Even for those who consider themselves partial to Oasis’ music, Noel Gallagher’s lyrics might not be the first thing you’d point to as a marker of the band’s unassailable genius. Late MOJO writer David Cavanagh, himself more of a Blur man, wrote of Noel’s lyrics on Morning Glory that they “fill a hole – they say nothing much about anything”, and Noel himself is frequently less than complimentary about some of the lines fans bellow back at him during gigs, admitting that many of his songs don’t make sense to the man who wrote them.
“The bit in Champagne Supernova about ‘slowly walking down the hall faster than a cannonball.’ What does that mean?” he reflected in 2017. “The answer is, I don’t know what it means. I don’t care what it means. It must mean something, though, because I play it to a sea of people every night and they seem to understand it.”
Yet for every lazy placeholder - “I can see a liar – sitting by the fire” - there’s the scally surrealism of Shakermaker, Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’s giddy escapism or the universal longing of Half The World Away - lyrics that continue to resonate with new generations of listeners, even if the songwriter behind them claims to have no idea what they mean.
As part of our celebration of Oasis’ 50 Greatest Songs in the latest issue of MOJO, Noel spoke to Danny Eccleston about his lyric writing...
“I like the lyrics to Morning Glory. ‘Tomorrow never knows what it doesn’t know too soon’ – what the fuck does that mean? Well, I don’t fucking know. I only wrote it. But those lyrics, they were tied up in the times, and everything around that time was vital.
“I couldn’t sit and write lyrics like that now, because there’s too much baggage and you second-guess yourself as you get longer into it. Between Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants and Heathen Chemistry, I kind of fell into the trap of trying to sum up the meaning of life in every fucking song. Since then, I’ve rediscovered my interest in watching the clock go around or queuing up for a pint of milk.
“Some of that stuff, you had to be there. Most of the songs I write, they’re there, in my head, music and lyrics. When it comes to the time to commit it to paper, it’s just a matter of filling in the gaps for Liam. All the lyrics to Morning Glory were just in the air. I’d have the first line of every verse, and the chorus I’d have. All the lyrics to that were written when I was 22, 23.
“There were lines that would tie all the songs together that were written, for want of a better word, in the fucking Britpop madness. But it would be wrong to say that I wrote a song about what was happening at the time. I’d never be able to look myself in the mirror. Write a song about being famous? Knobhead!”
This interview appears in the latest edition of MOJO, featuring Oasis’s 50 Greatest songs, the Grateful Dead, The Stranglers, Tim Buckley, Stereolab, Pulp, Rory Gallagher, The Lemonheads, The Roches and more! Order your copy HERE!
