The performance Noel Gallagher called a musical “disgrace”
It doesn’t take a long time to figure out where you stand with Noel Gallagher. He always told it like it was whenever he got into an interview, and if he had an issue with someone’s music, it was never a question as to whether he would tiptoe around the problem. In his mind, the greatest earned their spot at the top, and that left a lot of wannabes in the middle, but even the legends could come up with some truly shocking material half the time.
But in the case of Oasis, people were already ready to trash them before they made a dent in the charts. Yes, the Beatles comparisons were clearly there from the beginning, but did it really matter when the songs still sounded fantastic? ‘My Sweet Lord’ had a phenomenal guitar break when George Harrison played it, so that doesn’t mean it automatically sounds bad when Noel copied the riff wholesale for ‘Supersonic’.
As authentic as the Manchester legends could sound, they were always looking to tear down the old guard of music. Grunge may have done that in the US around the same time, but where hair metal gave Kurt Cobain a target to aim at, most of Noel’s enemies had to do with the more flashy side of entertainment. He knew that all the processed music people had been served was terrible, and he would rather be dead in the ground than have to listen to whatever Phil Collins was moaning on about.
Even by the standards of 1980s artists, though, no one could manage to match what Michael Jackson did going into the 1990s. His status was beyond anything any artist could have hoped for, but when he went on his massive tour for HIStory, his stop at the Brit Awards midway through only served to piss off Noel.
Granted, it’s not like people didn’t have reason to be mad. Every artist on Jackson’s level could have been guilty of having a messiah complex at one point or another, but the idea of him cosplaying as a pop version of Jesus while children fawned over him was definitely an ill-advised choice, given that he was coming off a slew of allegations that were involving the sexual abuse of children.
And while Jarvis Cocker did end up taking the piss out of Jackson’s performance that night, Noel said the Pulp frontman was only doing what everyone else was thinking, saying, “Michael Jackson is a bit over the top, to say the least. A white robe and all these little kids, after he’s just settled $40million out of court for child molesting. Allegedly, of course. We were all at the back of the room shouting sick names at Jackson anyway, ’cause we thought it was a disgrace. I think everyone in the room, apart from his record company, was pretty disgusted by it.”
Then again, the fact that Cocker managed to come out as the victor in the whole thing earned a couple more points for Cool Britannia. Jackson’s momentum couldn’t be stopped for a second, but if a punk kid from England could manage to mildly inconvenience him and make him look like a fool for a few seconds, that was enough.
But while Jackson’s hits around this time like ‘Earth Song’ and ‘Scream’ weren’t going anywhere once they hit the radio, Britpop was clearly sending a message to the world about what was going on in the streets. The general public wanted Jackson more than anything, but Noel was more interested in seeing where the kids were taking things.
