Song · Counting Crows
“Mrs Potters Lullaby” by Counting Crows
From the album This Desert Life (1999)
“Mrs Potters Lullaby” by Counting Crows appears on 10 radio countdowns from 4 stations between 2000 and 2020. It was first released in 1999 on the album This Desert Life. Its best result is #4 on the WXRT Listener Poll: Top 30 Songs of 2000. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #4 indie & aaa song of 2000 and #1,526 indie & aaa song of all time.
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Adam Duritz wrote "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby" for This Desert Life, Counting Crows' third album, in 1999, and it's a song about a woman he'd never met: actress Monica Potter, or rather the version of her he'd pieced together from watching Con Air and Patch Adams. It sits second on the record and later went out as its second single.
The real-life twist is pure Duritz. On the very day the band cut the track, he finally met Potter at a dinner with industry friends, and she came back to the studio to watch them work, leaving with a take a production assistant handed her. Duritz later told her the song was being scrapped because too much production had smothered it. It survived anyway, and in 2022 American Songwriter placed it third among the band's ten best.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 4 | 93XRT Chicago, IL | WXRT Listener Poll: Top 30 Songs of 2000 | 30 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 1984 | WFPK | WFPK 2001 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2000 |
| 2004 | 576 | WXPN | WXPN 885 All-Time Greatest Songs (2004) | 885 |
| 2009 | 296 | WYEP | WYEP 913 Essential Songs | 913 |
| 2009 | 821 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Desert Island Songs (2009) | 885 |
| 2010 | 301 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Ultimate Road Trip Songs (2010) | 885 |
| 2012 | 611 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Greatest Rock Songs (2012) | 885 |
| 2019 | 772 | WYEP | WYEP Big Spring Countdown 2019 | 1017 |
| 2019 | 772 | WYEP | WYEP Labor Day Weekend Countdown 2019 | 1099 |
| 2020 | 1348 | WXPN | WXPN 2020 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2020 |
Also listed as: Mrs. Potter's Lullaby; Mrs Potter's Lullaby.
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