Urban Hymns

This is a good album.
However, it has a couple of problems:
1) It is too long (and many of the individual songs also extend for too long)
2) "Bitter Sweet Symphony" and "The Drugs Don't Work" are real urban hymns. These two tracks are iconic and really good. The rest of the tracks are not even close to these two masterpieces.

However, it is still a very good album. And there are other songs I actually enjoyed: "Sonnet", "The Rolling People" (it reminds me of Oasis. It would be better if shorten to 5 min), "Space And Time" (Coldplay vibes...in the good sense and, of course, predating it. And, once more, the last two min are not really needed), "Weeping Willow", "Lucky Man", or "One Day" are also good. And, by the way, "Come On" is also a pretty solid rock track.

Overall, this is between 3 and 4 stars but, I think that it deserves 4 stars (and let's just skip two or three songs to make this a very good 50 min album). Also giving this one 4 stars because I actually like some of the solo work by Richard Ashcroft.

Bitter Sweet Symphony - 94
Sonnet - 92
The Rolling People - 90
The Drugs Don't Work - 93
Catching The Butterfly - 90
Neon Wilderness - 83
Space And Time - 91
Weeping Willow - 89
Lucky Man - 90
One Day - 88
This Time - 86
Velvet Morning - 89
Come On - 88

Urban Hymns - 92

Didnt realize how good bitter sweet symphony really is. I guess i took it for granted. I was expecting ut to be like a one hit wonder but the other songs are even better imo. Very radiohead-like.
The Last few Songs were lretty much the Same, but they are Not Bad ans there are some nice parts to it. Lol also ist funny to me that the super Deluxe Version hast Like 10000 Versions of the Same song they used the fuck Out of that Album. Also excuse my weird was of capitalizing random stuff it is the Auto correction. WHAT J THOIGHT THE ALBUM ENDED BUT ITS JUST THIS HUGE PAUSE AT "come on". idk abt yall but i really enjoy it, especially what Happens after

All these sad britpop songs sound just like each other don't they

they listened to Whats the Story Morning Glory? and really said "we need more strings" 2.5

"Bittersweet Symphony" is one of the best songs of the 90s, hands down. I don't know anyone who does not like its brilliant fusion of orchestral backing and anthemic vocals.

The rest of the album is completely boring, however. Awkward funk and David Bowie worship at some points, and then non-boundary-pushing "psychedelic" rock the next, without interesting production or great performances.

The album is kind of contextually hilarious because of this massive dip in quality following its first track. It's a classic indicative case of what Jack Black calls "rocket sauce"- "A lot of bands - they've only got so much in the bottle. They use it up sometimes in one song."

Tiene dos canciones buenas y el resto es un bodrio. Muy largo y aburrido al pedo.

Not very diverse

I'm getting pretty tired of just having a bunch of Britpop albums I don't care about. At least this one has one major hit on it ... And then an hour of other songs. Many of the songs are OK, and some are actually surprisingly good, but I don't really think any of them truly reach great status. This album mostly stays in one particular quasi-melancholy groove for an hour and doesn't really do much besides that. It's OK, but it's a bit too long.

This album is ranked #5 of 25 albums for 1997. Other 1997 albums rated by me:
Either Or(4/25)-3
In It For The Money(8/25)-2
A Short Album About Love(19/25)-3
Life Thru A Lens(21/25)-1
Let's Get Killed(22/25)-3

More britpop. More than half of the pulling in this album is done by bittersweet symphony, if that song wasn't there this would be a very forgettable album.

Nice bittersweet symphony and The Drugs Don't Work. 2 other good ones. But also lots of what I thought listening to Oasis would be like (annoying men moaning with their voices and such). It just gets a 3

Listened before? Yes

Thoughts:
- I really enjoy the first half of this album. Bittersweet Symphony is the clear standout, but Sonnet and The Drugs Don't Work are also great songs.
- The second half does get kind of boring though. All the songs started to feel a bit too long.

Favorite track(s): The Drugs Don't Work, Catching the Butterfly

Call this album the drugs the way it don't work.

Twaalf keer saaie britpop en Bittersweet Symphony, daarvoor toch net een 3.

I was very much flipping back and forth between giving Urban Hymns a 4 or a 5 star rating but after enough thinking, i decided on the latter due to many reasons. I only knew this album from one of it's singles and that being the monster of a track that is Bitter Sweet Symphony but a lot of the other tracks sound very much like it and are still very good in all their own ways. I love all the orchestral elements in each of the songs and they are all elevated by the brilliant melodies and masterful production. I really cannot think of too many things that i can complain about when it comes to this album so i'll just say that it is an amazing listen and one that i'm glad i got for my 22nd birthday.
Best Song: Bitter Sweet Symphony
Worst Song: This Time

Bardzo miła, przyjemna płyta, porządny brit-rock i tego nie można im zabrać. Bittersweet Symphony jest równie przeklęte co Wonderwall, pa.

I never quite understood the hype that was generated ahead of this album. The singles are great, but beyond that is all fairly mediocre and Richard Ashcroft’s vocals are hardly great. I’s a shame Lucky man is buried down at track 9, as i’d long lost interest before then. It would be far better replacing the rolling people and then you could just switch it off.
Four songs do not a great album make

This album outstayed it's welcome for me (and I didn't even listen to the 2 hour 35 minute deluxe version the generator linked to!). Richard Ashcroft's voice over a full 75 minutes was a bit much, and I think the songs were a bit inconsistent. Although that might have something to do with how many singles were released and how ubiquitous those singles were.

Bittersweet Symphony is the obvious, and massively successful, one of those singles. It's a great song*. Probably my favourite song off the album, though I do also like The Drugs Don't Work a lot.

Another middling mark from me:

3/5

* Anyone reading this who hasn't seen Ren's YouTube live version of Bittersweet Symphony with his own lyrics, you should watch it. He's an amazing story teller.

Lost a star when it just kept going…

Enjoyed this though wasn’t completely blown away. Probably unfairly, I’d never really listened to the Verve and lumped it dismissively with the britpop label. More depth than I was expecting,
Can see me potential revising this score upwards after repeated listens but for now a very solid 3.