A slight change in direction then, after Will Smith’s intergalactic, family friendly, summer blockbusting number one…

The Drugs Don’t Work, by The Verve (their 1^st and only #1)

1 week, from 7^th – 14^th September 1997

This is surely one of the saddest chart-toppers in history. Not many hits have made the toppermost of the poppermost with lines such as: Like a cat in a bag, Waiting to drown… This time I’m comin’ down…

I suppose we have to class this as Britpop; but it also feels bigger, more timeless than that. And if it is Britpop (bearing in mind that the Verve formed as a shoegaze band, way back in 1990) then it is another song marking the comedown, more ‘Beetlebum’ than ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ It’s interesting, actually, that the closing years of the decade will see (slightly) more rock chart-toppers than 1995-6, the peak years of Britpop.

As with Blur’s second #1, this one’s about drugs, and the bands’ struggles with them. I mean, it’s right there in the title. But added to that is the perhaps apocryphal story that it’s about watching a close family member die of cancer. The drugs don’t work, They just make you worse, But I know I’ll see your face again… Richard Ashcroft has never confirmed this, but has mentioned in interviews that this is now the song’s widely-accepted meaning. And he seems genuinely moved by this, the fact that he’s written a song that accompanies people through some of their darkest moments.

Despite all this, and despite me just calling it “one of the saddest chart-toppers in history”, it’s not a miserable song. The reverb, and the strings, give it a light quality, and I love the bluesy rasp to Ashcroft’s voice. The highlight is the middle-eight, the gorgeously soaring Cause baby oooh, If heaven calls… ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ was the second release from their widely acclaimed ‘Urban Hymns’ album, and the strings in particular tie it back to the previous single, ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’. That record is probably the Verve’s best remembered – especially as it was their only hit in the US – but it’s not a song I’ve ever loved. For me, this record, their sole number one, is their towering achievement.

So, I wouldn’t like to overly suggest that the success of ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, which had made #2 a couple of months earlier, was the reason for this making #1. This record deserves better than ‘shadow #1’ status. Perhaps more of a factor in this being such a big hit is the fact that it was released the day after the death of Princess Diana. Lots of sources have retrospectively claimed that her death, and the public’s need for something both maudlin and uplifting, meant it went straight to number one. Maybe that’s true, but again I’d give a song of this quality a bit more benefit of the doubt. ‘Urban Hymns’ went on to become one of the decade’s biggest albums, but its success caused the band to fracture. Ashcroft embarked on a successful solo career, and the next Verve album didn’t appear until 2008.

Anyway, if the public were desperate to mark Diana’s death by purchasing a CD single, they didn’t have to wait long for an even more appropriate song to come along…