Did Liam Gallagher write any Oasis songs released as singles?
It’s hard to deny that Oasis would be nowhere today if Noel Gallagher hadn’t agreed to manage his brother’s band in October 1991 before taking over songwriting duties. Noel went on to write songs that touched popular consciousness in a way that not even he himself, at his most boastful, could have predicted.
Yet slowly but surely, his younger sibling Liam grew in confidence as a songwriter and was spotted more frequently around studio sessions with a guitar in his hand working out the chords to new music he’d come up with. Although he’d contributed to the melody and lyrics of the band’s shoegaze throwback ‘Columbia’ right at the start of their existence, he had to wait until the next century for his first actual writing credit on an Oasis song. That song was ‘Little James’, a paean to his newborn son that ended on the band’s fourth studio album, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants.
Having taken that first tentative step, Liam contributed three songs out of the 11 on the track listing of the group’s next album, Heathen Chemistry. These songs included ‘Born on a Different Cloud’, which Noel admitted to being impressed by at the time in a promotional film for the record. “I don’t believe he wrote it,” the elder Gallagher joked. Given his extensive songwriting contribution to the album, it was only right that one of Liam’s tracks was chosen to be a single.
‘Songbird’, a song the Oasis frontman said he’d written sitting under a tree in Paris, was released on February 3rd, 2003. It was the third and final single from Heathen Chemistry and reached number three in the UK singles chart. Liam would then have to wait almost six years for his next Oasis single.
Up there with his best work, ‘I’m Outta Time’ was a clear highlight among the distinctively mixed bag that was Oasis’ final studio album (to this point), Dig Out Your Soul. It came out in time for Christmas on December 1st, 2008, and peaked at number 12 in the UK. This was the lowest placing of any Oasis single in the British charts since their debut release ‘Supersonic’ in 1994. But that reflected the decline of guitar bands in mainstream British music by that point more than the quality of the song itself.
And who is the song about?
‘I’m Outta Time’ perfectly encapsulates Liam Gallagher’s lifelong obsession with John Lennon. The song bases itself heavily on the chord progression of Lennon’s 1971 single ‘Jealous Guy’ and features a piano embellishment lifted directly from the song. All the same, it took years to finish, so intent was its writer on doing its subject justice.
Liam openly dedicated the track to Lennon, and its theme of falling and being “outta time” alludes to his premature death in 1980. The singer also does his best Lennon impression on the lead vocal, going as nasal as he can to imitate the Beatle’s Imagine-era timbre.
Just in case any of us weren’t 100% clear on the song’s meaning, the youngest Gallagher brother finishes it off with a poignant snippet from John Lennon’s final interview on the morning of his murder. “As Churchill said, it’s every Englishman’s inalienable right to live where the hell he likes. What’s it going to do, vanish? Is it not going to be there when I’ll get back?”
Overall, it’s a moving tribute to one of British rock’s leading lights and a worthier single than anything else on the seventh Oasis album. It was only the second hit for the band penned by Liam. But if there’s any new music to come out of the Oasis reunion, we can be sure it won’t be his last.
