Song Spotlight —Bitter Sweet Symphony

This week, I’m obsessing over The Verve’s biggest hit

I had an idea that I would like to write about classic songs and albums. As an avid New Musical Express (NME) reader through my teenhood (I had baskets full of magazines under my bed), I not only loved the music and the bands they wrote about, but the way they played with words. While music journalism never specifically crossed my mind at the time, now that I’m here leaving words on the internet, it seems like a good time to splice my love of writing and my love of music.

The song’s origins

Bitter Sweet Symphony was the lead single from The Verve’s 1997 album Urban Hymns which also included hits such as The Drugs Don’t Work, Sonnet, and Lucky Man.

Bitter Sweet Symphony was written by frontman Richard Ashcroft and was immediately controversial. Not, as is often the reason, due to profane or otherwise offensive lyrics, but for its heavy sampling of the Andrew Oldham Orchestra version of The Rolling Stones song The Last Time. Andrew Oldham had once managed and produced The Rolling Stones and reworked some of their earlier songs with his orchestra for an album. The Verve obtained permission from Decca Records (who were the copyright holders to The Rolling Stones’ songs) but neglected to talk to their current manager, Allen Klein. Klein owned the rights to their songs before 1970, including The Last Time. The song had been recorded and produced to perfection, but hit a snag as it was due to be released because Klein felt The Verve had used a larger portion of the song than originally agreed. Not only does the song open with a very similar string arrangement to the last time, but they felt Richard Ashcroft’s vocal melody was too similar to Mick Jagger’s in The Last Time. The single was released, and became The Verve’s biggest hit at that point, reaching number 2 in the UK chart and hanging around for 3 months. Unfortunately, for Richard Ashcroft, he had to relinquish all song-writing credits to Allen Klein, and the song was credited to Jagger-Richards instead. The Verve’s biggest hit - played for years on the radio, used on a Nike advertisement, and featured in several films - made Richard Ashcroft no money. He was erased as the songwriter.

Side note:

In 2019, following Allen Klein’s death, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards gave the songwriter rights back to Richard Ashcroft. He estimates he lost around $50 million because of Klein’s decision and intends to chase it down.

Watch on The Verve’s official YouTube channel

You can listen to The Rolling Stones “The Last Time” here.

Did you know?

Bitter Sweet Symphony is used at the end of the 1999 movie Cruel Intentions starring Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ryan Phillippe. This movie sits in my top 10, partly because of how powerful the ending is. If you’ve seen the film, here’s a reminder of how expertly the music was used to conclude the story. If you haven’t seen it, skip the clip and watch the movie!

Still of Sarah Michelle Gellar from Cruel Intentions ending — video from ezavenue YouTube channel

What makes it great

The strings. Obviously.

But also…everything else.

This is a Verve song. There is no doubt about it.

The song starts with THE grand string sample and the sample repeats at various points throughout the song. The band added some background strings and guitar. A simple drum beat sits nicely atop the strings and Nick McCabe’s Twin Peaks-type plucked guitar notes, and helps to drive the song forward. Richard Ashcroft’s vocal is simple but effective. He delivers bluesy-type lyrics about life being hard and we all sing along because we understand.

’Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, that’s life Tryna make ends meet, you’re a slave to money then you die

The song has swagger. That attitude is visible in the video, in which Ashcroft walks down a street shoulder-barging through people and pissing them off. It occurred to me that the video is a great visual of what the song did to people. For example, Richard Ashcroft vs Allen Klein! The 90s was where my musical tastes were formed. Having not heard The Last Time until recently, I liked Bitter Sweet Symphony on its own merits. Having now heard The Last Time, Bitter Sweet Symphony still gets my vote.

Aside from all the talk of sampling and production, Bitter Sweet Symphony is just a great-sounding song. There are glaring similarities to the orchestral version of The Last Time, that cannot be denied, but it is also different enough to be an original composition. Richard Ashcroft, in seeking permission to use the string sample, recognised that he had borrowed elements for the song. However, he composed the rest. He poured his heart and soul into the lyrics and the musical arrangement.

Ashcroft was interviewed in Rolling Stone magazine (oh the irony) and said of the song:

“We sampled four bars,” Ashcroft says of the Oldham-record riff. “That was on one track. Then we did forty-seven tracks of music beyond that little piece. We’ve got our own string players, our own percussion on it. Guitars. We’re talking about a four-bar sample turning into ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ — and they’re still claiming it’s the same song.

It’s my opinion that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards approved of Bittersweet Symphony because it sounds nothing like the version of The Last Time that they wrote and recorded, and so subsequently they received royalties for a song they had no hand in writing. It is only the reworked Andrew Oldham instrumental version that bears any likeness. You can hear the original Rolling Stones version of The Last Time here.

Thanks For Reading

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What do you think of the song?

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