"Hanginaround" is a song by American
rock
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* Rock music, a genre of popular music
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Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
band
Counting Crows
Counting Crows is an American rock band from San Francisco, California. Formed in 1991, the band consists of guitarist David Bryson, drummer Jim Bogios, vocalist Adam Duritz, keyboardist Charlie Gillingham, David Immerglück, bass guitarist Mil ...
. It is the first track on their third album, ''
This Desert Life'' (1999). Released on October 18, 1999, the song reached number 28 on the US
''Billboard'' Hot 100, becoming their biggest hit on the chart from this album. It also reached number one on the ''Billboard''
Adult Alternative Songs
Adult Alternative Airplay (also known as Triple A or Triple A Airplay, and formerly Adult Alternative Songs and Triple A Songs) is a record chart currently published by ''Billboard'' that ranks the most popular songs on adult album alternative radi ...
chart, their second number-one single on this listing.
Outside the United States, "Hanginaround" became the band's fifth top-10 single in Canada, reaching number three on the ''
RPM
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Standards
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'' Top Singles chart, and peaked within the top 50 in Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. In April 2022, ''
American Songwriter
''American Songwriter'' is a bimonthly magazine covering songwriting. Established in 1984, it features interviews, songwriting tips, news, reviews and lyric contest. The magazine is based in Nashville, Tennessee.
History
The ''American Songwri ...
'' ranked the song at number nine on their list of "The Top 10 Counting Crows Songs".
The chorus of the song was used as the main theme for the 2006
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
sitcom
A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...
''
Four Kings
''Four Kings'' is an American television sitcom that aired on NBC from January 5 to March 16, 2006, as a part of winter 2006 programming, but was cancelled before the end of the season. It starred Seth Green, Josh Cooke, Shane McRae, and Todd Gri ...
''.
Background
As with on much of the ''This Desert Life'' album, Hanginaround saw the band experimenting with different recording techniques - in this case, utilizing
looping. The song consists of eight different piano loops arranged in various configurations in setup inspired by Brian Wilson's ''
Smile
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'' project.
According to Counting Crows fansite anna-begins.com, Duritz says:
In an interview with Songfacts, Adam Duritz summed up his thought process behind the lyrics by stating "The idea of a song created with loops made me think of being on a loop myself. I wrote that song about when I was younger and the latter years in Berkeley and how I loved it there, but I was kind of going nowhere."
[
]
Music video
The music video for the song shows the band performing the song in a living room of a house surrounded by a large crowd, as well as Adam Duritz waiting at a bus stop on a clear, colorful day. Throughout the video, the scene changes constantly, from people walking by (including one woman naked with her exposed areas blurred) to a construction crew removing the bench and replacing it with a bus canopy they built, to the other band members performing with Adam. At the end, a woman walks up to the canopy and sits next to Adam. After he glances at her necklace, a bus pulls up. Many others board it first, and as the woman is about to do so, she asks Adam to ride with her. He agrees, and gets on. The video ends with the crowd in the living room applauding the performance, and the bus (with posters of the band's "This Desert Life" album cover on the back of it) driving away from the stop.
Track listings
US 7-inch single
:A. "Hanginaround"
:B. "A Long December
"A Long December" is a song by American alternative rock band Counting Crows. The ballad is the second single and 13th track from their second album, ''Recovering the Satellites'' (1996). Lead singer Adam Duritz was inspired to write the track af ...
"
UK CD single
# "Hanginaround" (CD version)
# "Baby, I'm a Big Star Now"
# "Omaha" (live)
European CD single
# "Hanginaround" – 4:12
# "Mercury" – 8:17
# "Goodnight Elisabeth" (live) – 6:44
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Release history
References
{{Authority control
1999 singles
1999 songs
Counting Crows songs
DGC Records singles
Geffen Records singles
Song recordings produced by Sebastian Arocha Morton
Songs written by Adam Duritz
Songs written by Charlie Gillingham
Songs written by Dan Vickrey
Songs written by David Bryson
Comedy television theme songs