The song Noel Gallagher would die happy to have written
Noel Gallagher has never been shy when talking about how great his tunes are. Throughout every decade he has worked in, there are at least a handful of songs in Gallagher’s catalogue that he considers stone-cold classics in the same vein as The Beatles. Regardless of the amount of fantastic material that may have come from Oasis, there are still a few songs the guitarist would have loved to have written.
Gallagher always tends to return to The Beatles when discussing the best songs he has ever heard. Once he started to get his bearings in Oasis, Gallagher was known to pull from anything the Fab Four could offer, whether lifting melody lines from their songs or taking the song titles and shoehorning them into various tunes.
In the wake of The Beatles’ breakup, though, Gallagher became enamoured with what was happening in the indie rock scene of the 1980s. Informed by the punk movement happening a few years prior, artists like The Smiths were taking the genre to new lands it had never been before, providing a foundation for what would come with the Britpop explosion a few years later.
In the middle of the underground scene stood U2, boasting a brilliant sound that transcended the typical layers of rock and roll. Although the band would claim to have punk roots in their early albums, Bono’s penchant for militant language steered them through some of the most celebrated albums of the decade, later becoming global superstars with The Joshua Tree.
Although Gallagher admitted that most of his friends didn’t like U2 when he was growing up, he was always proud to fight for their honour. When listing his favourite songs by the group, Gallagher had a particular soft spot for the song ‘Running to Stand Still’, telling The Quietus, “For me, it’s about the songwriting. If I could write a song like ‘Running To Stand Still’, then I could die happy with never writing another song again.”
Considering Gallagher’s reputation for unbridled optimism throughout Oasis’s material, hearing him single out this U2 deep cut is striking. Compared to the other optimistic songs on the record, like ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’, Bono sounds on the verge of tears throughout the recording as he talks about the dangers of someone struggling with heroin addiction and slowly withering away.
Even though Gallagher may not be known for writing in this particular style, it depends on how well the melody fits over the chord changes. Never one to focus on the words to every song he sings, Gallagher knows that the best songs in the world have to pass the test of standing tall on an acoustic guitar without any accompaniment, and the tune is more than enough to make the song work.
‘Running to Stand Still’ would also become a core part of U2’s reinvention in the 1990s, playing up the raw wounds they were still healing from after becoming one of the biggest bands in the world on Achtung Baby. While Gallagher might like to write songs about getting the most out of life, this brand of song can only be written after living through a private Hell.
