Round Here
Maria says she’s dying. She’s standing on the back of a rented Cadillac in the middle of the night, and she’s dying. Not literally—or maybe literally, it’s never clear. The song starts there, with this impossible image of a girl who can’t hold still, who says things that don’t quite make sense, who belongs somewhere she can’t get to.
“Round Here” was the opening track on August and Everything After, which sold seven million copies and made Adam Duritz briefly the voice of a generation. People remember “Mr. Jones,” the hit about wanting to be a rock star. But this was the statement of purpose—a six-minute sprawl about watching people you love spiral while you stand helplessly nearby.
The song isn’t really about Maria. Or it is, but she’s just the entry point. It’s about that specific 3 AM feeling when everything feels urgent and impossible. When you know you should do something but you can’t figure out what. When you’re surrounded by people who are all falling apart in their own ways and you’re not equipped to catch any of them.
Duritz wrote this before the band existed. He performed it solo in Bay Area clubs, just voice and piano, already sounding like he was confessing things he wasn’t supposed to say out loud. When the band formed, they built the arrangement around his sprawling vision—starting spare, accumulating intensity, reaching for catharsis without quite grasping it.
The song doesn’t resolve. Maria doesn’t get saved. The narrator doesn’t figure anything out. They’re all still round here, circling the same problems, unable to move forward. That’s what makes it true.
Some songs have answers. This one just has the question, asked beautifully, over and over.
Worth your time: Noah Gundersen’s cover strips the song down to its bones—just voice and electric guitar, no band to hide behind. Gundersen has said this is the song that made him want to write music, and you can hear that in every note. Sometimes the best covers aren’t trying to improve anything. They’re just confessing what a song meant to them.
Imagine being in that room. He starts playing, and you realize you’re watching someone show you exactly who they are. No armor. No distance. Just a man and the song that made him want to do this forever. Six minutes later you’re not sure what just happened, but you know you saw something. The room knows it too. That’s the thing about moments like this—you can’t plan for them. You just show up, and sometimes the universe decides to ruin you a little.
