The Bay Area-born ’90s hit-making band, Counting Crows, which is set to head out on tour this year with popular group Dashboard Confessional, is known for its emotional songwriting.
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The band, fronted by Adam Duritz, released hit after hit, from “Mr. Jones” to “A Long December” to “Omaha” and many more. With his emotive, hard-to-harness voice and poignant, thoughtful lyrics, Durtiz captivated legions of fans. He’s still doing so, with the band releasing its latest record, Butter Miracle Suite One, in 2021.
But what does the legendary lyricist have to say about life and love, his craft, and the world at large outside of his epic songs and albums?
Check out the 11 best Adam Duritz quotes below.
1. “Sometimes the world seems like a big hole. You spend all your life shouting down it and all you hear are echoes of some idiot yelling nonsense down a hole.”
2. “For me, songwriting is something like breathing: I just do it. But that doesn’t mean you’re fantastic.”
3. “All my songs are where I am.”
4. “But what you realize after you’ve been in the business for a while is that people develop opinions about you that don’t have anything to do with your music, they like or dislike you for a million reasons, they like or dislike you for your last record.”
5. “Truth is, you make albums, and some of those songs are hits, and some of the greatest hits albums have songs that weren’t hits. You have a career, the reason why we’re still around 10 years is that we do have successful songs.”
6. “I realized at some point that I had a nice voice but that wasn’t the same thing as singing. Being a good singer was a craft and I think I felt unable to really properly express the emotions of the songs. So, I wanted to push myself and be able to do more that way.”
7. “I have a pretty debilitating mental illness and, at times, it made life fairly terrifying and crippling. I think getting through that made a lot of other things just not seem as hard.”
8. “There just is exponentially more money in the movie business than in the music business. As a result, there are more people involved in the creative process.”
9. “[Singing] it didn’t have much of a point to it until I started writing.”
10. “There’s a difference between success in art and success in commerce.”
11. “[Music has] been the center of my life since I was a child. It was my comfort and my joy. It was what I turned to for everything from the time I was very young, I’ve been obsessed. I’m geekly obsessed with music.”
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