Counting Crows • A Long December

A Long December. I realize it’s not December yet. But by now it seems that the launch sequence has been set in motion, and there’s no holding back the holiday season, ready or not. I don’t know if anyone besides me would even remember this song. Counting Crows was one of the few alternative rock bands from the 90s that I liked and could relate to. I’m not sure exactly why. I guess because they’re just really good. I think I have four or five of their albums.

Sometimes the period of the mid 90s seemed like a wasteland in the pop/rock music world. Maybe it was. But then I’ll stop and listen to a song like this one and remember that my harsh judgment of 90s music is not well founded or accurate. Art has to be taken piece by piece. Value, of course, has to be attached to the creative process and product of music in a case by case way. Sweeping generalizations are usually not true or meaningful (with the possible exception that all SUV drivers tend to eventually become aggressive drivers. Okay just kidding)(I apologize to all courteous SUV drivers... both of you)🙂 Anyway, this one song in 1996 was a powerful song. To me.

I remember sitting in my car one night in December 1996. It had been a really hard day in a really hard week. Board meetings with genuinely unkind and non-compassionate people in charge. Dysfunctional family members on discouraging phone calls. Trying to keep things in perspective. Too much to do. Christmas was fast approaching and I wasn’t ready. Just felt fatigued and inadequate on so many levels. And then this song came on the radio. “A Long December.”

It somehow gave me a lift in that moment. It’s somber tone (at first) turns to a focus on hope, which is how the song ends. Adam Duritz, who wrote the song speaks of a friend who had suffered terrible injuries, having been hit by a car - thus the line, “The smell of hospitals in winter...”. He is going through a lot of difficulty, but he clings to “...maybe this year will be better than the last.”

Jim Beviglia (American Songwriter), comments, “A Long December” see-saws from heartbroken to hopeful without seeming strained. Regrets pile up, as they tend to do at the end of the year, but they are counter-acted by the sense of optimism that the changing calendar inevitably brings. So it is that “the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls” is quickly replaced by a glimpse of “the way that light attaches to a girl.”’ He continues “Maybe “A Long December” falls short of bringing tidings of comfort and joy, but it delivers a glimmer of hope for the new year. Sometimes it’s the best we can hope for, and sometimes it’s enough.”

In a year like this one, sometimes glimmers of hope are hard to find. But don’t stop looking, and listening. There are glimmers to be found. Maybe that’ll be enough.

“A Long December” peaked at number one on the US Adult Alternative Songs chart, and number one on the Canadian Singles chart.