Sometimes you need to hear a song again, years after the last time you heard it, to really appreciate it.
For me I had that moment driving my wife's car the other day. She had the left the '90s alt-rock satellite radio station on and, before I could change the channel, the Counting Crows' A Long December came on.
I was still a teenager, fresh out of high school, when the California band released the single from their Recovering the Satellites album in December 1996.
It was a chart-topping hit in Canada at the time and got plenty of radio play, but I recall not caring for it much back then. Like everybody else on the planet I'd heard and enjoyed the band's previous chart-topper Mr. Jones, but I couldn't warm up to the bittersweet melancholy of A Long December.
I'm sure I've heard the song a few times in the intervening years, but the poetry in its lyrics never resonated with me until last week.
Perhaps it's the added years of perspective -all the joys and sorrows, the triumphs, defeats and compromises of adulthood -or perhaps it was the timing as summer slipped away in the night without so much as a kiss goodbye, but I couldn't get this song out of my head.
Watch the minimalist video, featuring Friends actress Courteney Cox, online here: http://youtu.be/1D5PtyrewSs.
