All The Records I've Ever Owned

  Year Released: 1997 Label: Hut Records / Virgin Records Year Bought: Can't remember It's hard to critique this album as it's just one of those albums that everyone universally considers to be great. I'll be honest, I've never really listened to it properly. The singles are ace, and I'm sure I gave it a spin way back when, but when it came out I was still on my Oasis trip, and then shifted to Radiohead and Jeff Buckley, so Urban Hymns just sort of lived in my peripheral vision. I knew the singles, that was enough for me. As album openers go, Bittersweet Symphony is up there with Smells Like Teen Spirit on Nevermind and Rock n Roll Star on Definitely Maybe as the perfect encapsulation of a band's ethos. It's the perfect headline. You can read on, but it tells you everything you need to know. When I saw Richard Ashcroft playing this at Wembley last year supporting Oasis, the whole stadium got to their feet like it's the national anthem. Let's be h...

Released: 1998 Label: Hut Records When I bought: 1998 In 1998, The Verve could do no wrong. Urban Hymns had dominated the zeitgeist, Richard Ashcroft was the very definition of cool, and seemingly everyone wanted to parody the 'Bittersweet Symphony' video. Nailed on for that year's Mercury Music Prize, surely? Indeed not. Instead, another group of northern young men with guitars walked away with the gong, and a cheque for £25,000. Gomez hailed from Southport, played their first gig in Leeds, and signed to Hut Records (a subsidiary of Virgin Records) in 1997. Their debut album, 'Bring It On' came out in March 1998, but it's fair to say it didn't set the world on fire. The Mercury Music Prize win - which came a year to the day of signing their record deal - gave the album a burst of publicity and sales. I bought the record off the back of that win, but was so deep in my Britpop phase I didn't really connect with it. So that was that. I didn't listen to...