The classic Oasis song Noel Gallagher was never happy with: “It seems a little half-baked”
Some of the greatest rock songs of all time are built from a single great idea. Though the genre has never been known as the most intellectual style of music in the world, many songsmiths are willing to twist their phrases around in a way that not only rolls off the tongue well but also makes people understand themselves a lot better than they ever thought was possible. And despite Noel Gallagher’s penchant for layering in the studio on Oasis’s best tunes, he admitted that ‘Cast No Shadow’ never had as much potential as he thought it did.
But it’s not like he had time to go through every single line that the group were making. The whole record was cut within the span of ten days, so they weren’t exactly looking to get every waking moment absolutely correct or wondering whether the treble should be up on a certain mic stand.
After all, he had already had a few B-sides that weren’t supposed to be classics when they were recorded. When looking at a tune like ‘Talk Tonight’ about his time lost in America, you can hear everything from him taking his watch off to him coughing halfway through the verse. That’s not coming from someone who’s just looking to pour over every single line in the hopes that it will reach perfection because of how many hours were put into it.
And compared to every other anthem on the record, ‘Cast No Shadow’ has much more space than any other tracks. Sure, ‘Wonderwall’ couldn’t claim to be this grand epic with so few pieces in the final mix, but with just a spare acoustic guitar, various artificial string parts and a drum beat, Noel created a hauntingly beautiful song for the record.
Despite his desire to sound like Pink Floyd, most of the song feels like a sad ballad that John Lennon would have written back in the day. Only certain parts move in and out of the mix, but since the entire song is about a man who can never fully express himself and feels alone, leaving everything open in the mix does a much better job of illustrating the melancholy of the lyrics.
Even though Noel didn’t indulge in making this kind of tearjerker, he still considered ‘Cast No Shadow’ to be one of the few tunes that never came together, recalling, “It’s the same chords as ‘Wish You Were Here’. I was listening to it today, and it seems a little bit half-baked. There’s sort of a country thing going on, and it’s like something that’s caught between two stylistic stools. But it’s a fucking great song.’”
If nothing else, the song’s style actually feels like a spiritual successor to what ‘Wonderwall’ had hinted at. Since that was a pure love song talking about the start of a relationship, ‘Cast No Shadow’ feels like the same person years later after watching his lover pass him by one too many times.
For someone who always talks about how they are one of the greatest artists in the world, being this vulnerable in a song is a much-needed breath of fresh anger in between tracks like ‘Rock and Roll Star’ and ‘Live Forever’. Most people can talk themselves up all they want, but the only time that they can truly dazzle their audience is when they get all of their feelings out in song.
