Oasis - Definitely Maybe (Definitely Maybe - Oasis)

Member Name: Lichfield1979

Product:	Definitely Maybe - Oasis
Date:	04/09/08 (157 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Live Forever

Disadvantages: It's impossible to match the quality of the standout track

Oasis - Definitely Maybe (1994)

The Gallagher brothers don't need any more press clippings so let's just listen to the CD.

One - Rock N Roll Star

Noel's intro has a belly full of Sunday dinner confidence before the band quicken into a tightly paced rhythm with all the sleazy swagger you'd expect from the song title, as Liam leers his way into the public domain for the first time. Oasis have been responsible for some pretty silly lyrics in the intervening years but the message here is taut and well rehearsed. Two clever kids from Manchester are making good. The last minute of the track is superfluous and spoils the momentum to little effect. A more abrupt and matter of fact ending would have been creditable. Three minutes would be superior to five, and a band this preternaturally confident should have known that. But it's a great tune.

Two - Shakermaker

I don't like this track. The brother's obsession with The Beatles first raises its head and their psychedelic posturing feels insincere and mannered. The words are tedious too. The production feels cluttered with too many reflections instead of a clear light. The first four minutes of Rock N Roll Star sounded wonderfully assured and direct, but this track just wallows in the same indulgence that blighted the finish of the opener. And again they stretch it out to five minutes when half that time would do.

Three - Live Forever

This is one of the greatest pop songs of all time. Opens with a distinctive but simple drumbeat that carries on to underlay warm guitar chords and the charismatic grit of Liam's searchingly sympathetic vocal. "Maybe you're the same as me" he says, and we feel his pain as it soaks us to the bone. "You and I are gonna live forever." Right behind us the band have struck up a fuller mid tempo sound to accommodate our yearning. Noel's guitar solo is perfect as the sun shines on the beats.

Four - Up In The Sky

This song has a faster rhythm and a denser guitar sound although the bass manages to propel things forward with just enough space not to feel overcrowded and there are some nice rising guitar patterns that allow more warmth to creep in. It's a decent vocal performance but not Liam's most memorable. The production is surprisingly clean given the illusion of so much going on.

Five - Columbia

I'm less than convinced there's any purpose to this being six minutes long. Opens inauspiciously with some noisy distortion and a quick drum beat although the guitar solo which eventually joins sounds more promising before the vocal ultimately disappoints by just not really having any wit or momentum. Probably makes a few too many concessions to trying to fit with the contemporary Manchester sound of the late eighties and early nineties. It's not terrible, and I can see the appeal of the style, but it feels like filler to me. Skip this one by listening to The Stone Roses instead.

Six - Supersonic

This may be the second best cut on the record. The opening riff is simple but effective. The Beatles influence returns but to stronger effect. The words pretend to lack sophistication rather than actually lacking it. The aesthetic sounds a bit like an upbeat Pearl Jam song - which is pretty funny given the whole Britpop verses Grunge furore that that media concocted to sell things, and which idiots fell for. Whilst Blur were busy studying Pavement, Oasis were lifting the most commercial guitar sound of the era.

Seven - Bring It On Down

Another rocky endeavour with plenty of reverb and distortion that rushes headlong forward but perhaps lacks a strong enough hook to really catalyse the senses. It's got a better beat than their American cousins but not quite the force or the feeling on this particular song. It's the vocal style that separates any direct comparison from ever having been made at the time, and which perhaps accounts for the inexplicable success of Bush in being the British band who came closest to penetrating that market, instead of Oasis.

Eight - Cigarettes And Alcohol

Again, if somebody can explain to me the finer points of why this should be labelled Britpop and not Grunge, I should be gratefully enlightened. Is it what accent you have and what clothes you wear? Cigarettes and Alcohol returns to the swagger of Rock N Roll star, only noisier this time, with a weaker tune, and the performance is less tight. But it's a crowd-pleasing sentiment.

Nine - Digsy's Dinner

This feels like a bit of a throwaway track to me and it fills up two and a half minutes nicely enough. A couple of times it briefly comes to life with the refrain "These could be the best days of our lives" and there's a nice little piano interlude that never really leads anywhere.

Ten - Slide Away

Actually, this one's probably better than Supersonic, although it's not entirely obvious why. The beat is a bit flat and methodical, and although Liam has plenty of attitude, his vocal does drift a little. The rhythm guitars have plenty of character rather than really knowing what they're doing. But the tune is positive and catchy and overall the song is vastly superior to the sum of its parts. Undoubtedly one of the definitive Oasis tracks.

Eleven - Married With Children

The album closes with its only acoustic song, and it's a good one. The lyrics masterfully capture the petty irritations that exist between two people who know each other only too well.


This is one of those classic albums that has one amazing song and four good ones but has rightfully been canonised any way because it meant a heck of a lot to a great many people at the time they first heard it, and because time has not faded that opinion since. The rest of the material is merely solid. Noel says he wrote most of What's the Story Morning Glory contemporaneously with Definitely Maybe, and if he'd finished those songs in time and picked out his ten best, then he'd certainly have an album to match some of his idols.

The British popular music press tends towards the over-aggrandisement of this record as a document of youth culture at the close of the twentieth century, and would perhaps be better served by properly contextualizing the musical legacy of the brothers Gallagher, instead of tending to their own. One suspects that the work of Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood, which sits alongside the Oasis records in the endless whimsical polls that journalists like to regurgitate, will ultimately have more lasting influence upon subsequent generations of serious musicians. Even so, Live Forever stands as a towering achievement, and will probably be recognised as the best British pop song of the 1990s in a hundred years time.

Summary: An strong album touched by one colossal moment of greatness