This week in 1997

1 The Drugs Don’t Work The Verve

2 Men In Black Will Smith

3 Tubthumping Chumbawamba

4 Where’s The Love Hanson

5 I’ll Be Missing You Puff Daddy & Faith Evans 6 I Know Where It’s At All Saints

7 Live The Dream Cast

8 Honey Mariah Carey

9 Never Gonna Let You Go Tina Moore 10 Even After All Finley Quaye

Twenty years ago ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ dislodged Elton John’s reworked ‘Candle In The Wind’ tribute to Princess Diana from the top of the UK charts, unintentionally continuing to capture the mood of a nation still in mourning. Depending on which description you read, Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft wrote the song about watching his father die from cancer, or about his own drug use. In truth, it was probably a bit of both. ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ was the Verve’s first and only number one…their best-known track, the classic ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, had been denied the top spot in June of 1997 by Puff Daddy & Faith Evans’ ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ tribute to the murdered Notorious B.I.G. ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ did not chart in the US and ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ was the band’s only Billboard Hot 100 entry there, reaching No. 12.

Richard Ashcroft performing ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ with the Verve on ‘Later... With Jools Holland’ in 1997.