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Counting Crows have had huge hits that have touched millions of fans.
They've also had critics slap them down, labeling singer Adam Duritz
as pretentious, self-absorbed and wallowing in self-pity. Even if
that's all true, Duritz says, so what? "I'm here to write songs about
myself. Let's say they are all self-pitying; what's wrong with that?"
the 35-year-old Duritz says. "What you wanna see in art is someone's
examination of themselves. I'm not out there trying to be someone
else's character. I'm just trying to be me, trying to look at it in
ways that interest me. I don't really do it for anyone else."
Recurring characters appear in Counting Crows' albums, including mentions of Durtiz's old girlfriend Elizabeth. While it makes a strong thread for fans to follow -- Elizabeth turns up everywhere from "Rain King" to "Goodnight Elizabeth" to the new "I Wish I Was a Girl" -- you wonder how she feels about turning up in her ex-boyfriend's songs six years later. "People leave relationships, and something that was very important to them and was a big part of their lives suddenly becomes meaningless," Duritz says. "I think one of the things that hurts most about being someone's ex is the amount to which you cease to exist. You think: 'Man, we talked every day for all this time. How can I not matter anymore? How can that just disappear?' Elizabeth doesn't have to worry about that. Things didn't work out, but she's got the songs as proof of how much it meant to me when we were together. I don't see why she'd mind that, exactly." -- from a January 2000 press release |
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