The Verve: Bittersweet Symphony

“Bittersweet Symphony” by the British rock band The Verve came out in 1997. You cannot dance to it like the Macarena, but it is easily one of the best songs of the 1990s. Even ten years later it still sounds wonderful.

The video is also a masterpiece: Richard Ashcroft, the lead singer, is waiting at an ordinary street corner in North London (Hoxton and Falkirk). He is dressed in black, so we are expecting to hear a rock song: drums to set the beat and then electric guitars. But we do not. Instead we hear violins. They sound like they are far away, like maybe from heaven.

Then the drums start and Ashcroft begins to walk. The drums play a slow, heavy beat. After Ashcroft crosses the street and heads up the block, he begins to sing. His singing matches the drums: slow, flat, low.

The colour of the video matches the mood: blacks, blues and greys.

So do the words: Ashcroft says this life is a bittersweet symphony, you are a slave to money and then you die. He is here in his mould, he cannot change, no, no, no, no, no. The only road he has ever been down is the one that takes you to the places where all the veins meet. Who knows his pain?

As he walks north on Hoxton Street he does not change his course to avoid knocking into people, even old ladies. He knocks over one woman and does not even seem to notice. When he crosses one street he jumps onto the car and walks on it instead of going round. The driver gets out and gets into his face, calling him names, pushing him. He takes no notice of her either but keeps on walking, his eyes always looking into the distance, looking for something.

A woman in a blue sweater walks down the street towards him, but she is there and then she is gone.

The song seems like it is about heroin: “the places where all the veins meet” and so on.

Maybe so. But the way I took it, and the reason I like it, apart from just being a plain good song, is the way it is a song of both despair and hope. It sounds like a sad song yet somehow it leaves you filled with hope.

Despite the drums, despite the dark colours, despite the pain and despair of his words, he keeps looking in the distance for something. He tells us he has never prayed before but tonight he is down on his knees. The music sets him free, it cleans him. And up above him, above the streets of London, the violins are playing from heaven.

Those violins, by the way, come from an old Rolling Stones song. But that is another (very sad) story – about a rich man and a shoemaker.

– Abagond, 2007.

See also:

• Bittersweet Symphony lyrics
• The corner in London Ashcroft started at on Google Maps. The latitude and longitude: 51.5308, -0.08016
• Amy Macdonald