Opinion: Oasis is getting back together after 15 years – so Glenn Fosbraey looks at why the band’s first album is still praised as one of the greatest debuts of all time.
Liam and Noel Gallagher have finally announced an Oasis reunion tour, 15 years after they disbanded due to their constant feuds.
Definitely Maybe, the album that launched the band, celebrates its 30th birthday on August 29.
Branded one of the greatest debut albums of all time by many music critics, what is it that makes it so good? I think it comes down to five core components – relatability, positivity, keeping it simple, catchy lyrics and the perfect frontman.
1. Relatability
Described by Noel as “an honest snapshot of working-class lads trying to make it”, Definitely Maybe involved no guitar effects and barely any equipment, but made up for it with loads of attitude, “12 cans of Red Stripe and ambition”.
Oasis looked like five ordinary blokes who had been dragged out of the local pub and shoved on stage. And that was a big part of their initial appeal. It felt like if they could make it, then we all had a chance.
This appeal was further enhanced when fans realised that the drum parts could be learned by anyone with the most rudimentary drum skills (Live Forever and Supersonic were my favourites to bash out on the battered old school drumkit).
And, although Noel’s description of his guitar-playing abilities as “average at f**king best” is a little disingenuous, for those who purchased the Definitely Maybe guitar tab book, his parts were eminently playable.
2. Positivity
Definitely Maybe is a definitive statement of working-class values and anti-establishment ideals. But the main takeaway for me is its sheer positivity and lust for life.
According to Noel, it is about the glory of being a teenager and was a response to the destructive and morose grunge music that was popular at the time.
In fact, the album’s third single, Live Forever (voted the best British song ever in a 2018 NME poll) was inspired by the Nirvana song I Hate Myself and Want to Die (1993).
To Noel, the song represented the complete opposite of the optimism he wanted to get across in his own songs. And in Live Forever, despite “not having a pot to piss in”, Noel expresses his gratitude for simply being alive, and for being able to find beauty anywhere, even in things that could be painful.
3. Keeping it simple, and loud
Spin magazine once described Oasis’s sound as “dense, structured, not particularly groundbreaking rock music”.
But Noel was never trying to rewrite the rule book with Definitely Maybe. His writing technique, of taking bits and pieces from rock and roll’s past and reformatting them for a new generation, provided both freshness and familiarity.
This allowed him to write catchy, heavyweight sing-along anthems that reached as many people as possible.
As he said in a 1994 Guardian interview: “[If] you want to sell 5,000 limited-edition red vinyl seven-inches, that’s fine. Make music for a closet full of people in Bradford somewhere … but it doesn’t mean anything to anyone.”
Racking up 86,000 sales in its first week of release, Definitely Maybe certainly shifted more than a closet full. And, thanks to technician Owen Morris, it’s likely that many thousands more people were listening to it through neighbouring walls.
Definitely Maybe was seriously loud down to a technique called “brick-walling” that Morris claims he invented during the mastering process. This involved pushing the volume to the very limit of what a CD could produce without distorting.
This made Definitely Maybe one of the loudest-sounding records of its era and allowed it to capture the kinetic energy of Oasis’s live shows. I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to my own neighbours for the noise pollution.
4. Lyrics
So, with its catchy melodies (Slide Away was so good that Noel recycled it eight years later as Stop Crying Your Heart Out) and huge sound, Definitely Maybe was well on its way to grabbing and keeping our attention.
But I’d argue that the lyrics are just as important, despite their simplicity and often-nonsensical content leading Noel’s critics to dismiss them as meaningless drivel.
What was important to Noel wasn’t that his listeners took a single “correct” meaning from a song, but that they take one at all.
Like the classic creative writing mantra “show don’t tell”, in Definitely Maybe, rather than telling us how or what to think, Noel presents us with a series of images and situations that invite us to figure out what they mean to us, which makes us active in the experience rather than passive.
In doing this, Noel ensures that even the absurd images that are found in the likes of Shakermaker (“I’ve been driving in my car with my friend Mr. Soft/ Mr. Clean and Mr. Ben are living in my loft”) and Digsy’s Dinner (“your friends will all go green for my lasagna”) become meaningful and connect us still further to the album.
5. Liam
However great its songs, it’s unlikely Definitely Maybe would have had a fraction of its success with a different frontman.
In Liam Gallagher, Oasis had one of the most compelling performers the UK has ever produced, someone who embodied the swagger and energy of the songs he was singing.
On Definitely Maybe, we see more of a diversity of Liam’s singing style than at any other point in his career. His patented sneer on tracks like Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rock ‘N’ Roll Star is paired with the tenderness of Married With Children where, in the bridge section, his voice takes on a vulnerability he’s never shown since.
Upon leaving Oasis in 2009, Noel said he “could not go on working with Liam a day longer”, but has since conceded that much of Oasis’s success was down to Liam’s singing and good looks.
A rare understatement of his own importance to the group from Noel, but an even rarer acknowledgement of the role his troublesome brother played in making Oasis one of the biggest bands in the world.
– Dr Glenn Fosbraey is the Associate Dean of Humanities at The University of Winchester. He has published various books, journal articles and chapters on the subjects of drama, song lyrics, and pedagogical processes in HE.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence.
