The saddest number one rock song, according to science
Most of the greatest rock and roll songs ever made have been about perseverance. The whole genre had started as the antithesis of good taste for most people, and it would be a long time before critics and parents began to come around on the genre that was supposed to be the death of music for most straight media. The only way to persevere through that kind of pain is to be optimistic, but some of the biggest artists of all time knew how to balance the good with the bad half the time.
After all, The Beatles have written some of the best tunes of all time, but there’s a reason why a song like ‘Yesterday’ has gone down as one of their finest works. Paul McCartney may have been known as the chipper attitude behind the Fab Four, so when he finally let that veil down and showed people the shape of his heart, it was easier to see the real human behind everything.
But sadness is a hard thing to measure in most songs. Everyone sees their favourite music in a different light, and when looking through the greatest tunes ever made, it’s hard to get a handle on something that tugs at someone’s heartstrings in one way and leaves someone else cold. But as the 1990s dawned, it was clear that there was a bit more emotion being put into rock and roll.
Because listening to Nirvana, it was clear that Kurt Cobain had a lot to get off his chest. Not everything was decipherable half the time, but his death was a punctuation on some of his darkest tunes, almost confirming that all of the tunes that he was writing were frighteningly real, like when he talks about missing the comfort of being sad.
Even when Britain tried to cheer everyone up with the Britpop movement, it’s not like there weren’t more solemn bands around the corner. Oasis may have wanted everyone to feel like they could live forever, but there were also bands like Radiohead that were teaching us how much sorrow could be let out with a guitar in one’s hands. And yet somehow, The Verve managed to do both at the exact same time on Urban Hymns.
Despite having some of the biggest artistic triumphs of the decade, ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ was never supposed to be one of the most optimistic tunes of all time. Richard Ashcroft was talking about the idea of someone working as hard as they can and never making anything of themselves, but outside of that kind of existential depression, ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ was far more effective at communicating that message.
And when Dr. Harry Witchel was ranking songs based on a “tune trigger quotient”, ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ was deemed the saddest rock song to ever reach number one. But listening to the lyrics, there’s a reason why it outshone songs like REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’ or Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’.
Although ‘Slowhand’s tearful farewell to his late son has the potential to make someone’s eyes wet before he even starts singing, Ashcroft hit on something that was all too common for people on the fringes of society. Thankfully, not everyone has experienced the pain of having their heart ripped out after losing a child, but someone with a drug problem who ends up losing that battle is far too familiar in the industry, and Ashcroft’s mantra of seeing his other half’s face one more time is a sentiment that everyone has to hold onto during their years without them.
So while The Verve might not have wanted to make the saddest number-one song ever, it does have a great way of hitting on everyone’s humanity before anything else. And when someone opens themselves up that much, there’s no way that anyone could touch them.
