Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	(69/100)
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Blender
Entertainment Weekly	B−
PopMatters
Q
Rolling Stone
Spin	(6/10)
Stylus Magazine	D+
Uncut
USA Today

Hard Candy is the fourth studio album by Counting Crows, released in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2002 and the following day in the United States.

The album features the hidden track "Big Yellow Taxi", a Joni Mitchell cover. This was one of their biggest radio hits from the album, however, re-releases of the album were revised to mention the song. Originally the song did not include Vanessa Carlton and the standard version caught the ear of a producer who added it to the movie Two Weeks Notice adding Carlton's voice to the track. This version topped the VH-1 charts and American Top 40 for a while. A new version of the song "Holiday in Spain", recorded as a duet in two languages, turning into a "round" before the final choruses with the Dutch band BLØF, became a #1 hit in the Netherlands.

Reviews hailed the album as the best release since their debut, with the albums of the mid-1990s being "long, and drawn out", likely due to Duritz' state of mind at that time, one reviewer happily announced that, "Hard Candy is crisp and tight, packed with three- and four-minute shots of radio friendly fare", and that during a time when hard rock is the standard, the band are not afraid of a sound that is in the title track, compared to the Byrds, and with its "Allman-esque" twin guitars, echoes The Band in "If I Could Give All My Love (Richard Manuel Is Dead)". So far the album has received a score of 69 out of 100 based on "generally favorable reviews" from Metacritic.

All tracks written by Adam F. Duritz unless otherwise indicated. The song "Big Yellow Taxi" was written by Joni Mitchell, who is credited in the liner notes with the passage "May contain trace amounts of Joni Mitchell"

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Wikipedia