This Desert Life is the third studio album from American rock band Counting Crows. The cover art is by noted comic book artist Dave McKean, best known for his work with Neil Gaiman, and was adapted from the cover art McKean did for Gaiman's picture book The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. The album had sold more than 2 million copies worldwide by February 2002.[8] The song "Hanginaround" was the first of three singles released from the album, and the highest-charting single off the album, reaching number 1 on the US BillboardAdult Alternative Songs chart and number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as top ten in Canada and top 50 in a number of other countries.
The album contains the same personnel as the band's previous studio album, Recovering the Satellites, being David Bryson (guitar), Adam Duritz (vocals), Charlie Gillingham (keyboards), Matt Malley (bass), Ben Mize (drums) and Dan Vickrey (guitars), with multi-instrumentalist David Immerglück, who formerly was credited as a session player on the previous two albums, promoted to full member. It received generally positive reviews from critics.
Background
Two years after the release of Counting Crows' second studio album, 1996's Recovering the Satellites, the band collaborated with producers David Lowery and Dennis Herring in a rented house in Hollywood, Los Angeles to record their third album.[9] Describing the content of the album in comparison to other releases by the band, lead singer and primary song writer Adam Duritz remarked, "I think the first [album] was really about yearning for a change where you are, and I think the second album was very much about having gotten that change and being thrown up in the stratosphere and kind of come crashing down. And I think [This Desert Life] is about sort of recognizing that life is about confusion and change".[10]
Lowery compared Counting Crows' past works from a more commercial aspect: "Commercially, it's been very successful for [Counting Crows] to be very introspective and sort of sad. So on this record, I thought we'd get a least a little bit of this humor and reverence to come through".
While writing and recording the album, the band allowed two songs to be used on movie soundtracks: "Colorblind" and "Baby, I'm a Big Star Now". The former was featured in the 1999 film Cruel Intentions, while the latter would feature in the 1998 film Rounders. "Colorblind" would also be used in 2014's Mommy. Concerned about having too many songs from the album available in other places, Duritz believed that two album tracks on other albums could detract people from buying This Desert Life. He was also finding it difficult to sequence the song with the album's other tracks. Ultimately, it was left off the album.[11]
When an instrumental score album for Rounders was released instead of soundtrack album, "Baby, I'm a Big Star Now" was not broadly commercially available for many years. It was something Duritz came to regret.[11] The song was released as a B-side on the "Hanginaround" single, and was eventually included as bonus track on the UK release of 2008's Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings. It was most recently featured in an episode of the television series The Bear.
* Original track length is 15:40, which included the hidden track "Kid Things". ** On digital purchase and streaming, "Kid Things" is listed as a separate track. † Originally a hidden track that started at 8:33 on the "St. Robinson in His Cadillac Dream" track; length includes intro and outro studio outtakes.
An unofficial double LP vinyl bootleg of the album first appeared online for sale in 2022. It includes "St. Robinson in His Cadillac Dream" and "Kid Things" as separate tracks, as well as "Baby, I'm a Big Star Now" (erroneously labeled on the cover as "I'm a Big Star Now").
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