Satuday Nights and Sunday Mornings Meanings

I was watching an awesome live performance of the Counting Crows on a show called Sound Stage. It was airing on one of the VH1 Classic or MTV2 channels, or maybe Fuse, but it was almost like Storytellers, which I really liked.

Basically, Counting Crows played a bunch of songs off of their newest album Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings. I really like this album because it has so much meaning to these guys. They completed two different sections of the album (Saturday Nights for louder music and Sunday Mornings for softer music). I really enjoy the new songs they have created.

On the show, Adam Duritz basically discusses the meanings behind a bunch of the songs. The only song they played that he didn't talk about was "1492" which they opened with. Otherwise, they went in order of its track listing but skipped a bunch of songs in between.

Below I have the song meanings that Adam discussed before he played each track. If you do enjoy the Counting Crows, you will enjoy what Adam has to say about each song.

SATURDAY NIGHTS

The album is about disentigration, losing your place in the world, and going crazy and becoming numb.

"Los Angeles"

The song is about "living dirty." It's about three of the band members moving to the south end of the west coast and all the "crap we pulled in."

"Insignificant"

This song is about when you lose your place in the world and can't touch the world anyumore, you have to find some way to feel anything and mean something. In this song, the guy is so desperate to mean something that he climbs up onto the top of a building and the best way to accomplish meaning something is to try to fly. (Which is a big mistake.)

"Cowboys"

This song is about when you just become so numb that you will do anything to get it back. The only way you think you can is through extreme violence. Adam says, "It's about everybody at once and its about me."



SUNDAY MORNINGS

This album is about not about getting better but failing to. But, it's also about a decision to change things and they way they are.

"Washington Square"

The song's main message is that the best way to change things and your situation is to leave home, but that's the hardest thing to do sometimes.

"On Almost Any Sunday Morning"

This song is about a cycle you can't get off of, and it's not a good cycle to be on.

"When I Dream of Michaelangelo"

Adam started writing this song 20 years ago when he was a kid. He had an image in his mind of what it was like to try to write a song, but it wasn't as easy as he thought it would be. He views it as a picture of himself reaching out to God on the Sistine Chapel and not quite touching him. Although it is about reaching something that you just can't touch in art, you just can't reach out and touch something that divine. The real crux of the song is that you can spend your whole life trying to touch something that you can't really, and you waste your whole life touching anything that's even around you that you might care about and that might actually be real instead of that divine thing that's not real. It's not about the thing you can't touch but the things you don't touch.

"Le Ballet d'Or"

This song is about looking at your life, but if you could just have seen it a little more clearly and done things a little differently then it would have been just a little bit better. But you didn't, so you have to live for today.

"On a Tuesday in Amsterdam Long Ago"

When Adam's band was traveling in Europe a few years ago, he was looking out a window wondering what if all that he was feeling now was just something he's looking back at years from now like a snapshot out this window, like a photo of Hard Candy in a drawer or a picture of that moment. What if things hadn't turned out as well as he'd hoped. This song is a photograph of a moment in his life a long time ago. It's the same song as "Accidentally in Love" but looked at from a distance.

So, what do you think of Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings or the Counting Crows?