The Oasis song that sampled their own hit
There probably isn’t an era of Oasis where the Manchester band didn’t believe they were the biggest band on the planet. Compared to the massive wave of Britpop bands following behind them, the Gallagher brothers always knew that their songs were a cut above any other track that any band in England would dare to put out around the same time. As the band prepared to say goodbye to the world, they did so by sampling one of their most famous hits.
Following the release of Be Here Now in 1997, the band went on hiatus to regroup, having gone through a world tour that nearly broke them. Deciding to continue without Bonehead and Guigsy for Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, their return in 2000 marked a comedown from the traditional Oasis sound. Gone were the self-confident rockers, instead replaced with introspective songs about what fame can do to someone.
As the band enlisted Gem Archer and Andy Bell in the group for Heathen Chemistry, they had started honing themselves down as a stadium-sized rock band, creating ballads that weren’t meant to be played to the rafters like ‘Little By Little’. All the while, though, Noel was still pulling from whatever classic rock band he could.
Considering how much of Oasis’ material was built off the rock and roll giants of the 1960s and 1970s, Noel had made different inroads to copy them directly, using the riff of T. Rex’s ‘Get It On’ for ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ and knicking the guitar solo from George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’ for the guitar break in ‘Supersonic’.
In the 2000s, Gallagher wasn’t finished shaking his classic rock fixation. Throughout the decade, avid rock fans could pick out numerous connections to past hits, like the drum groove for Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Little Miss Lover’ on ‘Fuckin in The Bushes’ as well as the groove from The Velvet Underground’s ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ for Noel’s ‘Mucky Fingers’.
While the band didn’t know that Dig Out Your Soul was bound to be their final album, Noel was still looking to draw from the past yet again. On songs like ‘The Turning’, it’s easy to pick out the chord structure from Cliff Richard’s ‘Devil Woman’, as well as the sampled drum groove from ‘Falling Down’ taken from The Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.
For what would become one of their final singles, ‘The Shock of the Lightning’, the band are out in full force, as Liam sings lyrics about being on his own magical mystery tour in life. Buried underneath all the layers of guitar overdubs and mountains of reverb, the band left a clip of ‘Champagne Supernova’ towards the end of the tape.
Although the band had probably thought that they were big enough stars to be able to sample themselves at this point, the inclusion would become far more bittersweet when they took to the road. After one too many fits from his brother, Noel decided he had had enough, pulling out of the band’s intended gig in Paris and announcing the group’s dissolution in a press release later. Dig Out Your Soul might be far from the best that Oasis ever did, but the callback to their previous glory does give their swan song a great sense of finality. After conquering the world, the band ended up still chanting one of their biggest hits.
