Bitter Sweet Symphony

Richard Ashcroft's lyrics and voice lift this track so far above many other Brit-pop "Anthems".

The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" is from the British "alternative" group's "Urban Hymns." Please,spare me,Higher Power! Though it dates back to the mid-'90s (back to my college days,luckily I missed out on it!),it STILL gets radioplay. KQED even uses it in interludes between shows. Enya makes sense--but why this???

"Bittersweet Symphony" sounds like a boring version of ELO. It's '70s meets New Wave meets VERY VERY soft rock. There's the refrain of "I can change,I can change,I can change" showing how repetitive the lyrics are. That's change? There are lyrics about being a slave to $$$,and every inspirational cliche the Verve could get their hands on. The whining "that's liiiiife" is enough to drain one's will to live. You can change,you can change,you can change the CD or radio station,thank goodness.

This song has my vote for one of the greatest songs of all time. It's about as close to perfection as you can get. It shows what a genius Ashcroft is.

This is one of those songs from my Teen years that really stuck with me and it was great to discover it here DRM free.
Now, a review on this service. I am a huge apple fan and for that reason I'm extatic that they finally have some direct competition. They seem to thrive when they have serious competition and Amazon has done a great job at providing this (at least on the music side of things, don't get me started on their TV show and movie crap player). I of course own a mac and after downloading the utility and installing it (all went flawlessly), I purchased this song for $.89. It downloading very quickly and magically appeared in iTunes with album art and all. The only difference from iTunes is that the song is not restricted and it wasn't automatically in my purchased smart folder, but I just drug it into the folder and the problem was easily solved. Great job Amazon! Can't wait to see if Apple responds and how.