You shouldn’t need to be a woman to relate to the John Lewis advert

September 1997, and I’m on a flight to New York feeling rough because I’ve barely been to bed, which was stupid, because I’m off to see my favourite band tonight. The Verve are playing at Irving Plaza, and no hangover or jetlag in the world are going to stop me from going.

Turns out that Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and a slew of others models and indie bands felt the same way. The gig was packed with A-listers, not that we called them that then.

Formed in Wigan in 1990, The Verve were Oasis for cool people, and Richard Ashcroft was the coolest frontman to walk God’s earth. Tall, dark and tortured, girls fancied him and boys wanted to be him. Even Noel Gallagher wanted to be him, though less for aesthetic reasons than because of his voice and songwriting skills. When Ashcroft was announced as the support act for Oasis’s tour next year, few Verve fans who’d lived through the 1990s were surprised.

They were, however, surprised on Thursday morning, when they woke up to the news that one of The Verve’s most poignant songs, Sonnet, had been used in the John Lewis Christmas ad. Nor was it being covered by a 16-year-old TikTok star they’d never heard of: it was sung by Richard Ashcroft, just as it had been in 1997. The second track on The Verve’s third album, Urban Hymns, Sonnet didn’t exactly set the charts alight – that accolade went to Bitter Sweet Symphony – but it remains many fans’ favourite song – particularly if said fans are women.

Just as Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the John Lewis Christmas ad, nor would the run-up be complete without everyone arguing about whether said ad is good or not. While it hasn’t yet been cancelled, it has attracted considerable criticism, for sins as various as failing to feature no dragons/aliens / lonely old men / any men at all.

The second John Lewis ad to be conceived by Saatchi & Saatchi, “The Gifting Hour” shows a time-pressed woman called Sally shopping for a present for her sister. A series of flashbacks depict her conjuring childhood memories in a bid for inspiration; that time her sister wanted a teddy. A scarf. A nose ring. The ad ends with Sally meeting her sister to present the gift. “What took you so long?” asks the sister. “You did,” Sally smiles.

On X (formerly known as Twitter), as ever, opinion was divided. “Fully grown men crying about the John Lewis Christmas ad only featuring women is better than any gift that money could buy,” wrote one woman. “Boring, I don’t get it,” wrote a male user. “Apparently, it’s supposed to be a tear-jerker.”

And therein lies the rub. Whilst we can all get behind the poignancy of a lonely old man or a trampolining dog, it appears that not all of us can relate to the poignancy of running round the shops for 15 minutes until closing time, sweating profusely in faux leather trousers and a chunky knit – though said sweats could equally have been prompted by the maelstrom of conflicting demands churning round our heads as we dash down an escalator looking for the perfect gift. Or 32 of them, actually, once we count our parents, partner, siblings, godchildren, nieces, nephews and friends.

Why is the John Lewis ad not relatable? Answer: it is. But only if you’ve ever been the person tasked with not merely celebrating Christmas, but producing it. In this, you don’t have to be a woman – but it helps. Scratch the surface of most nuclear families, and it’s women who buy the bulk of the Christmas presents, often for their partner’s families as well as their own. No, not all women. But many women.

Some of these women are angry about the extent and burden of this unpaid labour, but most of them are sanguine. They love producing Christmas, and wouldn’t have it any other way. Were their male partner ever to offer up more help, they might even reject it. They’d also likely criticise him for failing to do “the thing” as well as they’d have done “the thing”.

None of these complex emotions existed for me in 1997, when all I needed from a partner was decent taste in trainers and a GSOH (good sense of humour). To hear a song I loved from simpler times used as a soundtrack to more complex ones hit me like a ten-foot Norwegian fir. Maybe I had to become a middle-aged woman to realise that Richard Ashcroft had always written lyrics like a middle-aged woman. “My friend and me / looking through her red box of memories / Faded I’m sure / but love seems to stick in her veins, you know”. What 26-year-old bloke from Wigan has any business in writing those?

“We knew the ad was set in the 90s,” says John Lewis’s brand director, Rosie Hanley, explaining the reasoning behind their choice. “We wanted to tap into that nostalgia, and make sure that it was the sort of song that Sally’s mum and dad would have been playing on their CD player, so that Sally would hear the song and suddenly be transported back to that time. Usually, the song is one of the last decisions we make, but Sonnet was chosen back in August. We all felt really good about it – the lyrics work so well.”

In 1997, Richard Ashcroft would have likely told John Lewis to do one, had they approached him to use The Verve’s music for a TV ad. But age mellows us all, even countercultural Britpop icons who once denounced “The Man”. “The John Lewis Christmas ad has its own place in the hearts of the British public, so musicians tend to want to work with us,” says Hanley. “Richard has been a big supporter from the start.” Indeed: he’s also judging a nationwide talent search on TikTok, the winner of which will record their own version of Sonnet, to be featured in a Christmas Day airing of the ad.

“Sonnet plays again – time for some mince pies,” has so far been Ashcroft’s only comment on the matter. The mince pies are on him: in addition to the money he’ll make supporting Oasis next year (not to mention what he banks from the ad), Sonnet is likely to surge up the charts again.

As it deserves to. “Yes, there’s love if you want it / Don’t sound like a sonnet,” is a lyric whose words were wasted on me in 1997. Only when you’re older do you realise that love is rarely expressed in iambic pentameter. It’s shopping for Christmas presents in the middle of a menopausal sweat. It’s a thousand small acts of kindness stretched out over a lifetime – whether for your partner, your parents or your friends. It’s making an effort. You shouldn’t need to have a sister – or be a woman – to relate to that.