The Liam Gallagher Oasis song Noel called “one of our best tunes”
There was an outspoken rule throughout most of Oasis’ time together that Noel Gallagher dictated the majority of what the band would play live. Although there may have been a handful of songs that could squeak by from the rest of the band members towards the end of their run, there were just as many that were snuffed out by the material that Noel was bringing to the table. While Liam didn’t trouble himself with writing many lyrical gems, one song was good enough to catch Noel’s eye.
Then again, Noel was never the dictator in the early days of Oasis. Before he had even joined, Liam and Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs were already hard at work creating songs that were fairly straightforward rock and roll. Once Noel came in with tunes like ‘Bring It On Down’ and ‘Live Forever’, though, the band saw it fit to let him write most of the material, scoring massive hits off the back of albums like Definitely Maybe.
While working their way into the 2000s, though, the band experienced a slump off the back of the album Be Here Now. Despite being heralded as a modern classic at the time, most fans couldn’t get into the massive lengths of the songs, leaving the listener fatigued when the record concluded.
Knowing they needed to switch it up for their comeback, the band ended up falling out with Arthurs and bassist Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan on the next album, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, leaving Liam, Noel, and drummer Alan White as the core members of the band. Although Liam would come up with his first attempt on this album, ‘Little James’, it wasn’t until Heathen Chemistry that Noel saw something special.
Rather than the massive sentimental value put into his first effort, ‘Songbird’ would become one of Liam’s classic tunes. When describing writing the track, Liam remembered sitting under a tree when the melody came to him, recalling in Lock the Box, “I went outside with my guitar, sat under a tree, had a bit of a biblical moment, and there it was”.
Standing at just two minutes, Liam’s proper debut as a songwriter captures the innocence of any good 1960s pop song. Rather than call back to the Beatles tunes that Oasis loved to crib from, this feels like something that Ray Davies could have made with The Kinks, bringing a slightly music hall flavour to everything with the inclusion of the piano in the solo section.
When talking about picking songs for their greatest hits, Noel didn’t hesitate to include ‘Songbird’, saying, “It’s one of our best tunes. It doesn’t matter who wrote it. I always have to push him to put it into the setlist. He’s like, ‘Do you think it drags on a bit?’. It’s two minutes and one second long. I’m like, ‘What kind of crazy drugs are you on?’”.
While Liam may have been a touch critical of his work, he would go on to refine what he could do on the following Oasis projects, penning edgy rock and roll on ‘The Meaning of Soul’ before returning to the well of ballads on the track ‘I’m Outta Time’ from Dig Out Your Soul. Rather than Noel leading the charge through every iteration of Oasis, ‘Songbird’ was proof that Liam could write a song rivalling that of his brother.
