“Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve

"Bitter Sweet Symphony" swept in as the lead single from Urban Hymns, the Verve's third album, in 1997, and it manages to sound grand and bone-weary at the same time. Youth produced it at Olympic Studios in London, with Chris Potter recording it and adding production and mix work of his own. The spine of the thing is borrowed: a sample from the Andrew Oldham Orchestra's 1965 recording of the Rolling Stones' "The Last Time", onto which the band piled vocals, strings, guitar and percussion until that looping orchestral figure felt like fate itself.

Richard Ashcroft sings it with a slack, unbothered cool, and the video, a fixture on the music channels, has him marching down a crowded Hoxton pavement, shouldering strangers out of his way. It earned 3 nominations at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards.

The sample came at a cost. After a lawsuit brought by Allen Klein, the Stones' former manager, the Verve gave up all royalties to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who were also added as writers; in 2019, ten years after Klein died, Jagger, Richards and Klein's son handed the rights back to Ashcroft. None of that dented the song itself. It reached number two in Britain and hung on the chart for three months, climbed to 12 on the Hot 100, was named single of the year by both Rolling Stone and NME, and drew a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Song.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.