“To change pop culture the band achieved the hardest thing to achieve in rock, which is to imagine, create and mobilise an audience nobody had counted on,” Tom Ewing writes about Oasis, as if also describing what Donald Trump did with a sleeping American voter base in 2016. Deeply in love with The Auteurs and Suede’s first two albums, about to cheat on them with Pulp, in the dirt with the Massive Attack axis, I found The Oasis Thing predictable and, after a while, a menace. The “laddishness” which functions as descriptor and criticism is accurate if it encompasses the vehemence with which it excludes. “Stand By Me” has not a drop of communitarian spirit in its corpuscles: it’s a narcissist’s command, or, to be clearer, threat. Noel Gallagher has no interest in human beings or even songs: “Wonderwall” is a subpoena, defied at your peril.
Although it wasn’t a British hit, I included “Champagne Supernova” because why not.
The Hague
All Around the World
Stand By Me
Champagne Supernova
Meh
Wonderwall
Roll with It
Who Feels Love?
Shakermaker
Don’t Look Back in Anger
Go Let It Out
Whatever
Sunday Morning Call
Sound, Solid
Supersonic
D’You Know What I Mean?
Good to Great
Live Forever
Cigarettes & Alcohol
Some Might Say
These are populists of the worst kind. “Don’t Look Bacl In Anger” is the only melody I care for… and Live Forever is the other one in my list. Enough is enough.