The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony | # 50 | Top 50 Music Videos of All-Time & the Stories Behind Them

The plan for this space is exactly what the group title says: 'My Mind is on Music.' If that fits you at the moment, then you're in the right place. Feel free to post in this community if you want—just keep your images copyright-free, your posts plagiarism-free, and AI-free.

So we've decided to start a top 50 videos countdown today that will stretch out over the next month and a half.

Today's music video is Bittersweet Symphony by the Verge. The video (Directed by Walter A. Stern) revolves around The Verve’s lead singer, Richard Ashcroft, as he's walking down a busy street in East London, expressionless, not giving one care to whoever comes into his straight-lined path.

One interesting fact about this song is that the band went through a rough copyright battle after first securing the rights to use it. The problem is that they used too much of it, and as a result, they lost the songwriting rights/royalties to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards after a semi-nasty lawsuit by the Rolling Stones' former manager Allen Klein. The Stones decided to give the rights back in 2019.

The orchestral sample used in Bitter Sweet Symphony was derived from an Andrew Oldham Orchestra version of a Rolling Stones song (The Last Time).

Ironically, the song ended up literally being a bittersweet memory for the Verge since they didn't make anything off of it for nearly 20 years. While on the' Kyle Meredith With… Podcast' back in 2019, Ashcroft said, "I'm coming for that money. Someone stole God-knows-how-many million dollars off me in 1997, and they've still got it." At any rate, the video is still epic and stands as a minimalist gem from a time when artists were going all-out in videos, trying to catch everyone's attention with bling.

Below is an interview with Ashcroft on the Ivor Novello Awards red carpet, when Ashcroft also mentioned Jagger and Richards relinquishing their credits on "Bitter Sweet Symphony."

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