This Counting Crows Tune Travels Down a Particularly Lonely Avenue

Great songwriters generally display the ability to approach songs in a variety of ways. Even when they go outside what others might perceive as their wheelhouse, they can still deliver effective, moving songs. Adam Duritz showed off this ability right from the beginning of his career as frontman of Counting Crows. On a debut album filled with wordy songs. Duritz utilized a streamlined strategy on the song “Sullivan Street” and emerged with a gem.

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“Street” Sorrow

Counting Crows made quite the splash with their 1993 debut album, August And Everything After. They need to do so because they’d already been heavily hyped before a single album of theirs hit the shelves.

Based on a demo that the San Francisco-based band had put together and shopped around, a massive bidding war ensued for their services. Once they signed on the dotted line with Geffen Records, the label placed them strategically at industry events meant to gain them the most exposure.

Of course, as we all know now, the band possessed the goods that enabled them to live up to those lofty expectations. Most of that confidence derived from the songs that Adam Duritz had already written. Duritz flashed a maximalist songwriting style that somehow never seemed to be overdone.

The first singles from the Counting Crows LP featured Duritz going a mile a minute with rapid-fire lyrics not all that dissimilar to early Springsteen or Dylan. (He even name-drops the latter in “Mr. Jones”.) But on “Sullivan Street”, he delivers a more restrained but no less engaging approach. Every word counts in this tale of a relationship that’s about to run its course.

Examining the Lyrics of “Sullivan Street” by Counting Crows

The title road in “Sullivan Street” appears in all three verses. Our narrator seems like he’s repeating it as if trying to steady himself and give himself some measure of comfort for what’s ahead. He foreshadows it at the end of the first verse. “Pretty soon now, I won’t come around,” he says.

The second verse suggests that there are ghosts on the avenue that he no longer wishes to encounter: “Where all the bodies hang on the air.” He and his lover are going through the motions at this point. “If she remembers, she hides it whenever we meet,” he shrugs. “Either way now, I don’t really care/’Cause I’m gone from there.”

Little by little, we realize that we are witnessing the last gasp of this coupling. “Well, I’m just another rider burned to the ground,” Duritz sings. The narrator knows he is not unique in having failed at a relationship, but the dejected tones in Duritz’s voice reveal the rising disappointment.

In the refrains, his subdued calm gives way to anguish. “I’m almost drowning in her seas,” he belts. “She’s nearly crawling on her knees/It’s almost everything I need.” The word “almost” represents what a near-miss this whole affair turned out to be. As for the girl, she seems to be taking it worse, based on her pleading posture.

Folks who dove into August And Everything After by Counting Crows based on the verbose singles might not have expected such a song to appear. But “Sullivan Street” proved early on that Adam Duritz could get it done in many ways as a songwriter, and he’s continued on that path ever since.

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