Though I am not a big concert-goer (in terms of big concerts and big ticket prices) there are a couple of regrets from my bucket list. One was missing The Frames at Botanic Gardens a few years’ back, in what (it turns out) was their last visit to Belfast.1 Another was Nickel Creek at the Empire a few years before that.

And certainly, missing Counting Crows at their peak in 2009 is right up there. I’m reminded of it each year when I log on to BakeBook and am greeted by one of those ‘on this day’ posts at the top – wherein a school friend tagged me in a photo of him grinning beside an amped-up Adam Duritz after a show in Belfast.

Songwriters tell stories. A pal from years back, Andrew Farmer, has just released a new record today, Ochre, which encapsulates this – stories on a theme. An interesting twist, constantly revisited, is when songs which, rather than being full of vapid one-liners or platitudes, crossover into the mainstream.2 Often, its most prevalent in songs of heartache;3 but it can be most successful when its not, or when those songs of heartache are dressed up in a melody that sounds the opposite.4

Enter Counting Crows, and Mrs Potter’s Lullaby.

The story of this song is phenomenally quirky. Adam Duritz often wrote (and named) songs after real people – but this one is extreme. In brief: Adam Duritz was smitten by the actress Monica Potter, who starred in a number of movies in the late ’90s, and penned this song about an imaginary version of her. Completely unrelated, he then ends up in a room with her, and the song comes up. He is completely embarrassed; but she comes back to the studio to hear it, and makes off with a rough demo.

A few weeks’ later, Duritz hates the song. They can’t make it work. It’s overmixed and overwrought. He tells Monica Potter this – she disagrees and replays the original recording, which only she had.

‘Well, I’m going to need to borrow that,’ says Adam. And the rest is history.

Honestly, if it was an indie movie you’d consider it contrived. The narrative about the song is nearly as good as the narrative of the song itself. And the song itself is splendid.

  1. This was due to the impending birth of a child: a very good reason, I need to be clear, to not be milling around in Botanic. ↩︎
  2. Been spinning Phoebe Bridgers’ Lost Weekend all week – talk about narrative. Bobby is the pick of the bunch I think. ↩︎
  3. Let’s see now, what can we mention here in order to get a space on our Spotify playlist: Matchbox 20’s Unwell; The Civil Wars, Poison and Wine. ↩︎
  4. I was thinking about Shawn Mullins’ Lullaby, but it’s probably too sweet; the peak example has just passed 10 YEARS in the UK singles’ charts – The Killers’ Mr Brightside, an incredibly bleak lyric belted out at weddings and teenage discos across the land. ↩︎