Raining In Baltimore

 This song is my favorite from August and Everything After.  To me, the song's about being in such a bad place and everything around you is falling apart and you see yourself falling with it. You're doing everything possible to keep yourself sane, but you miss someone so much that it eats away at you.  All you need is a distraction; a phone call, a plane ride, a sun burn.  Maybe then you won't feel so lonely...

Well, Adam Duritz is FROM Baltimore. [Yay, Maryland.] and he actually moved from there to Sacremento, CA, where they started Counting Crows. So, it could be about missing someone he once knew in Baltimore. Or just Baltimore in general. God knows there's nothing better than Charm City.

I need something to shield out the hurt (rain coat), something to cover it up (sunburn), something to remind me its still there (phonecall), something to drown it out (new car, plane ride). Its a song about leaving someone you love behind because there is bigger and better things to do, but that old small town really brings back memories. Its about growing up, pushing through the hard times. That sorrow really makes itself obvious hearing the song live, but the record does a good job capturing that raw emotional feel.

i LOVE this song!! it is so amazingly beautiful, i always get a little misty eyed when i hear it i admit...its just so melancholy. favorite line: "there's things i remember, there's things i forget i miss you, i guess that i should 3,500 miles away what would you change if you could?" i listened to this song a lot after i moved away, so i can really relate to it

this songs does me in too. i am at a confused time in my life. as in round here ive contemplated jumping. i also contemplate of leaving and going some odd thousand miles away. I try to find out why or where these ideas come from but the mood in the song reflects mine right now. we all know the grass is always greener on the other side until we get there. then we see that the grass wasnt so bad where we came from. i have 2 choices to make and either way im gonna miss making the one i didnt. but now im rambling so ill close....

what does this song mean to me.. hmm.

i think he's talking about how great the place where he is USED to be, before whoever it is moved away from him. Because if you think about it a place can be so absolutely wonderful when you're with someone you love..but once they leave you there alone ("where you should be no ones around") you finally start seeing all the imperfections of the place that you couldn't see before because when you're with that one person you love everything around you is a blur.

I don't know, thats how I see it though.

I feel like this song is about a man, adam, who has trouble commiting so he moves away...to bltimore. but he gets incredibly lovesick there because he was in love. it was his love that drove him away, but also his love that makes him need to go back so badly. its about how mixed being in love can be and how you dont know what your missing untill its gone

as my sister pointed out these could be real needs, not distractions. it feels as if adam is walking down the street.. noticing that they're taking down the circus tent in this city "the big top is crubling down". and here comes the needs- he needs a phone call (from a girl?) he needs a plane ride (he needs to go to her?) he needs a sunburn (he wants to be in warm sunny florida with her, getting a sunburn, where it isn't raining?) and finally he needs a raincoat (because when you're walking down the street thinking, and it's raining, you need a raincoat).

This is the first CC song I ever heard - I always thought it was about the guy who'd left his girl and moved somewhere remote, but she doesn't seem to care - "Three thousand five hundred miles away But what would you change if you could?". It feels like he regrets getting mad and leaving - "I miss you, I guess that I should." I don't know if it's physical or metaphorical, but I know it's a great song!

The song is about being 50 miles from nowhere and wanting to be somewhere else with someone that you miss, but also realising that you set this situation up for yourself.