“I didn’t know”: The one line Noel Gallagher insisted on changing
For any lyricist, the songwriting process doesn’t ever end. Even though a song is released and thrown onto an album, there’s no telling as to whether someone will change a line here and there when performing or want to completely turn the track on its head when they put together a remix of it. Although Noel Gallagher already has a fairly steady process when it comes to his Oasis and solo tunes, he felt that he should have gone back and made sure this line cleared a few things up.
Then again, Noel was never one to go back on his opinion about anything. From his rivalry with Blur to the amount of animosity he held against people like Phil Collins, it’s not like he was prone to filtering himself whenever he talked about those he didn’t care for. Once he struck out on his own, though, a new version of Noel seemed to take over.
Though he liked the idea of selling out stadiums around the world, some of the most interesting moments of his solo career were when he worked outside of his comfort zone. Hearing him make something like ‘AKA What A Life’ is one of the most bizarre left turns he had made since working on ‘Setting Sun’ with The Chemical Brothers, and there was no way that Oasis would have ever made something as psychedelic as ‘Riverman’.
There was bound to be some pushback, though, and Who Built the Moon is still regarded as one of the strangest moments in ‘The Chief’s catalogue. Although he still had a handle on the musical side of things, hearing him play songs like ‘Holy Mountain’ with the main hook being played on what sounds like a panflute was absolutely ridiculous to watch in real-time.
If that divided fans, ‘It’s A Beautiful World’ was where he went completely atmospheric. Compared to the straightforward assault of the casual Britpop fare, Noel created a tune that felt like a happier take on a New Order song, complete with a guitar line that could have passed for a Peter Hook bassline if it had been pitched down a little bit.
When getting to the end of the song, though, the vocalist singing over the top of the outro never sat well with Noel, saying, “We found this train announcement in French from 1940 something. She is announcing the end of the world, and I didn’t know what she was saying. It said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s just the end of the world’. When I heard that, I’d got her to change it and say, ‘It’s not the end of the world.’”
At the same time, making a post-apocalyptic sounding song would have been very interesting coming from Noel. Many of his greatest songs have exuded positivity and a certain naivety, so having him turn that concept on its head and make a song about watching the world go up in flames would have been a clever way of flipping his usual formula.
After all, the entire album was about him shifting towards new sounds, so why not have a few songs that sound like watching a world on fire? He had already dove headfirst into the world of science fiction in terms of sound design, so this could have been his opportunity to make something about going off to find new planets after the Earth had gone.
