Which Oasis song was only included on the vinyl version of ‘Definitely Maybe’?
As Oasis’ debut album Definitely Maybe approaches its 30th anniversary, fans around the world are revisiting the record for another listen. Some might be rediscovering their favourite tracks, while others may uncover hidden details they hadn’t noticed before in Noel Gallagher’s triple-layered guitar work and Owen Morris’ intricate, kitchen-sink mix of the album.
For those who don’t own the LP on vinyl, it might also be the chance to discover a song they never knew featured on its track listing. Smuggled in between shoegaze raver ‘Columbia’ and the band’s first single ‘Supersonic’, one of Noel’s earliest Oasis songs provides a welcome change of mood.
The song’s demo version from November 1992 had Liam Gallagher on vocals and Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs playing a second guitar part. But for the album version, Noel decides to go solo, singing the tune himself over his double-tracked acoustic guitar. Bonehead briefly appears on a synth part, while it could be Liam’s voice heard in the background near the end of the piece, filtered through vocoder effects. The recording’s in a different key, too, pitched slightly lower, which paradoxically allows the part-time vocalist to show off his command of the high notes.
It’s easy to see why the track was left off other versions of Definitely Maybe. Its bright acoustic jangles and melancholy, soulful spirit are more akin to early Oasis B-sides than anything else on the album and run contrary to the entire sound Noel and Morris were aiming for on the record.
So, what’s the song called?
Fittingly, given its sound, the track is simply entitled ‘Sad Song’. And it is just that, a downcast reflection on life in a lower working-class area of Manchester where no one dares to hope for anything. “The sun is coming up, and it’s going down,” Noel sings before reasoning, “It’s all just the same.” Nothing ever seems to change. Everyone he knows in Burnage stays in Burnage and never gets out.
As he reaches the chorus, like a worried parent, he instructs us, “Don’t throw it all away.” Before relenting, with the helpless line, “Throwing it all away,” which resolves on the root major chord as though he’s given up trying to stop us. After all, it’s out of his hands, as well as the hands of everybody trapped in poverty and isolation from social mobility.
Thankfully, Noel, his brother Liam, Bonehead, Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan and Tony McCarroll were the five in a million able to pull themselves out of their hopeless social situation, principally on the strength of Noel’s songwriting. And he’d have the chance to record equally emotive ballads during the sessions for Oasis’ follow-up album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory.
Besides those later songs, an early version of ‘Live Forever’, a power ballad that’s more optimistic but just as grounded in the struggles of working-class life in Manchester, is being released as one of many lost recordings on an anniversary reissue of Definitely Maybe. Most of the recordings won’t be as downcast as ‘Sad Song’, but they’ll give us even more insight into what the band sounded like before their debut record came together.
