(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still / Virgin Records)
Mon 29 September 2025 4:00, UK
Even before Oasis have stepped on stage, during this string of reunion shows, the nights they have put on have been unfiltered celebrations of 1990s euphoria. Rather than platform emerging artists on their closely watched support acts, they decided to steer into nostalgia and recruit Cast and Richard Ashcroft.
While the former approach would have undoubtedly been a more thoughtful approach, when all the criticism falls away, you can’t help but acknowledge their inclusion of their ‘90s counterparts makes for an immersive evening of nostalgic celebration. In the case of Richard Ashcroft, especially, it delivers a setlist that at times showcases songs equally as anthemic and stirring as anything on the upcoming Oasis setlist.
The most notable of all would be ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, boasting a chorus line that even the uninitiated would still be familiar with and then giving way to a following on set, that works its way through one alternative ballad after another. Most of those tracks come from the band’s seminal album Urban Hymns which was released in 1997, two years after Oasis’ magnum opus (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?.
But that wasn’t the band’s only stellar effort. Before Urban Hymns, they released A Northern Soul, which was also released in 1995 also and began to showcase the band’s penchant for penning expansive, gritty ballads. It was a sound they decided to fine tune, abandoning the model of their first record A Storm In Heaven and embracing the model of the after hearing the undeniably brilliant Oasis. And for Ashcroft, it was ‘Live Forever’ in particular that led the way to this brave new future.
“When I first heard the demo of this before I’d even met Oasis or played with them this song popped out at me and I thought this is a classic,” Richard Ashcroft explained. “Then going on to meet the lads and play with them and stuff, in the period leading up to recording A Northern Soul I started to make this conscious effort of wanting to create things that, a bit like ‘Live Forever’, are more direct, more succinct, close to perfection. Clear and uplifting and transcendent.”
Sure, on A Northern Soul, they created their own greatness with tracks like ‘Life’s An Ocean’, but it wasn’t until Urban Hymns were they perfected their own style of alternative heritage.
Ashcroft continued, “You know, I’ve always thanked Noel for that because I really do think that song and those guys re-energised and refocused me as a musician to where I was going to end up. There wouldn’t be a ‘Lucky Man’ or a ‘Sonnet’ or a ‘Drugs Don’t Work’. I really don’t believe that without this moment, without hearing ‘Live Forever’.”
It’s high praise from the Wigan native, for those three songs, alongside ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, are probably The Verve’s most recognisable and most loved. They do certainly share similarities in terms of melodic profile, but Ashcroft’s delivery of the lyrics is completely different from that of Liam Gallagher, and so keeps the song as a uniquely Verve track, rather than a Britpop rip-off.
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