“It is right up there”: the George Michael song that knocked out Liam Gallagher
While the Oasis reunion tour of 2025 was a triumphant return to the ignorant bliss of Britpop, there was a fundamental change in the Gallagher brothers that felt as though it turned my world upside down.
This time around, the otherwise gruff and unimpressed Mancunian brothers had developed something of a soft edge, where pop stars were no longer caught in the humorous crosshairs of their press runs. Instead, they swapped the quick-witted insults for an uncharacteristic amount of industry respect that seemed to feel at odds with this biblical return to the top. Maybe, they’ve spent one too many years in Chiltern Firehouse?
Or maybe I am just missing the point completely, and have exercised my selective memory in celebrating the band whose return signified a much-needed blast of nostalgia. Their softened stance to say, pop music, hasn’t just come from their ripened age spent in the comfort of their north London homes. No, even back in the day, when they were still at the coalface of rock and roll, they would be able to put their egos to one side and compliment a pop artist who was doing it right.
One of which was the late great George Michael, whose 1990 song ‘Praying For Time’ inspired a young Liam Gallagher, in the very same way the works of The Beatles did.
The Oasis frontman celebrated the track, saying, “When I hear that, it is right up there, you know what I mean? And then you get into the lyrics. The one that jumps out is ‘the rich declare themselves poor’. I like it because it’s got a bit of a dig, you know what I mean?”
He added, “It’s like, I mean, that’s the way I take it anyway, it’s like you bunch of fucking cunts, you know what I mean? Always fucking playing the poverty card, I like that, so it’s got a bit of a Lennon vibe, he likes to dig people out. There’s no one before the Beatles that did that kind of song.”
That social aggression is at the heart of all the music Liam Gallagher claims to passionately love and goes some way to proving rock and roll spirit isn’t just embodied in the crunch of a reverberated guitar, but more in its attitude and intention. One that John Lennon mastered on the darkest Beatles songs, Gallagher himself perfected in performance, and Michael clearly tapped into on ‘Praying For Time’.
Gallagher’s assessment of the song was bang on, though, as Michael later claimed the social angle of the song was written “to show how much I loved Lennon”. It was Michael trying to step outside of his clean-cut pop poster boy image and impact some sort of meaningful change through his music, and carve out a career of artistic legitimacy for himself.
It was a pursuit achieved, for the song has created the sort of legacy Lennon would be proud of, and more importantly, got the seal of rock and rolls hardest man to please: Liam Gallagher.
