as I'm thinking about it, right? it's um And also, of course, there are right ideas are not words, right? So the ideas presented in Mr. Jones are are ideas that we see across tons of Counting Crows songs, just because he isn't using the, right? Like the idea of...
00:54:33
Speaker
fame and wanting to be famous and how being famous fucks with you is something that comes up a ton. It's just that like the word itself is not Yeah, no, thank you. I actually, that was going to be, yeah you're you're stealing my thunder a bit, but not really. I was almost going to end with, not but that was one of the points I wanted to make about and that I both appreciate and want to note about is that, um yeah, is that themes, sometimes you can put as particular words, like, you you know, as you put here, space, outer space, and then you can mention particular words, but that's a little different than themes. And for example, like you just said, fame dealing with fame is certainly,
00:55:12
Speaker
One of the most common themes, but that's not necessarily tied to a word, right? Right. so Or like heartbreak. I don't know that I have any words in here that that elicit heartbreak, but you can't talk about Counting Crows work overall without talking about that emotion theme.
00:55:30
Speaker
Right. Although that is more of a common, you know, you can have lots of great writers have written about heartbreak, right? And so in that way, it doesn't, um yeah that doesn't distinguish It doesn't stand out. Yeah. Yeah. And and it's it's the other things that do.
AI Insights and Personal Analysis
00:55:43
Speaker
That's why I think Mrs. Potter, i mean, I think Mrs. Potter's is the answer um in terms of like the most, because it's so many references, but it's also like,
00:55:50
Speaker
The references are the themes in that one that really go. If you were trying to pack all of the themes of of the music into eight minutes, that's where it is. Relative to Palisades Park, where I was looking at the lyrics, say oh, there's 12 of them.
00:56:05
Speaker
But it feels more like the references to the words rather than the overall concepts are more in Palisades Park. You know, Palisades Park is a story. it's a story song, but it it and contains a lot of things. It's interesting, but it doesn't in the same way as Mrs. Potter's, which I will note, by the way.
00:56:23
Speaker
I always come back to, you right, that like generally when we get to like the top of an album, it's very a contentious thing. When we got to the top of This Desert Life, it was basically just everyone spending five minutes talking about how amazing Mrs. Potters is. Yes. So there is something to it. I think that that song is just like the most yes counting crows song in certain yeah way that just we can all – if we're willing to join a podcast to talk about these songs, you probably like the song Mrs. Potters.
00:56:50
Speaker
No, it's yeah yeah right. And it's a great payoff song. If you were listening to the first two albums, right. And you're along with their journey, you know, it's almost like the, ah you know, some of the movies give the callback, you know, like, yeah right. You can watch the third movie by itself. Or if you're a really diehard fan and watch the first two a ton of the times, you appreciate the third. That's kind of Mrs. Potters is kind of like that. I was almost looking quick. know why I'm doing this. I was almost looking at which ones are,
00:57:14
Speaker
don't have the theme. Oh, don't have many? Yeah. Yeah. and And I'll just mention, so Catapult, although we actually joked once, Chris and i said that sneaky way Adam has brought up some, particularly on, as you said, cowboys and stuff, maybe some violence a little bit or weapons. And that, if that was a theme, not that I would say kind of Chris talks about violence a lot, but but But it has a little bit about guns and and stuff and and catapult. Didn't we joke it mentions like five different weapons or something, Chris, or three, especially if you count catapult as a weapon. um And then so the other ones wouldn't surprise me as much. A Speedway, which I, yeah, nothing.
00:57:55
Speaker
Yeah, I gotta I'm scrolling through this at the same time as you. And I love that Walkaways, which is like maybe a minute, still manages to fit in two references. Yeah. Balletador, you can't count on me, right? Which except unless you talk about you write some of the relationships. New Frontier and Carriage seem to have be zero. Yes. Oh, right, right. Sorry. I was missing some of the ones with zero. Yeah. And anyone but you. Oh, yeah, yeah. You caught that. Which that makes total sense about New Frontier and Carriage, right? no. That must be something because New Frontier has a ah ah city. So there must be something in how it's being counted at the bottom. It has London.
00:58:31
Speaker
Oh, well then, so by the way, this is all human, and so there's also just a chance I... Yeah, yeah. You get the idea. New Frontier also references America, which is not a sweet city. yeah. guess it's a Okay, then that's on me. Yeah, no, America belongs there. Okay. But carriage... Let's fix that. We're going fix it right now.
00:58:48
Speaker
Yeah, please. Yeah. The interesting thing about Speedway, I think, is that um it's I think it's one of the most... internal songs in the catalog, right? it's That is more so than ah pretty much any other song. As thinking about it, it's very much about like feelings um in a sense that you don't, you can't picture where that's taking place the same way Yeah. ah A lot of the other songs could, which I think to your point makes it, maybe it's an outlier in that regard. Yeah. um Though apparently, i just, I think I just did a bad job because Speedway references Los Angeles. So.
00:59:28
Speaker
Oh, you're right. Going down. Yeah, that's actually my favorite part of the song. I just didn't have the count. to Okay. Right. we're Right. No, we have that. Okay. Okay. That's in there. Yeah. I said one. One is. And then make sure if you do update, make sure you add the last five songs from the new album. Yeah, I have to do that. Only because the Virginia Through the Rain just comes up. It has Virginia and rain in it. And I love that song. So you got to throw that one in. Do you want to... So one of the things I did was to check your work. No, just kidding. That's fine, please. No, I didn't. And I used a very basic, and believe me, I think it probably stole from you. So I just typed into, I think it was yesterday or two days ago, just typed into ChatGPT and just said, what are the 10 most common themes in Counting Crows? And as I said, they probably stole from your article because that's That's because it's crawling the web, et cetera. That's how it works, yeah. Right. And that's the title of your thing, right? Right. You actually put Counting Crows' Most Signature Songs by Themes. And by the way, what I was going to say is what you kind of stole already. And I think you kind of caught it in the old...
01:00:42
Speaker
I guess AI agrees with you. And the only time it added things was the themes that would be difficult to, to capture by a few, ah key yeah words. So um they put rain and weather.
01:00:55
Speaker
Yes. Number I want to say about rain. It's always so interesting to me that he lived in LA for so long, a place that's sort of known for not getting rain. When really he loves rain so much. But then as I was writing this article, was thinking like,
01:01:09
Speaker
I think that's that's part of what he writes about is his kind of his obsession with things that he can't have. So living in LA and wanting rain, but you can't have it. Or like, you know, the amount of ah issues that he had with his sleep of like, and just singing about all the time of like wanting to sleep, but not being able to do it.
01:01:29
Speaker
By the way, did you pick the, and I'm guessing Spin pick the the the picture on the front because that's him doing that's that's him doing the rain thing. So I was just wondering. Okay, so rain and weather, number two, either is sleep, dreams, or insomnia. Definitely. Then we have that. right Now the third one we didn't have, but dislocation kind of bit on here, but this is the hard one. Being either loneliness, isolated, disconnected.
01:01:54
Speaker
Yes. And that would be tough to capture. um But clearly, and then the AI mentions about colorblind to perfect blue buildings. Okay. Among other songs. ah Guess what? mar Number four, Maria and recurring women characters. Sure. So we have that. Number five, colors.
01:02:11
Speaker
Now they were wrong here, I think, because they said particularly blue and gray. Now we did say blue was number one. Was gray number the second most common? think that's most common. We get a lot of gray. We get blue. Yeah. So yeah. is 18 times.
01:02:25
Speaker
Gray is eight times. Black and white actually have more than gray. So AI is hallucinating about gray. Right. But again, it's like black and white are more common. Plus black and white together, right? Yeah. so also Also, the line gray is my favorite color in Mr. Jones is pretty, gray is pretty. Yeah. If you're thinking about colors. That elevates gray for sure.
01:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny as I like, well, I guess I like most colors, but those are some of my favorite colors to actually blue and then black, white and gray that. So I love that. um And actually, they mentioned that there, too. OK, number six.
01:02:56
Speaker
Basically cities and travel and being on the road. yeah so So that's a little bit that that, so they combine kind of two themes, right? One is about the specific cities tied to memories, I guess, or just where where things happened, but also part of it. And then of course they mentioned trains and highways and hotels because he, he has said that because I, you know, I, I,
01:03:17
Speaker
I guess he's explicitly I said recently, but I didn't figure out until recently that he's very comfortable. This is like the socialization, right? What I mean, socialization is like how you grow up and then you develop habits and then it just becomes a part of you. So even though he's been New York for what, 20 or 30, you know, 20, 25 ish year, 25 ish year. Yeah.
01:03:41
Speaker
is that he grew up moving quite a bit and then most of his adult life was being on the road. yeah So he's very comfortable, I guess, always. right And that's part of the reason that he writes about these different cities, because he's either been there or he thinks about traveling between the two of them, etc. Right. And I think there's a right a lot of these themes are linked together, right? So that would be linked with the feeling of of right of like dislocation and um and ah distance from other people and stuff like that, where it's you know, a lifestyle like that. Right. And and and these sorts of um like liminal spaces where you were talking earlier about like things being fuzzy around the edges, right? Like a hotel or a train or a plane is those are all ah definitionally liminal spaces where you're not building anything permanent there. It's it's the route between.
01:04:36
Speaker
Oh, by the way, I'm counting that. did today Did it really come up? One of my favorite saw ah words that Counting Crows, that Adam uses, is as satellites, just because yeah that is a word that is not used much by many other artists, right? I almost don like can't even even think of a lyric. Yeah.
01:04:53
Speaker
by any artist that uses Dave Matthews band. Oh yeah. The song satellites. Yeah. Good, good call. Oh yeah. Maybe I did. Maybe I, maybe back in my mind, I even remembered that, like, why would they use satellites? But, you know, and then almost the shooting star, which is part of, you know, the cover album has become their symbol kind of. So, so what are the songs that use satellites here? well According to, according to um the, the list satellite, they use six times as frequently as it shows up in,
01:05:22
Speaker
Really? Normal. Yeah. and that's a That seems low. Apparently. And then you have it here in Cap... yeah i'd have to Offhand, i the one that comes to me is now you're everybody's satellite. I wish that you were mine. Oh, right. That's... um Yeah, and Recovering the Satellites. Recovering the Satellites. And then you have... Elizabeth. And then Cowboys. And Cowboys. And then it... Yeah, anyway. Okay, cool. I will make one other observation just from looking at the ones that don't have any references. So there's two more that come up after the ones we talked about.
01:05:56
Speaker
carriage, which is very close in that it has ah like lips, eyes, and mouth. So you have like skin and bone. It has neither of those, but it's it has body parts. Oh, right. That's true. Sort of related to skin and bone, but that is sort of the only theme that would come up.
01:06:14
Speaker
and you and And you also have in there, and this isn't um when he says there's another world of chocolate bars and baseball cards and neither of those are themes but the but a broader theme is the like and I mentioned this in the article the sort of like childhood um ah nostalgia right and that's where we have like you know circus and trains and um you know a lot of like and I think like birthday cakes birthday cakes chocolate and baseball cards fits in with that sort of idea of a of like a beautiful childhood oh The other one that doesn't have anything is anyone but you. And I actually don't see an argument for any of the themes in there. Other than, again, the general themes about like, you know, feeling distant from people. yeah But again, maybe, I mean, that's what, like maybe the only of their songs that's been released on a record that hasn't been played live. Maybe everyone just agrees. It's just not...
01:07:08
Speaker
It's just not a Counting Crows song. Maybe somehow this proves that it doesn't have a certain quality that all of these other songs have. Is this why they never played live, Chris? That's what I'm saying. Maybe they just realized there's something missing from the song they haven't been able to figure it out. And this explains what's missing. It just doesn't have the themes. That's incredible. I mean, it is true. I don't particularly like that song. And it is true that there's a pretty high correlation between number of themes included and how much I like the song, slash arguably even how good the song is. And it's not all right. There are outliers. Long December, I think, doesn't have ton of them. And that's a really good and really classic Counting Crows song or whatever. But yeah.
01:07:56
Speaker
um But I think if you plotted along another sort of chart of like my favorite songs by how many themes are referenced, you would see like a pretty clear pattern merge.
01:08:09
Speaker
That's funny. um Oh, just to mention the last four, the AI tracking to you, yeah um number seven out of the 10, which you have, maybe you to put time and seasons. For some reason, they combine time and seasons, um so but but particularly midnight mornings, and but a bit, it's well, because it mentions December. So they're a bit of a stretch for AI on that one. Number eight, which is what we just said, this would be tough to track, which is about being famous, either wanting fame, fear of fame, and then dealing with post-fame. Of course, that's what All Satellites is about, or most of it.
01:08:43
Speaker
So that's that. Number nine, Ghosts and Haunting. and But they also put Memory in there. i mean, yeah, he sings a ton about Memory, which again fits with the childhood nostalgia thing that i was just talking about. Yeah. And then number 10, which is, um this is true, but it would be the hardest to do, which is love.
01:09:03
Speaker
but And then in particular, love that either failed or um you know fleeting impermanence. Right. And though, as one of you pointed out earlier, at that point, you're just talking about like rock and pop songs. Yeah. Although I do think he, more than others...
01:09:20
Speaker
I know that they all talk about breakups, but I always thought that Adam, a little more than them, looked philosophically at the impermanence. And that's what Possibility Days is about. Like, everything in life, you know, is just temporary, including that, even though you have these strong feelings and et cetera, right? either And then, I guess he doesn't really talk about divorce, but divorce or spousal death or whatever, right? But but but he definitely has this a bit that...
01:09:50
Speaker
I don't know. Is it nihilism a little, at by the younger person that like, it doesn't matter because it's all temporary anyway, but then you still try to be optimistic because it's so beautiful at the same time. So, ah but okay. But, but that goes back to Anna Begins, Lila, because that was the whole point because think of the backpacking, like this is so magical, but it's going to end at some point because we got to go back to our home countries.
01:10:14
Speaker
Imagine being that and like, well, I just, well, I must have rocked his world. Just hung out with him for a couple weeks and now people are still talking about me decades later. That is how you get, right? That is the sort of emotion that I think creates for better art are those sorts that where you you never...
01:10:32
Speaker
you know where you never truly know the other person or how everything would have played out. And therefore, there you you know you never lose the like intensity of feeling that is associated with that. Yeah, yeah.
01:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess Adam Ray talks about... Anyway, about the impermanence, right? Because part of it was that he was a rock star too. So does that the part of that, I guess he... even though I'm sure that that's why a lot of other rock stars couldn't commit to people is that, but they never really explicitly explicitly said that where Adam was kind of like, i'm I'm a rock star and on the road. So this is probably not going to last that. And plus I'm messed in the head. Right. And I have these dislocate, you know, dissociative disorders, et cetera. So this is going to be difficult, which of course was proven wrong as he is now married as of, you know, whatever.
01:11:24
Speaker
what we say, December? so He announced it recently. Who knows? I think he announced in January that he got married in December very you know very casually or something like that. As a writer, I think like um how we interpret a story depends on when we choose to end the story. right so it's like if you choose the ending to be now, then like that's a happy ending. right Your narrative is somebody who couldn't managed to connect and then found found that. um If you'd ended the story 10 years ago, it would have had a different ending. number If you had the story 10 years from now, it might yet have a different ending.
01:12:02
Speaker
That's a good point. I like it. And speaking of which, this is a good segue to both call an end. No, I'm just kidding. You've talked an end. But also, I did want to talk about your... I'm sorry we didn't talk about it before. a bit of your career and your work other than this great Crows article. Other than the big bucks that I that i pulled in from writing one article. One article years ago.
01:12:24
Speaker
um So I know you've done... And please talk about your career. But I know you've done a lot with... um I guess because it's young adult, but also tween, but I don't know if that's different than the same, but please, why don't you just talk about your career and what you're working and and how people can find your work?
Lila Sales' Career and Personal Favorites
01:12:39
Speaker
Sure. ah So yeah, so I work in book publishing. I've written a bunch of books um probably, and i I really like writing about music actually. Probably my my best known novel that's come out is called This Song Will Save Your Life. And it's about a girl who uh, she's a teenager and she becomes, uh, like an underground indie rock DJ. Um, and, and I have a book coming out this fall, which is going to be my first novel for adults. And it's called Encore Performance. And it is about, um, uh,
01:13:10
Speaker
like an indie sleaze era band who was very popular circa, you know, 2006. And then they've been broken up for 20 years and now they're getting back together to play a reunion tour. And it's about ah sort of the, you know, the mistakes they made back then and trying to reconcile their younger selves with who who they are that are today.
01:13:31
Speaker
And what, up what social media accounts can they, and can people use to follow you? Yeah, I'm on Instagram and Blue Sky as Lila Sales Books.
01:13:41
Speaker
um Yeah. All right. Yeah, no, you're pretty pretty prolific. you've written You've written... Can we pre-order the new one yet? Yes, you can. um Yeah, Encore Performance by me, Lila Sales. And then i have a website.
01:13:54
Speaker
um You can sign up for my newsletter on my website. And then I don't... get my act together to send it out all that frequently. But like when this podcast goes live, I'll send out a newsletter saying I got to be on a Counting Crows podcast. um this like So I mean, I've been on a bunch of podcasts talking about like my writing and my editing and books and stuff like that. I've never gotten to be on a Counting Crows podcast before. This is so exciting. yeah It's fun. it's now yeah it's been It's been fun finding people that connect over this. And I was going to mention, but yeah and please, I'm going to go to the, oh, if you go to the um Lila Sales slash writing, we see a lot of your articles as well. So people want to know, ah you write about ah culture culture, you've written some humorous pieces. Yeah, i've done a few other pieces for Spin.
01:14:41
Speaker
Yeah, personal essays, et cetera. So if if somebody, yeah, so check out the books, but if not, at least you can check out some of these essays, et cetera. ah Wait, before we go, yeah so please my favorite please can I say what my favorite Counting Cruz song is? Oh, yeah, sorry. I haven't gotten to mention it and i'm yeah I'm concerned. My favorite Counting Cruz song is A Murder of One, and I just wanted to go on record saying that. Oh, yeah.
01:15:02
Speaker
very and not and not an unpopular i mean that definitely i forget where you rank that but if you look at reddit and e etc that get that that is a fan favorite and they haven't played it for years now right or did they play it once a couple years ago or something once not um no i think they brought it back but like again they played it once so we've got to see if this is going to stick i hope it does it's been too long they should play that song a whole bunch that's a That's a classic. Anger. Yeah. Do you, what are your favorite County Crow songs? I'm sure you've said this on this podcast many times, but I would like Well, we haven't officially released like our top 10 or 20, which I guess we will at some point. We have to go through the albums, which we're only up to what? Saturday night, Sunday morning. So we still have a couple to go. I'm pretty sure. I'm i'm pretty sure I've said it's ranking. Okay. It's ranking.
01:15:47
Speaker
Great. And i so i so i i I switch a lot. But Mrs. Potters is up there there. There's a lot I like, Up All Night. although And I kind of regret. i'm I'm having a lot of regret because I think in the last minute I put Miami above Up All Night just because it's more of an iconic song. But I clearly like Up All Night ah more. Yeah.
01:16:08
Speaker
I love Possibility Days. I like the ones with the best lyrics, you know, where he's so... Yeah, right. Well, it makes sense, right? i like the ones where the music is incredible and the lyrics are particularly clever. Yeah, those are good. um Which makes sense. And then from the from a to Z on the new album, I love...
01:16:24
Speaker
uh mr jones which i have said a couple times uh is the one that got me in in into the crows but uh which is a bit of a stereotype i guess but uh but yeah they just have impressed me more and more and it cycles through the you know something like catapult at one point you know i'm like i love this song so much or angels and uh the murder of one is banger and of course um separates itself from the pack of that of that album, which is more whatever, alt country, rockish Americana. And then um I know that song would probably take a lot out of him. I mean, I just I do get nostalgic watching Murder of One, the old videos where he's jumping around absolutely insane on the stage, yeah um which, you know.
01:17:09
Speaker
for physical reasons, might not want to do every more anymore on every every set. but And again, an interesting one where if you if you started to include alts in this in some way, or at least like common ones, right? Like, he's I've been to Paris and I've been to Rome. I've gone to one. There's multiple places yeah set in in a row, which otherwise there's not in that song. But I mean, he's...
01:17:29
Speaker
um Yeah. ah It's a classic. i mean Yeah. Yeah. um
Conclusion and Appreciation
01:17:35
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I really, ah I, you know, I'm so grateful you guys for having me, for inviting me on here to get to talk about like, I don't know, nobody ever asks me about the counting crows. You know, but we find to know not enough, a lot of people who love, they need to get asked about counting crows more. More people need to be asked about counting crows.
01:17:51
Speaker
I completely agree. I will go out into the world and ask more people about counting crows after this call. Well, thank thanks so much. Now, this was a lot of fun. And I know, yeah i got the the article got my attention a couple of years ago. I know we talked about it briefly and then somehow it didn't come up again. and then i either remembered it or got reminded of it recently. And I said, oh i have to reach out to her. And i I was like, this is one person that I think if I reached out, will definitely say yes. Because if they put enough effort into writing, because it wasn't just like some... um you know, ambivalent, you know, news writer writing, Oh, I'm going to randomly. No, this was someone that likes the crows. So you didn't want to talk about it. Yeah, definitely. um So thanks so much.
01:18:32
Speaker
And thank you out there for listening to us here on Sullivan street, the New York version for today. um Thank you. I appreciate it. Bye. Thank you.