Tag Archives: stop the clocks

#1318: Oasis – Supersonic

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I write this post at a point in time when the first Oasis reunion show is just over three weeks away. But today, they would have been going on for almost a month. I hope the Gallagher brothers (and Bonehead) have been going strongly. I wasn’t spending countless hours in online queues when the reunion announcement was made last year. I like Oasis, but not that greatly. The only album of the band’s I’ve listened through is …Morning Glory. Definitely Maybe is considered to be the best of the best by the group. Noel Gallagher thinks of it that way. I’ve never had the urge to check it out. What I definitely know about Oasis is that they usually never let you down when it came to their singles. Their music videos were on the TV all the time. And a lot of them I liked. So when the Stop the Clocks compilation came around in November ’06, I knew I had to get my hands on it somehow.

I have a vivid memory of seeing ‘Supersonic’ one day on the small screen, and just immediately getting what it was about just from blend of music and visuals. I might have even had Stop the Clocks at the time of watching and had completely ignored the song. But if I didn’t know it by then, I definitely knew it now. I think the song is one of Oasis’s best, even if the song is about nothing at all, as Noel Gallagher as admitted on several occasions, and was written in about half an hour because the band needed a song to be the band’s first official single, after ‘Bring It on Down’ was passed over. And what a tune. Liam Gallagher’s vocal is A-class, top notch. Doesn’t yet have that rasp that would make itself known as albums went by, but it’s still got that youthful power that makes it incredibly infectious. The song has a bit of a groove to it, I feel. If I find myself nodding my head to a song’s motion, which I do in this one’s case, it’s fair to say there’s a groove about. A solid wall of barre-chord guitars, lead guitar licks here and there. What more could you ask for?

I’m not sure what else I can comment on, really. ‘Supersonic’ is a super solid number. What’s Noel Gallagher writing about? A girl called Elsa who’s into Alka Seltzer. Doing it with doctors on helicopters. Riding in BMWs, sailing in yellow submarines. A whole lot of nonsense. But in between, you’ll have the coolest phrases like, “You/I need to be your/myself, you/I can’t be no one else.” And “You need to find a way for what you want to say / But before tomorrow.” Those are some short, snappy life lessons in there. Noel Gallagher was really good at somehow throwing in some very relatable things among the unusual. That was really his bread and butter, the formula that made those first two albums (and Be Here Now to an extent) so captivating. And Liam Gallagher sang them like no one else could. Thirty years on, I’m not expecting things to be quite the same. But I could be wrong, though. There’s still time. I’ll need you guys from the future to tell me how those Oasis gigs are going.

#1240: Oasis – Some Might Say

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Who out there’s one of the lucky people going to the Oasis reunion gigs in the summer? If you are and reading this, I hope you have a good time. I could say I was jealous, but I feel all right knowing that the Gallagher brothers are way past their ’20s and probably won’t be as great live as they were 30 years ago. But it’s nice knowing that Noel and Liam seem to be getting along now, or so it seems. I guess everyone will have to wait and see until that big tour starts in July. It’ll be a spectacle, I’m sure. I like a bunch of Oasis songs. Most of them happen to be singles. I got the Stop the Clocks compilation a long time ago, which is an ideal package if you want to start getting into the band. For any artist, the singles are picked ’cause they’re considered to be the best songs. But that’s something that truly applies to Oasis. ‘Some Might Say’ was the first single from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, released in April 1995 – six months in advance of the album. Oasis were already a name in the UK ’cause of Definitely Maybe, and people liked ‘Some Might Say’ so much that it shot straight to number 1 in the charts after its first week.

It’s up there as one of my favourite Oasis songs too. Just like its music video shows, the chugging guitar introduction feels like a rocket ship launching and when the band enters you’re just taken into the stratosphere and never come down from that point on. The song sees Noel Gallagher on some kind of quasi-philosophical line of thinking. “Some might say they don’t believe in heaven/Go and tell it to the man who lives in hell.” “Some might say that we should never ponder on our thoughts today ’cause they hold sway over time.” Some good, good lines. The main line to focus on is the one that precedes the chorus, “Some might say we will find a brighter day.” We all hope for that, don’t we? And then there’s lines about standing at a station in need of education and sinks full of fishes and dirty dishes. The chorus is a bunch of nonsense, but alongside the music, it sounds out of this world.

And like the songs that were listed on Definitely Maybe, ‘Some Might Say’ is designed to be played loud. Guitars levels are boosted to the max, tracks and tracks of overdubs are existing on there. Noel Gallagher’s said before that he doesn’t like the sound of …Morning Glory, but at least to me, this song is where the way it’s loudly mixed works massively to its advantage. Liam Gallagher sings the track very, very well, and I thoroughly enjoy the back and forth between he and Noel during the song’s final moments amidst the feedback and uplifting chord progression. Those guitars that go on and on for the gradual fade-out outro, I could listen to for at least two more minutes, and the story goes that the band kept on playing that outro for a long while after the album’s fade because they were enjoying it so much and didn’t want to stop. I read that somewhere, I’m sure. Or watched Noel say that in a video, I wish I could find it. He does consider it to be one of the band’s finest moments, I have the evidence for that. And as a listener, I wouldn’t argue.

#862: Oasis – Morning Glory

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‘Morning Glory’ is the almost-title track from Oasis’ second album. In a video commemorating the 25th anniversary of that record, Noel Gallagher admitted that he felt there were a lot of songs that sounded unfinished. A lot of them consist of just one verse that’s repeated, a pre-chorus, and the main sing-along chorus. One of those songs he may be referring to include this. In ‘Morning Glory’, the second verse is the same as the first. Every time Liam Gallagher yells ‘well’, it sounds like each iteration is longer than the previous. But one thing’s for sure, this song’s an absolute corker.

In some ways, it precedes what was to come on Be Here Now. Like that album, it begins with distant helicopter blades, radio static and guitar feedback, before launching into this massive wall of barre chords that set the track’s chord progression. Liam Gallagher’s voice on here’s possibly the best thing about it. Has that rasp behind it, but also that power. He puts his all into every line sung, straight from the gut. And again, Noel Gallagher’s lyrics contain that faux-philosophical, somewhat cheeky and nonsensical, but somehow very relatable feel that he excelled at tremendously when Oasis were really on top. I like how he tells us that ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ by the Beatles is his favourite tune. He kinda slides it in there. Not as obvious and throwaway like that ‘fool on the hill and I feel fine’ lyric from that other track.

The video’s possibly the way that I came across the track. It’s okay. The band play the song in an apartment, the angry neighbours come around and bang on the door wondering what all the noise is about. Meanwhile, the band play football and generally get up to no good. It’s probably one of the least memorable videos out of the singles from that album. Maybe it was more of an afterthought. The track was only released as a commercial single in Australia and New Zealand after all. But no matter how I feel about the video, it doesn’t stop me from turning the volume loud whenever this one comes on.

#815: Oasis – The Masterplan

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‘The Masterplan’ was originally released as a B-side to ‘Wonderwall’ when that song was a single back in the day. It, along with many other Oasis B-sides, has always left Oasis fans wondering how they weren’t singles in their own right or at least on their parent albums. Noel Gallagher has said that at the time, he didn’t write shit songs. Which is a fair enough answer. Something had to be a B-side, so he wrote this to fit the quota.

I had been on this earth for only a few months at the time of the ‘Wonderwall’ single. I was three when the The Masterplan B-side album was released. So I didn’t know this song existed for a long time. In 2006 the band released Stop the Clocks, and promotion videos were made for ‘Acquiesce’ and ‘The Masterplan’. Saw the video for the latter on MTV2 one day, and that was all it took, really. Better late than never. With its message that we’re all small things that a part of a bigger picture alongside its L.S. Lowry-inspired animated video which is a huge ode to Manchester, it just made for a memorable music experience. Still does now, but when I was 11 it was even more so.

It is a bit crazy that no one thought to tell Gallagher to save this one. I could think of a song or two on Morning Glory that it could have replaced. It was 25+ years ago, so obviously what’s done is done. It does truly show the quality of Noel Gallagher’s songwriting, particularly during that point from 1994-6 where it seemed that all he touched turned to gold. Good stuff.

#789: Oasis – Lyla

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Oasis’ sixth album Don’t Believe the Truth was released in 2005 and it was around that time that I really got into the habit of watching music television as soon as I woke up and went downstairs to the living room. ‘Lyla’, the first single from the record, was always playing on there. And it was supposedly a very big deal that this Oasis band was back with a new single and an album that was to drop soon. At the time I was 10 and don’t think I properly knew who Oasis were. I don’t think I remember caring that much about this song then either. In fact, I much preferred ‘The Importance of Being Idle’ which was released after. Then ‘Lyla’ was part of the soundtrack of FIFA 06, and after repeated listens I came to realise that it definitely deserved its number one spot in the charts.

So what’s it about? Well, knowing Noel Gallagher’s tendency to write a lot of nonsensical lyrics (which he admits himself) it’s probably safe to say that it’s about nothing very important. It’s about a larger than life character called Lyla, who is the sister of Sally from ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, and the narrator of the track just seems to be in awe of her. She’s the queen of everything, and everyone, and you, and yours, and mine. Despite the lack of lyrical substance, it still has a universal feel about it. Something that we can all relate to. Gallagher got that down to a tee on Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory, and ‘Lyla’ is very reminiscent of songs you would find on there. It’s probably why it did so well and became one of their most loved singles.

It’s a proper bouncer; it stays in one key for the majority of the song which provides this real drone-like quality, and Liam Gallagher sounds great on the vocal here too. Noel Gallagher’s fantastic on the backing harmony vocals, and I’ve always thought that the highlight is when he elongates the last ‘fall’ before the track goes into the ending ‘Hey Lyla’ section. That part was always repeated during the loading screens in the FIFA game so that got embedded in my head for a long time.

And that’s it. The ‘L’s’ are done. Thank you for joining me on this journey. It’s been five months which is the longest time I’ve spent on any letter with a regular schedule. I’ll take a bit of a break from here. This year’s been strange but this blog has been one of the main things keeping me intact. I don’t want to start becoming sick of it though. Need to come in fresh when it’s time for the M’s. So take care of yourselves, stay safe. I’ll see you on the other side.