It's a Bittersweet Symphony This Li-ife

(Trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die-i...)

Remember this song? Everyone who lived through the ’90s remembers this song.

Maybe you hated it.

Maybe you remember it but never knew which band played it.

Maybe you loved it but heard it too much then tried to forget it. Then long after you turned 40, the algorithm served it up on some playlist for Gen Xers who played Mazzy Star and Pixies. Maybe the algorithm didn’t have to serve it. Maybe you walked into some boutique that sells crystals and vintage Hawaiian shirts and the Millennial clerk was setting the mood with a “people who like ’90s music” playlist, and The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” came on after Stone Temple Pilots’ “Sex Type Thing,” and you found your inner voice singing the lyrics all intensely like “I can change / I can change / I can change,” because those bittersweet lyrics had always nested in your mind, and the song’s signature symphonic sample puts you in a zone, mesmerizing you with a hypnotic mid-tempo, because whatever kind of music you liked as an alterna-kid, and whatever kind of music you like now, “Bittersweet Symphony” is truly one of the singular, memorable songs of the 1990s. It just is.

Then there’s the video. Remember the video?

Filmed in London in 1998, the video shows Verve lead singer Richard Ashcroft walking a straight line down a busy street, his eyes fixed and pale face callow, plowing through anyone and anything that stands in his path. He brushes a silver-haired passerby without slowing. He walks between two women and slams his shoulders into both of them. Incensed, they face him, but he plods on, singing the song lyrics as he goes. When Ashcroft hits a brunette in a maroon coat, she spins so hard she falls to the ground. He seems like a jerk—overly serious and just banging into people instead of sharing the streets. It’s a memorable video that provokes the viewer while inviting them to assign meaning to this mystifying scenario. Any urbanite can imagine similar scenarios happening to modern pedestrians who are too busy texting or checking their phones to notice a pending collision, but mostly, it’s just a cool weird video that grabs your attention, which is partly why it still hits today.

The thing is, maybe the video made you want to dislike this band entirely and discount this song, the way it initially did me in 1998 (initially), back when I had irrational polarizing reactions to things that were based on my idea of what kind of cool person I was and what people would think of me if I stepped outside of my cool person box and actually gave myself freedom to just like whatever the fuck I liked and whatever sounded good. The Verve’s lead singer looked like a dick to me, sure. But it was his haircut and style that first turned me off. It just seemed too Brit Pop for my taste, too like Blur or something for my style. I was in college, but teenage insecurity still had a grip on me, and I didn’t think cool people like me were supposed to like that stuff in 1998, so I was like “Fuck that song,” even as that song wormed its way into my head, where it played on repeat on the CD player of my soul, playing and playing on a hypnotizing loop down deep in my heart, which was filled with love and tenderness and fear, despite my hard posturing full-of-shit exterior, until finally I was like, “Fuck it, I love this song, I admit it!” just like I liked Bananarama and that Elastica song “Connection” and James’ 1993 hit “Laid.” So in 1998, I openly sang:

I can change, I can change, I can change
But I’m here in my mold, I am here in my mold
But I’m a million different people from one day to the next!

Because that’s how good this song is, and that’s how much being a young person can suck. Such fear. Such head games with yourself. Dreaming of acceptance and experimentation but fearing perceptions. Ashcroft sang of change. Why couldn’t I change, too? I was here in my mold, here in my mold. But I was evolving. I was exploring being a million different people from one day to the next, and this song’s signature symphonic element contrasted so beautifully with the heavy, grudging guitar music that I’d blared through high school—Fugazi, Soundgarden, Jane’s Addiction, Alice In Chains—and that I’d finally ditched in college for Cat Power, surf music, mariachi, New Zealand pop music, Bach, Beethoven, and instrumental jazz, and my self-conscious young self finally had to do what my 40-something-self now does and just let people think whatever they think of me and let it go, because a good song is a good song, no matter who sings it in whatever genre. That shit doesn’t matter. Brit pop. Post-punk. Vintage rocksteady. Taylor Swift. ABBA. Canned Heat. Salt-N-Pepa. I love it all, because if it’s good, it’s good. Love freely and embrace your world and yourself. And this song was good. So was the video. And sadly, it is still the only song I ever knew from The Verve.

Anyway, I thought you’d remember it, too! Bye!