"Einstein on the Beach," Counting Crows (1994)

A great song with a slippery story

Peak: #1 on the alternative rock chart
Streams: 5.9 million

Does “Einstein on the Beach” even exist? I don’t mean the Philip Glass opera called Einstein on the Beach. I mean the Counting Crows single that borrows its name. In one sense, of course, it definitely exists, because I’m listening to it as a type this. In 1994 it also topped the alternative rock chart. Even “Mr. Jones” stopped at #2 on that particular listing, so there’s a half-hearted argument to made that “Einstein on the Beach’ is their biggest hit alt rock hit.

But at the same time… is it real? The internet is curiously silent. I’ve found a few unsourced items about how Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz (pictured above) feels about the tune, but I’m not taking any of them as gospel.

This puzzle suits a song that’s lyrically about Albert Einstein’s chagrin that his beautiful theories were used to create the atomic bomb.