I don’t recall how it came to me, but I’m glad it did. It was possibly my favorite piece of music journalism ever and it taught me something about myself. It’s something I’m still trying to figure out, but an important lesson is unfolding.

I don’t know @Steven_Hyden from Adam, but somehow he knows me.

His Grantland piece from the latter part of 2013 marked the 20th (you’ve got to be kidding me) anniversary of two markedly different, yet equally touchstone records. It’s a read you should enjoy before the day’s end.

So, despite my ever present, sometimes latent desire to be one of the cool kids, I have to admit that I never really got Nirvana. Sure, I liked them and, being a teenager in the mid-to-late-nineties, there was no escaping their influence. But the music never really resonated with me.

Counting Crows, on the other hand? Adam Duritz sang my soul. As he and his combat boots bobbed and weaved along the tracks, I felt my isolation and need for community (some things never change).

And now I get it.

I don’t know if I ever said those exact words to a woman, but I’ve said something like those words. And hearing Duritz sing them never fails to make me cringe a bit. Not because it makes me think about Duritz and the circumstances of his life, but because it makes me think aboutmy life, and not a particularly good part of my life. This is Duritz’s unique talent as a songwriter: He vividly re-creates the feeling of your lowest of personal lows.

I was pretty well-adjusted as a teenager, but whatever darkness I lived manifested itself not as rage and anger, but sadness and isolation.

Cobain’s refrains always rang out as anger to me, and I just couldn’t relate. I may have felt alone, but I wasn’t really angry about it.

And it took me twenty or so years to realize that it wasn’t that Duritz was somehow more empathetic or in-tune with the tenor of our time. It was that he was more like me than Cobain. And, as much as I felt like Duritz got me – as much as his words and those sounds resonated with me – I can name dozens of my peers that didn’t just feel alone. They felt angry and hurt and the refrains of In Utero made them feel like a part of something.

I didn’t get it then; I think I might get it now.