Your music's shite it keeps me Polling all night: OASIS (ILM artist poll 78) --- Voting open until Sunday August 21, 2016

i never vote in these things but listening to sad song for the first time since i was 16 has made me kinda excited to see the results of this poll.

The lyrics to She's Electric are so terrible that sometimes I forget the song itself is not bad

Giving Morning Glory a listen now and... yeah, it's really not surprising at all why this album was what it was.

imo it'd be an actual classic if "acquiesce," "underneath the sky," or "step out" were on it but the singles are all very good and it feels like an important album, i.e. less flimsy than it occasionally is

anyway i'm hanging out with be here now rn and wow, such digital distortion

There's no doubt that it would have been even better if some of the B-sides had been on it, but it didn't do too badly as it stands!

For an album that sold over 20m copies worldwide and still gets cited as one of the best albums of the '90s, I'd say it already was an "actual" classic.

i mean understand, i'm not an oasis fan, and i kinda think an album with "she's electric" and "roll with it" on it kinda marginally sucks. i get that it's a classic in the sense that it's anointed forever

i'm only halfway through and i feel like i've been listening to be here now for days

"my big mouth" is prob gonna make my ballot though, it's ridiculous

stunned that the two b-sides i've heard from be here now ("stay young" and "going nowhere," which are both on the masterplan) are imo maybe the two best oasis songs...ever? and yet this is the album from which they were cut. :|

'Stay Young' was bumped off the LP for 'Magic Pie', 'Going Nowhere' was recorded after the LP came out and was written before Definitely Maybe.

There's probably four or five songs from Be Here Now that are going on my ballot - I won't say which ones!

Important reference material perhaps: Worst/most cringeworthy lyric on Oasis' 'Be Here Now'

ah i was wondering where "going nowhere" actually came from. "all around the world" was also really old by the time they recorded it right?

"stay young" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "magic pie," it's ridiculous

Yeah, 'All Around The World' and 'Whatever' were written around the same time. I agree that 'Stay Young' is miles better than 'Magic Pie' ... 'Magic Pie' was written after the rest of the LP and Noel only stuck it on there because he sings a lead vocal on it. I won't be voting for 'Magic Pie', that's for sure.

I can't believe 'I Hope, I Think, I Know' and 'It's Gettin' Better (Man!!)' weren't singles.

The opening minute of "D'You Know What I Mean?" will never not sound cool to me though. I do get how people convinced themselves this was a great record day-one, it really announces itself as a massive thundering classic, and you can totally get steamrolled by a listen-through. You figure "wow, that was something! I don't really remember all the songs but that's how it goes with a first listen, after a few more spins I'll be singing them all in my head for weeks!"

In hindsight though, a 71-minute album with only twelve tracks, one of which is a "reprise," doesn't really bode well for Gallager's strengths as a songwriter or Oasis's skills as a band. They don't really "jam," so if that time gets taken up by instrumental sections it's going to really be a lot of overdubbed guitar-blanket stuff (which this band does well as part of an album's mix). If that time gets taken up with a bunch of repetitions of the choruses, then it's going to come down to whether you find "All Around The World"'s various bits catchy and interesting. I'm in the minority that does, but, boy is this ever a classic case of an album from a band poised to deliver a super-statement and the only thing they forgot was to leave time to write the songs. Gonna try and give it a full listen-through today though just in case it has some gems I overlooked when I wrote the whole thing off as an overheated headache-inducer.

I can't believe 'I Hope, I Think, I Know' and 'It's Gettin' Better (Man!!)' weren't singles.

was impressed by both of these songs on the listen i just gave it, think the former might make my ballot

Weirdly, they didn't even play 'I Hope, I Think, I Know' live, even though it's one of the tracks on the album that stands out as a song that you'd think would part of the live set.

last night i fell asleep listening to the masterplan and briefly woke up during "listen up," thinking it was "supersonic." both great of course but basically mirrors of each other

I have to point out that it took me 19 years to like Be Here Now! Before then, I was as down on it as everyone else was.

when i listened to oasis a lot when i was a kid (before i decided i actually really disliked them (except for the masterplan) which is an opinion that i wanted to challenge with this poll and hey it's working!!!) i focused on be here now a lot bc i tend to believe super-maligned albums tend to be a band's best or at least really valuable in a specific way (my favorite album of all time at that age was adore by the smashing pumpkins). doctor casino otm, it's messy sprawl is sort of superficially impressive! and yet almost all of the songs failed to stick

At least some of the songs have okay cores, but either needed more time to work up better and less vague/generic lyrics, or just can't survive being six minutes long. Like, "Stand By Me," there's plenty there waiting to be made into a good song, but so much work left to be done. It's like they went straight from the first demo to larding it up in postproduction. "I Hope, I Think, I Know" is much closer to being done - has enough energy and punch to it that you almost don't notice that there's only one goddamn verse worth of lyrics. It might make my ballot on catchiness alone. It'd be better at three minutes than four and a half but, good riff, several different hooks, nice earnest performance from Liam.

making my way through the rest of the be here now b-sides right now. surprise, for the most part they're better than anything on the album. "the fame"! "flashbax"!

On "The Girl With The Dirty Shirt" now and it sort of encapsulates the bigger problem - this just isn't really a very catchy or interesting song. Everybody's throwing themselves into it as if it is, and there's plenty of extra stuff piled into the mix, but it doesn't even really sound very fun to play. God knows what point it's trying to make. "If you ever find yourself inside a bubble, you've gotta make your own way home / You can call me anytime you're seeing double, now you know you're not alone." What? So is this person making their own way, or are they not alone? A bubble? Huh?

'The Girl With The Dirty Shirt' is one of my least favourite Oasis 1994-1998 tracks, maybe even my least favourite. It's the only track on Be Here Now that I'd say I out-and-out hated.

Magic Pie sure torpedoes the momentum on this fucker.

standing on the shoulder of giants (infuriating title) is like, "ok, the last album was excessive, what if we scale back in arrangements and make them a little
more tasteful, but also what if we make every vocal melody a tuneless drone"

Yeah, this was the part where it was all over for me.

I hated the title, I hated the artwork, I hated the fact that they'd carried on even though all the original members had gone, I hated how utterly boring the new members they'd brought in were, I hated the majority of the songs - particularly pointless, tedious and unmoving ballads like 'Sunday Morning Call', I hated the way all the confidence had been sucked out of the band, I hated the fact that Noel was blatantly forcing himself to write and record songs even though he was completely uninspired. Everything just pointed to a "grab the cash while you can, fellas" type of situation.

But to be fair, by this point most of Oasis' so-called "Britpop peers" were also down the toilet, just in different ways.

I love She's Electric so much it almost makes me want to vote in this poll, but I'm not sure I can think of four other Oasis songs I like.

"And I need more time" part were a little more interesting the whole song would work better - as it is every verse sorta ends with "and I'll write more lyrics to this later."

― we're gonna live in spatula city (Doctor Casino), Friday, August 5, 2016 2:39 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like the way that "And I need more time" works as both "I need to spend more time with this amazing person" and also "I need more time before committing, because I'm an egotist", especially with the brutal "she's got one in the oven, but it's nothing to do with me" kiss-off. She's Electric is my favorite iteration of what Doctor Casino describes here:

They had this great mix of braggadocio and desperate need when they were still on the rise, very hard to sustain that once you've hit the top (and once you're on the decline even)

and the solipsism that the braggadocio and desperate need entail, but but only with the dream of "making it" applied to a romantic relationship rather than becoming a rock star or whatever. The jaunty but bittersweet feel also reminds me of Squeeze, who I always associate with Blur more than Oasis, so maybe it's Oasis' most Blur-like song.

Whereas Blur's most Oasis-like song was "She's so high" there you go I said it.

It's true! Particularly the chord progression, although not even Gallagher would be that lyrically lazy.

I'd always though that the "she" in "she's got one in the oven, but it's nothing to do with me" was the same "she" who is electric i.e. that the songs protagonist is going out with this girl he's infatuated with, but then denies responsibility and dumps her after getting her pregnant, because he's basically a solipsist. but I just looked up the lyrics to She's Electric on genius and someone has annotated it with this Noel quote:

It’s about a boy who’s got a girlfriend, and he used to go out with her sister, that he fancies her mother, doesn’t get on with her brother, and, as somebody gets her cousin pregnant, and everybody thinks it was him, because he’s a bit of a f—in' run c—, but it wasn’t.

so maybe I've misunderstood?

the blurriest oasis song is surely "underneath the sky"

standing feels less like a sober album to me than one recorded after a considerable withdrawal, brain too scraped out and droning to put together anything but the dullest thoughts

the album only starts to get interesting when it's almost over, during "roll it over," though the stolen beatles guitar licks feel pretty cynical at this point in their career

hey, this is great! it was on the "sunday morning call" single

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-2dG_Kwn8E

I always felt that the criticisms of Oasis "ripping off The Beatles", on the whole, were overstated, particularly on the first three albums. Although, by the time of Standing... they're putting in those 'Come Together' licks into 'Roll It Over' and have the 'Strawberry Fields Forever' flute sound on 'Go Let It Out' ... but on the first three albums I mostly hear influences that aren't The Beatles.

But yeah, I think you're OTM about the album being the product of someone whose mind wasn't really on the job.

i think they got called "beatle-esque" in the u.s. bcz of their hair liam's glasses

their hair + liam's glasses

Was surprised to learn that neither Gallagher bro is on the cover of Morning Glory

As a kid, I didn't know what the phrase "one in the oven" meant, so I thought the song was saying that she's burning on of her dozen cousins in the oven and the lead singer doesn't want to have anything to do with it.

aaaahahahahahhaha

I thought it was "She's got one in the other," a very odd way of describing an incestual relationship among the cousins.

Was surprised to learn that neither Gallagher bro is on the cover of Morning Glory

― Οὖτις, Sunday, August 7, 2016 2:15 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Producer Owen Morris is on there, holding the master tapes of the album, but he's not one of the two guys in the foreground.

It's hard to choose a favourite of all the sleeves that Microdot/Brian Cannon did for Oasis, and I always liked how all the single and album sleeves had a visual continuity to them, which was lost when they stopped using him after the Be Here Now era... I guess it helps to distinguish the good Oasis releases from the shit ones, though.

Yes, they were very well served by their graphics. Hard to imagine their brand being well served by a more rudimentary / d i y style.

Suede had (still have) a similar continuity to their artwork.
Blur, too, had those distinctive Stylorouge sleeves, but stopped using 'em after Blur