“They scare me”: the voice that Liam Gallagher could never tolerate
None of the members of Oasis spared any expense when talking about the bands they weren’t fans of. There were always going to be artists who didn’t have the same kind of drive as them in the music industry, but unless they turned it up when they heard someone’s song on the stereo, it didn’t take long for any of them to start taking shots. But when it comes to one-liners, Liam Gallagher is the reigning champion of people that stopped giving a fuck after two weeks in the industry.
No one since the days of John Lydon had been brave enough to be as unapologetically feral as Liam was when he came onstage or had a microphone shoved in his face when he was off it. There were a lot of people who were willing to point out the phoniness of rock and roll at the time, but as far as he was concerned, he was more than happy to sing whatever he could as long as it had some conviction behind it.
After all, the grunge scene looked worse for wear by the time Britpop started, and since Kurt Cobain cast a dark shadow over rock and roll, hearing tunes like ‘Rock and Roll Star’ and ‘Supersonic’ coming out of Liam’s mouth was like a breath of fresh air. Then again, that musical fireworks show was bound to come crashing down to Earth, eventually, and the 2000s were when the dark times set in for the band.
It simply wasn’t cool to have those kinds of aspirations anymore when bands like Radiohead started taking over the world, but that didn’t mean Oasis were about to cower. But if Noel didn’t have one nice thing to say about the way that Thom Yorke whined about being famous and cerebral music, you can imagine how they were going to feel about Muse when they started making waves.
“They’re like fucking creepy shit. But people like ’em. They at least play guitars.”
Liam Gallagher
Granted, Muse would have probably been everything Radiohead was doing done right in Liam’s eyes. This was complicated music with the theatrics of Queen backing them up, but the minute that he heard Matt Bellamy bellow to the heavens with his Jeff Buckley-by-way-of-Freddie Mercury voice, he knew that he was not going to have the best time seeing them in the charts.
Liam felt that the music was alright, but Bellamy’s voice was practically nails on a chalkboard, saying, “Muse fucking scare me. They’re like fucking creepy shit. But people like ’em. They at least play guitars, but when I hear his voice I’m like, ‘Ah, fuck him.’” And it’s not hard to see why Muse’s music tended to be overblown, seeing how they made the rest of their career a vehicle for Bellamy’s voice.
But it’s not exactly out of jealousy, either. Liam probably couldn’t hit the same notes that Bellamy could on his best day, but he didn’t need to. He could hold the audience in the palm of his hand by singing some of the best melodies ever written, and when faced with the choice, he probably wouldn’t be caught dead singing along to some what he would most likely see as a poor imitation of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.
Then again, comparing both of them is like judging two completely different genres of music. Because for as much ground as Oasis covered, they were still punks at heart, and Muse had that kind of polished sheen behind their music that would have driven any rootsy rocker up the wall.
