Why do I find Richard Ashcroft so absolutely fucking hateful?

Not much changes, really.

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:kqdyhnklmmv34nmml6btyqv6/bafkreibz2o22ivt2lk35izybklesxak36khtdxz6dbstit4rkv32yxkvqi@jpeg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0jxbliRYg0

my local supermarket plays A Song for the Lovers a lot - I always liked that one, lots of post-Britpop acts tried these big orchestral arrangements but it almost always ended up sounding turgid and lumbering, A Song for the Lovers manages to do it more elegantly imo, it actually achieves this melodramatic swoon that these guys were (presumably) all grasping for. I've never listened to the rest of the album.

I just wrote and lost a post about this new song for which Grammarly had suggested I change 'cunt' to 'tosser'. I mean, look at him.

at least Baby Billy is funny

Wow, that's one of the worst things I've ever heard.

lol, hated all these 90's English pop singers since I was a kid. Fuck all of 'em.

lol

I still like “Sonnet.”

on Facebook, I mostly post my various articles and blog posts. one FB mutual who I don't really know anything about would occasionally comment, and once in a while he'd ask if I'd ever written about the Verve or Richard Ashcroft, and I said I had not. over the course of maybe a year, it escalated, with him starting to ask why I had a problem with Richard Ashcroft, culminating in him leaving a very weird mean-spirited comment when I posted a year-end list, and I finally blocked him. the oddest part is, the guy is American, and Richard Ashcroft hadn't released anything that year.

How dare you wreck his dreams.

This song is pitiful even by Richard Ashcroft's lowly standards, but sadly I have to admit that after playing most of it once it's now lodged in my head and won't leave. Curse you, Ashcroft!

xp this sounds like an internet horror movie plot

real question though - is ashcroft a dick or is his music / persona just disliked here? i mean i'm assuming he isn't actually "hateful" or anything and this thread title is misleading (2003 being way before the cancellation era) but maybe i'm wrong?

I heard a tale from a sessioneer who played with him in the 2000s that he is, indeed, a dick

imo A Song for the Lovers works as well as it does because it has that fast samba rhythm. although it is a major weakness of mine that i can be partial to his usual solo plod on occasion (re: some other stuff on the early albums).

If there is credibly a world where Ashcroft isn't a complete cunt, then that is it for me. I'll just fucking finally top myself.

He had a solo song called Nature is the Law with Brian Wilson singing backup, that was real good.

Yeah that's one of the others. Although it possibly gave Starsailor the courage to phone Phil Spector.

i've seen richard ashcroft walk very arrogantly down the street making no effort to avoid bumping into other people! very hateful indeed!

that makes me feel bittersweet

Credit lists Joan Armatrading as co-writer, oddly enough (odd because she's written lots of great songs, and this is... umm).

This interpolate some JA track or something?

Yeah it starts off with a big lift from Love and Affection - from about 1:40 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWFKKtvAvak

It's all the way through, I quite like the song for that reason

there was a one page "ten things I know" interview with wayne coyne many years ago. one of the things he said was that most celebs he'd worked with were fine upstanding friendly people. except richard ashcroft, that guy was a real dick.

omg, it's like a boy band thing? he's.....rapping? almost?

Noel won't like it.

I saw a picture of Richard Ashcroft and Josh Widdecombe at the Chelsea Flower Show and decided that I really did hate the world.

Lol.

That video is so embarrassing to me. It made me drag all my organs closer together. I don't understand how a grown man gets *through* making this - the song, the video, the PR stuff. How can you be so lacking in self-awareness and not see how fucking awful it all is?

On a musical level, since Urban Hymns, all of Ashcroft's stuff has basically been a series of drawn out codas with no song attached.

If you judge people by what they've done in the past, you're wrong. Richard Ashcroft
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/richard-ashcroft-quotes

Jesus, that track is so bad. It sounds like they thought "what if we made an entire song that sounded like the outro of a bad song"

I don’t like this but it is quite catchy. I think it might sound better if you took all the reverb off and maybe made the drum pattern a little more elaborate, so it built on the Armatrading progression but made it a bit funkier, but not so it would sound like Robbie Williams or something. There might be a way of doing it.

But also, the video is terrible and really does nothing for the track. I’m surprised that the video was deemed acceptable. Whatever you think of him, he is still a somewhat charismatic figure in many people’s eyes, and the video does nothing to get that across. He becomes just an indistinct figure surrounded by nothingness. But maybe there’s a reason for doing that. If they made him less indistinct, it would reveal too much of how older he’s got, I don’t know. Certainly, he would need to be lit subtly.

Literally joined a work call five mins after posting that and my colleagues were discussing weekend plans, and one said "I'm going to see Richard Ashcroft"

I was like "oh did I see somewhere he has a new single out? Didn't hear it yet just think I read that"

omg, it's like a boy band thing? he's.....rapping? almost?

― fetter, Friday, 23 May 2025 08:36 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's not what I've expected a new Richard Ashcroft single to sound like in 2025. Reminds me a bit of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-cYRVHyxws

Sorry to bring up old bullshit but THIS is who Kate left Jason for?

Catchy it may be, but surely it's the Joan Armtrading bit and absolutely nothing else in the song? I'm sure deep down he knows he couldn't come up with a hit to save his life these days and this is his attempt to get on Radio 2

Yep xp

Although they've been married for 30 years now

Lol.

That video is so embarrassing to me. It made me drag all my organs closer together. I don't understand how a grown man gets *through* making this - the song, the video, the PR stuff. How can you be so lacking in self-awareness and not see how fucking awful it all is?

On a musical level, since Urban Hymns, all of Ashcroft's stuff has basically been a series of drawn out codas with no song attached.

I honestly thought you lot were joking about how dire this is.

The 'rap' style is simply to obscure how fucked his voice is, isn't it. You can hear the vocal chord nodes fraying on the abbreviated 'yeah's.

I accidentally saw a Richard Ashcroft solo gig, it was the most crushingly boring gig ever. Not his fault, but I do recognise some of the descriptions of songs that are all outros. One called "New York" as per.

This was a Teenage Cancer trust gig, and part one consisted of NoelG, Weller and Daltrey buskin a few favourites, and even Liam turned up (maybe the only time he did to one of these)

I wasn't aware RAsh was playing. But he did.....