The Oasis song Noel Gallagher called “the best we’ve got”
Most bands can only hope to capture their essence within just one song. Every artist has the right to experiment with whatever they want to, but there are usually those few pieces in their catalogue that stand as the benchmark of what they are supposed to be. Although anyone with a guitar will say that the best Oasis track is ‘Wonderwall’, Noel Gallagher claimed that the closest they’ve come to perfection was ‘Some Might Say’.
When looking at the rest of the band’s catalogue, it doesn’t seem all that different at first glance. This is the same kind of Beatles-adjacent music that they had been working on since the beginning, only with a few psychedelic chords in it. To really dig deep into what the song was, we have to look at something that no other Oasis connoisseur should ever have to dissect: the lyrics.
Granted, it’s hard to really parse out anything when analysing Noel Gallagher’s lyric sheet. He famously said that the melody always comes first, and like giants like Nirvana before him, it was important to listen for the melody of the track rather than trying to teach their fans something about themselves.
That said, much more is happening with ‘Some Might Say’ than just nonsense. Throughout the entire song, the music radiates positive energy, and Liam sounds like he’s prepared to take on the world as long as he has the band behind him. The day might be cloudy, but that doesn’t mean that things can get brighter on the horizon.
That image right there is practically the story of the group. Since the group came out of the rain-swept streets of Manchester, they had scaled all the way to the top of the British music scene and finally found that brighter day. Then again, Noel probably didn’t know the power of that song until it was silenced.
The tour for Standing on the Shoulder of Giants may have seen Noel and Liam try to kick their drug habits, but that meant that Liam had to go into damage control again. He couldn’t belt like he used to in his prime, and that meant that to recover, ‘Some Might Say’ needed to be removed from the setlist.
When being interviewed at the time the tour started, Noel said that he regretted not being able to play it, saying, “I would like to be doing ‘Some Might Say’, but Liam just can’t sing it anymore. It’s a shame because that’s probably the best Oasis song we’ve got. In that four and a half minutes, that says more about Oasis than any other song. If it means him walking offstage every time he sings it, it’s probably better to just do ‘Shakemaker’.”
That didn’t mean that the track had to be retired forever. Ever since Oasis broke up and Liam took time to work on his voice, his solo shows have seen him bring it back into the setlist, sounding just as ferocious as he did when he first sang it. While it’s anyone’s guess whether the Gallagher brothers will put aside their differences, it’s easy to close your eyes and picture the band in their prime whenever Liam breaks into that chorus during his live shows.
