The Verve had been a much-admired drive in fashionable rock music from the UK for greater than 5 years by 1997, however nothing may have ready them or their report label, Hut, for what would occur with their third album launch.
The five-piece British outfit loved nice acclaim and average success with their first two LPs, 1993’s A Storm In Heaven and the 1995 follow-up A Northern Soul, the latter additionally yielding three Prime 40 singles. However their subsequent set of recent songs wouldn’t solely reshape their careers, however change into one of many defining UK albums of the Nineteen Nineties.
On the chart of October 11, 1997, City Hymns entered at No.1, because it began a mission that noticed it change into one of many UK’s 20 bestselling artist albums of all time. The important thing to The Verve’s fast elevation to the highest desk of British rock got here with the 2 landmark singles that previewed the album’s launch.
“Bittersweet Symphony,” absolutely one of many best-known anthems not to make No.1, had entered, and peaked on the UK chart in runner-up spot in late June, however it turned a defining anthem on an album that stored on delivering them. It was adopted by Richard Ashcroft’s highly effective “The Drugs Don’t Work,” which gave them that high spot they’d narrowly missed a couple of weeks earlier when it debuted at No.1 in September.
With anticipation for the guardian album sky excessive, City Hymns started a unprecedented chart residency, first within the UK after which world wide. Its preliminary British reign lasted 5 weeks, adopted by seven extra within the Prime 3, all the best way to the tip of 1997. December introduced one other Prime 10 hit from the album with “Lucky Man,” and within the new yr, City Hymns accelerated anew. It spent the primary six weeks of 1998 on the summit, because it amassed an unimaginable 42 consecutive weeks within the Prime 10.
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The album went on to really spectacular gross sales world wide. It was quadruple platinum within the UK even earlier than the tip of 1997, and in 2013, commerce physique the BPI confirmed it as ten-times platinum. Its worldwide gross sales at the moment are previous ten million, and in 2014, the Official Charts Firm named City Hymns the seventeenth bestselling artist album in UK chart historical past.
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