Science

When Bonnie hears the opening bars of the Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony, she is transported back to 1997. But it isn’t a joyful memory that comes to mind; it is the painful recollection of driving home from school and seeing the sheriff changing a lock on her house.

Then a teenager, Bonnie and her family were about to be evicted. And the Verve’s song was everywhere.

“It was a big hit at the time, and it just seemed to be playing all the time, in takeaway shops and shopping centres, on the radio in the car. I just couldn’t get away from this song,” she says.

To this day the 46-year-old who lives in Canberra, Australia, says she will change the radio or leave the location where the song is playing to avoid hearing it. “The lyrics of this song too closely described our situation,” she says.

Bitter Sweet Symphony was the recessional at my first wedding. I'm pretty certain neither of us (both trancewhore ravers) had bothered listening to the lyrics when we made that selection.