Success Quote by Adam Duritz

Duritz is puncturing the tidy mythology of the “hitmaker” with the unglamorous mechanics of longevity: you don’t manufacture legend, you rack up work. The phrasing is blunt, almost businesslike - “you make albums” - as if to drag the conversation away from aura and back to output. That’s the first tell of intent: he’s defending craft and persistence over narrative. Counting Crows didn’t survive a decade by chasing the perfect cultural moment; they survived by doing the unsexy thing, repeatedly.

The slyest move is the paradox about greatest-hits albums containing songs that weren’t hits. He’s pointing at an industry trick: “greatest” is often retrospective branding, not chart math. A label can canonize deep cuts once an artist has enough public goodwill, radio familiarity, and touring history to make those tracks feel inevitable. It’s also a fan-service truth. For listeners, the “hit” is the song that welded itself to a breakup, a car ride, a particular year; charts are just a public scoreboard for private attachment.

Then he pivots to credibility, almost defensively: “the reason why we’re still around... is that we do have successful songs.” That’s Duritz negotiating two pressures at once - the artist’s desire not to be reduced to singles, and the reality that singles finance the right to keep making albums. Subtext: longevity isn’t purity. It’s compromise, a few undeniable songs buying freedom for the rest.