The classic Oasis songs Noel Gallagher liked least: “Selling yourself short”
It doesn’t normally take much for Noel Gallagher to start waxing poetic about the brilliance that is Oasis. There are many people who are optimistic about their career, but Noel was determined to be the kind of artist that went down in history with the all-time greats, and listening to some of the band’s work in the 1990s, it’s not like anyone would necessarily disagree when listening to songs like ‘Supersonic’ or ‘Live Forever’. But even during their best moments, Noel could at least admit when some songs weren’t exactly at the same peaks that he reached with ‘Champagne Supernova’.
Listening through to the band’s catalogue, though, it’s easy to picture their greatest songs being a relic from another time altogether. The whole point behind their music was to serve as a positive retort to grunge in many ways, and while Noel could appreciate someone like Kurt Cobain, there was no way that he would get behind songs like ‘Dumb’ and ‘I Hate Myself and Want to Die’.
What he did needed to be more upbeat, and while you’d swear that albums like What’s the Story Morning Glory were made up of long-lost Beatles artefacts half the time, Be Here Now was the first time that the Manchester legends felt like they were on the same level as their heroes. Oasismania was in full swing the minute that ‘D’You Know What I Mean’ got on the charts, and while its moment in the sun was all too brief, the singles from the record are a different story.
Hearing a song like ‘All Around the World’ in isolation isn’t going to automatically forgive the massive size and scope of the record, but the B-sides from the sessions offer a nice bit of insight into Noel’s songwriting process. ‘Going Nowhere’ is a far more mellow affair than before, and their cover of ‘Street Fighting Man’ is stellar in most regards, but there were a few stragglers out in the wild.
When talking about the single for ‘Stand By Me’, Noel felt that this was the first time when writing B-sides ever felt forced, saying, “‘(I Got)The Fever’ and, er, ‘My Sister Lover’, they’re the ones I like the least. That was when we were like, ‘Oh f**k, gotta write some B-sides’. They were just f*****g bashed together, couple of chords and a chord change. Which I hate doing, because it’s selling yourself short, really, and it’s not fair on the people who buy the records.”
This is strange because that had never been a problem with Noel. It was understood among Oasis fans that the B-sides of their singles were as good and often better than the A-side, and while the songs here aren’t exactly on the same level as ‘The Masterplan’ or ‘Round Are Way’, they do offer a bit of insight into the band’s past that fans don’t get to see too often.
‘My Sister Lover’ is quite self-explanatory, being a thank-you to the band The Sister Lovers, who helped them play their showcase gig for Alan McGee, but ‘(I Got) The Fever’ is much more raw and aggressive than anything they’d done. This is a far more sombre affair, and listening to what Noel is writing about, it almost seems self-critical in some respects, as if he’s talking about the next generation that will one day overtake him.
For someone who was all about self-belief in everything he wrote, this might have been a teaser for what was to come later, too. Standing on the Shoulder of Giants may have been the sad afterglow of the band’s time in the sun, and since Noel had taken to writing songs like ‘Gas Panic’ and ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong’, songs that were more reflective like this may have been an excellent jumping off point for something a bit more sombre.
