The Oasis song Noel Gallagher says no one understands: “It’s just so pathetic”
There’s a good chance that no artist can sing a song quite like the one who wrote it. While performers may excel at interpreting a track, the emotional resonance unique to the writer often shines through only when they perform it themselves. Noel Gallagher often reserved these more intimate tracks for his own vocals in Oasis. However, he grew frustrated when people misinterpreted the meaning behind the song ‘Acquiesce’.
Granted, that’s when people were actually trying to decipher every single meaning behind an Oasis record. There are certainly some gems to be found throughout their discography, but when looking at the lyrics, you’d swear that Noel was permanently stoned whenever he was writing every one of them, especially when first looking at songs like ‘Shakermaker’ and ‘Digsy’s Dinner’.
There are still some gems sprinkled throughout, though, and ‘Acquiesce’ is probably one of the most Oasis-sounding songs they have ever made. Noel even ranked it among one of the most definitive tracks they had ever made alongside ‘Some Might Say’, but the meaning behind believing in one another had fans speculating if the track was too close to home.
Since most of the lines talk about feeling alive and two people depending on each other, many fans think the song is about the relationship between Noel and Liam. Yes, they had their spats from all the way at the beginning of their career, but this might be the purest love song that Noel wrote for his brother, almost to remind him that they can make people’s hearts soar whenever they play.
But Noel quickly says that the song is far from the lovefest that everyone thinks it is, saying in Supersonic, “It is just so pathetic to me when people say, ‘It is clearly about you and Liam’. Oh, right, yes, because I forget you were fucking there inside my head when I wrote it, and I must be wrong. Well, it isn’t, in the same way ‘Cast No Shadow’ is not about Richard Ashcroft. It is dedicated to Richard Ashcroft; it’s a whole different thing, isn’t it?”
Which begs the question, if it isn’t about Liam, then who the hell is he actually talking about? Noel has been to keep everything close to the chest whenever he writes lyrics, but there’s a case to be made that this could be about an old flame of his that helped him get back into the band following the disastrous Whiskey-a-Go-Go gig in the US.
Also, being the inspiration for songs like ‘Wonderwall’, Melissa Lim is a probable candidate for Noel’s muse on the track, especially since she was separated from him at the time and could have easily been on Noel’s mind when he started putting together the B-sides for what would become What’s the Story Morning Glory.
But at this point, the only way that anyone will actually know is if ‘The Chief’ actually holds a press conference and tells everyone himself. Because if there’s anything that we can count on, it’s that Noel has the answers stored somewhere in his head and just refuses to tell anyone to keep things interesting.
