‘(Get Off Your) High Horse Lady’: The Oasis song Noel Gallagher never wanted to release
By the end of Oasis, no one could really claim to be happy. Noel Gallagher could still write fantastic songs, but considering the breakdown of his relationship with his brother, Liam, it was clear that things were building to some kind of massive blowup that no one realised was coming. Although the band did stay together long enough to craft one last classic on Dig Out Your Soul, Noel admitted that one of the songs was far from the best work that he ever put out.
But listening to this version of Oasis compared to the Manchester lads from the 1990s is like two completely different entities. Noel was still the guitarist and Liam was as good a frontman as ever, but having everyone contribute songs made the entire group feel more like a committee of songwriters rather than Noel’s singular vision.
And despite picking all of the songs for the record, the band’s swan song does feel a tiny bit lopsided in places. There are classics to be found across the record, but somewhere around the midpoint of the album, things stay in moody territory and never pull themselves back out, as if the band are more focused on making their songs as psychedelic as possible without having to worry about proper structure.
Does that mean that the whole thing grinds to a halt? Not necessarily. Noel’s ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ worship on ‘Falling Down’ is a nice piece of sound design, and the snarl that Liam has on ‘Ain’t Got Nothin’ is the kind of aggression that most people had been waiting for from him, which would later be fleshed out with Beady Eye and during his solo career.
Compared to everything else, though, ‘Get Off Your High Horse Lady’ does have a few slogging moments. The whole track is practically one verse repeated over and over in classic bluesy form, but whereas this kind of approach worked on ‘Shakermaker’, this feels like Noel trying to find something to fill out the song before everything comes to a halt.
According to Noel, the song was never even in the running in terms of the tracks, only making it on the record when he produced it a little bit more and added some bass to it, saying, “[It’s] the oldest song on the album, originally demoed for Heathen Chemistry. Wouldn’t have made the album, but the bass is so heavy, it forced its way onto the final cut.”
Admittedly, the bass does save it in a few spots. As much as the band aren’t known for being Led Zeppelin or anything when it comes to heaviness, this song is another example of Dig Out Your Soul being one of their darkest offerings, especially when paired with some of the classics on the first half like ‘Bag It Up’ and ‘The Turning’.
Still, there’s a bit of sadness listening to this kind of song, knowing what we know about the group. The band were still playing to the best of their ability, but taken on their own, ‘(Get Off Your) High Horse Lady’ deserves a spot next to Liam’s ‘Soldier On’ as the moment where both of them knew that their lives in the biggest band in the world had stopped being fun.
