The Mountains Win Again

The harmonica is a distraction. It’s supposed to be.

“The Mountains Win Again” is the saddest song on Four, an album that also contains “Run-Around” and “Hook”—two of the most deliberately cheerful songs of the ’90s. While those tracks were designed to be infectious and inescapable, “The Mountains Win Again” was designed to hurt. The harmonica wailing through the mix is John Popper’s way of expressing what words can’t.

The title is a metaphor so on-the-nose it becomes profound. Life presents obstacles. You try to climb them. Sometimes you make it. And sometimes—most times, if we’re being honest—the mountains win. They were there before you and they’ll be there after. Your struggle doesn’t diminish them. It doesn’t even register.

“Didn’t I tell you that I love you, baby?”

Popper’s voice breaks on that line. Not dramatically, not for effect—just a small crack that reveals the size of the feeling underneath. He’s asking a question he already knows the answer to. He told her. It wasn’t enough. The mountains won.

Four was the album that made Blues Traveler famous, selling six million copies on the strength of singles that MTV couldn’t stop playing. But the band always knew they were more than that. They came out of the jam band scene, more interested in improvisation and feel than in crafting radio-ready hooks. “The Mountains Win Again” is where those two impulses meet—a proper pop song that still leaves room for the music to breathe.

Some battles you can’t win. Some mountains you can’t climb.

The trick is surviving the attempt.