Mercury winners: where are they now?". Channel 4. 18 July 2007. Archived from the original on 8 October 2009 . Retrieved 10 June 2009. Laws, Mike (11 December 2014). "The 10 Best Britpop Albums of All Time (or At Least Since 1993 or So)". The Village Voice. Suzan Gursoy . Retrieved 13 December 2016. American certifications – Verve, The – Urban Hymns". Recording Industry Association of America . Retrieved 9 February 2010. Urban Hymns spent 12 weeks at the top of the UK Albums Chart, with a total of 124 weeks on the chart. [35] It also became the Verve's first charting album in the United States, where it debuted at number 63 on the Billboard 200, [36] giving the band their first commercial success in the country. [37] Urban Hymns ultimately peaked at number 23 on the chart and was certified Platinum by the RIAA on 4 April 1998; [38] it remains the group's best-selling album in the United States, with more than 1.3 million copies sold as of 2009 [update]. [39] Legacy [ edit ] Sealing the deal, though, were the big-hitting singles; they, ultimately, are the reason why Urban Hymns is the eighteenth best-selling record of all time in the UK. “Bitter Sweet Symphony” neatly encapsulates the album’s sonic ingenuity, sampling as it did an orchestral cover version, unrecognisable from the original, of The Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time” and creating one of the most genuinely iconic string parts in modern music history.

With their star firmly in the ascendant, The Verve scheduled their first UK gigs for two years in September ’97, just as the album’s second single, the glorious orchestral swell of “The Drugs Don’t Work,” furnished them with their first UK No.1. Urban Hymns’ majestic trailer singles were inevitably singled out for praise when the album emerged, yet the record seamlessly ebbed and flowed between the band’s customary psychedelic wig-outs (‘The Rolling People’, “Catching The Butterfly,” the valedictory “Come On”) and expansive, existential laments such as “Space And Time’,” “Weeping Willow” and the elegant “Sonnet.” Barely a second seemed superfluous. Wilkinson, Matt (16 February 2010). "Liam Gallagher snubs Noel as Oasis win Brit Album of 30 Years award". NME . Retrieved 26 October 2019. Trust, Gary (23 January 2009). "Ask Billboard: Mariah Carey, Abba, Oasis, The Verve". Billboard. Archived from the original on 7 February 2009 . Retrieved 12 April 2013.The Official Swiss Charts and Music Community: Awards (The Verve; 'Urban Hymns ')". IFPI Switzerland. Hung Medien. American album certifications – The Verve – Urban Hymns". Recording Industry Association of America. Tops de l'Année – Top Albums 1998" (in French). Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique . Retrieved 27 June 2021. The Top 200 Artist Albums of 2006" (PDF). Chartwatch: 2006 Chart Booklet. Zobbel.de. p.42 . Retrieved 29 June 2021.

Beaumont-Thomas, Ben (23 May 2019). "Bittersweet no more: Rolling Stones pass Verve royalties to Richard Ashcroft". The Guardian . Retrieved 14 July 2022. This twentieth anniversary reissue of the album is suitably epic in its presentation, although anyone who doesn’t consider themselves a Verve diehard may find much of it to be extraneous. The fourth of the five discs is the highlight; for the first time, we get the entirety of the band’s massive homecoming set in front of 30,000 people at Haigh Hall Park in Wigan in May of 1998. It finds them at the absolute height of their powers; after all, Urban Hymns was a record that was supposed to be played to crowds of that size. Top-75 Albums Sales Chart (Combined) – Week 25/2021". IFPI Greece. Archived from the original on 8 July 2021.

a b c d Woodward, Will (29 April 1999). "Bittersweet success as the Verve split". The Guardian . Retrieved 20 January 2017.