The iconic songs Noel Gallagher said were baked into society
If you have ever walked past a busker in any major city in the UK, you will already be fully aware of just how deeply ingrained Oasis are in everyday life; from the soundtracks of television adverts to the wardrobes of middle-aged men who’ve never seen fit to change their haircut.
Ultimately, though, it all comes down to the songwriting mastery of Noel Gallagher.
Noel was the final piece of the puzzle when it came to the formation of Oasis back in the early 1990s. They already had spades of attitude and indie boy cool emanating from Liam Gallagher, but they lacked any kind of songwriting talent or direction – if you look at the band’s earliest demos, the majority sound as if they’re doing a bad impression of The Stone Roses. Luckily, Noel came prepared to rattle off a plethora of now-iconic anthems, often in the space of only a few minutes.
Armed with tracks like ‘Live Forever’, ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, the meteoric success enjoyed by the Mancunian outfit during the height of Britpop felt almost inevitable. At a time when grunge was steeped in angst and bands like Radiohead were knee-deep in existential gloom, Oasis came through with something far more hopeful—and crucially, more universal. Not only did they conquer the Britpop scene, but they also had undeniable mainstream pull. And let’s be honest, not many bands managed to straddle those two very different worlds quite so effortlessly.
With the sheer volume of records that Oasis shifted back in the 1990s, those tracks quickly weaved themselves into the cultural fabric of the UK, but the fact that today, three decades later, they still maintain the same level of cultural relevance and popularity is pretty astounding. For Noel Gallagher himself, those early efforts mark a now-unattainable upper echelon of his songwriting, having taken on multiple new lives since they were first written.
During one interview, when asked about the impact of those legendary tracks, Gallagher equated their reputation with some other timeless classics. “‘Let It Be’ is one of those songs,” he declared. “You know, ‘Hey Jude’ is one of those songs – I’m not putting myself up there with The Beatles – ‘Satisfaction’, all those songs take on a life of their own.”
Seemingly, when those songs were accepted into the global consciousness, along with Oasis, whatever the original songwriters intended the meaning of the work to be was suddenly rendered superfluous; they mean whatever they mean to the listener. “In the end, nobody knows what the song is about, but people just wait to get to the ‘na-na-na’ bit of ‘Hey Jude’,” Gallagher continued. “Nobody knows who Jude is, or what it means. It doesn’t become that. They become part of the fabric of society.”
It is worth noting, at this point, that the Jude in ‘Hey Jude’ is actually Julian Lennon, and Paul McCartney wrote the track about his bandmate’s son. Still, Gallagher’s point remains valid. In all forms of art, meaning is attached to a work in the years – centuries, even – after publication, as it takes on new meanings in the mind of every person who holds it dear to them.
Oasis might not be on the same level as a track like ‘Hey Jude’, but some of those early efforts by Gallagher have certainly been accepted into the hearts and minds of millions since they first hit the airwaves, and whatever the songwriter meant them to say originally no longer matters all that much.
