Worst/most cringeworthy lyric on Oasis' 'Be Here Now'

Select Magazine also got Noel Gallagher to open up about the Be Here Now material in their Knebworth '96 coverage (August 1996)...

From the gig review:

"We're gonna do two new songs now," Noel announced on Saturday, "So if you're bootlegging this and the tape's running out, tough shit." 'My Big Mouth', it soon became clear, is an instant 'Some Might Say'/'Morning Glory'-type hit, while 'It's Getting Better, Man' is the real killer, replete with a sluttish early-70's rock-beast bassline. The second night it sounded even better. But then everything did.

and then the interview later on in the piece:

Q: Tell us about the new songs.

A: "I've got 15 songs on a cassette. Like I say, I went to Mustique with Owen [Morris, producer of the first two albums] with a digital eight-track and a keyboard to do the strings on. I played them on acoustic and Owen programmed the drums in. It's the first time I've ever done any
demos, bar 'Live Forever' and 'Up In The Sky'. But it sounds good. Should be out around June. We've been doing two of the faster ones live. 'My Big Mouth' sounds fuckin' excellent, like a cannon going off in your head. 'It's Getting Better, Man' is like the big fuckin' party tune, quite camp as well -- our Liam with his fuckin' hand on his hips, ha! There's about four like that, quite Stooges-like. Then there's the stuff in the vein of 'Don't Look Back in Anger', and there's a couple of 'Wonderwall's on there. I definitely want to use some form of sequencing, and mad keyboard noises, just to make them sound a bit more '90's. I'm starting to get me head round sampling. What have we got? 'Don't Go Away', 'Stand By Me' -- that's pretty good. I was looking for a bit in the chorus. It goes, (sings) 'Nobody knows the way it's gonna be', so 'me' rhymes with 'be', three syllables, thank you very much. I thought it was a good title for a song anyway. 'All Around The World', 'The Fame', which are me being a sarcastic twat. The lyrics go, 'I'm a man of choice / In an old Rolls Royce / Sat here howling at the moon / Is my happening too defeaning for you?' It's about people who say fame's changed us, and us saying, 'If you lived the life we fuckin' live...'

so 'me' rhymes with 'be,' three syllables, thank you very much

So basically, a whole year before the album came out, they had most (if not all) the songs for Be Here Now, plus the B-sides, and even had the idea of the way to begin the album with the sound of the jet etc. and not once between then and the album coming out (all throughout the writing and recording and putting the album together) did someone step in and say "uh, guys, this actually isn't very good!" or "you may wanna fix these lyrics up" or "you may wanna shave a few guitar tracks off the final mix" or "Noel, it would be a really bad idea to make the songs go on for this long"...

From another Select interview from late 1996, which is hilarious in hindsight...

"Anyway, we go in and start recording in October (1996), we're gonna do the single, have it out in January (1997), and around then we'll start recording the album. The last one took about 15 days, so we're probably gonna take about three weeks this time. No, we're planning to spend about three months on it, and hopefully it'll be out for June (1997), with a single first. All depending whether we split up in the studio and the usual bollocks, walk-outs and bust-ups and trying to get Bonehead out of the boozer."

did someone step in and say "uh, guys, this actually isn't very good!" or "you may wanna fix these lyrics up" or "you may wanna shave a few guitar tracks off the final mix" or "Noel, it would be a really bad idea to make the songs go on for this long"...

c'mon we know this doesn't happen with superstars. You know the Hugh Padgham-Macca story?

Then, tellingly, there's this conversation with Q Magazine in February 1996 (roughly about half a year before Knebworth)...

Q: You seem to have ambiguous feelings about songwriting. You've said it comes naturally and that it's very difficult too.

Noel: "The music is easy. Like at the moment I've got this fucking blinding riff on the guitar - and the intro and the chorus and the bridge. I've even got the title: 'New Suede Shoes'. Nothing to do with Elvis. The melody comes next. Then I get to my biggest failing. I sit down and go (despondently hunches over imaginary guitar), "Fuck, what am I going to say?" I said everything I ever wanted so say in 'Rock'n'Roll Star'."

Q: Then maybe you agree with some of the reviews of (What's The Story) Morning Glory? which said the lyrics were slack?

Noel: "I know I could do much better. I could take more time over them."

Q: Apart from the Lyrics, do you ever get blocked?

Noel: "Except for 'New Suede Shoes', I've been blocked since coming out of Rockfield. A good six months now. It's the only time in my life I've just had one song on the go."

Q: Does that frighten you?

Noel: "Frightens the fucking life out of me. But I know it's going to come."

Q: You've often given the impression that you hoover cocaine by the bucketful and some would suggest that's a vice.

Noel: "Whoever said I'm on a line of cocaine every 40 minutes, I'll sue the fucker. That's out of order. In Oasis, Guigsy, Bonehead and Alan White don't take drugs. Me and our Liam do. We'll take anything that's put in front of us because that's just the kind of guys we are. But we've never been on stage out of it. We've never taken heroin or crack. We do take too many drugs, though, and I wish I'd never started. In fact, I wish I'd never started smoking cigarettes or drinking beer or taking cocaine or ecstasy because I'd have a lot more money now than I do have. The one thing about us is we're honest. If we're asked whether we take drugs, we say yes. I was brought up by my mam not to be a liar. take cocaine. Big fucking deal. It's a social thing and I've been doing it since before I was even in a band. But we're in a vicious circle. You become an addict."

c'mon we know this doesn't happen with superstars. You know the Hugh Padgham-Macca story?

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, January 25, 2014 2:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True, but that was the first time McCartney had worked with Padgham, and he'd had a seriously long career under his belt even by that point. Oasis were working with pretty much the same people they had done from the very beginning, so you'd think at least one person would have stepped in and said something. Although, it's quite possible that they were too scared to at that point.

All these interviews are really funny with how things actually turned out. I'm getting an urge to start rereading My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For the Prize (The Creation Story) again. The Be Here Now era was just fascinating. Stories about the security of the album just before it came out and people at the company actually having doubts about the quality of the album when they heard it.

It sold very well no?

Rocker Noel Gallagher cringes every time he hears a song from Oasis' 1997 album Be Here Now, insisting the tracks make no sense as he was drug-addled when he wrote them.

LOL at "insisting", like anyone's arguing any different.

It sold very well no?

― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Saturday, January 25, 2014 4:03 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, it did. In the UK it shifted something insane like over 350,000 copies on its day of release alone. But that had a lot to do with the album coming on the back of the success of Morning Glory, not to mention the tight, extremely paranoid security surrounding the album. There's a legendary story about Steve Lamacq on Radio One getting a preview of some of the tracks on the album over a week before it came out, and he was allowed to air them on the condition from the bands management that he talked over the tracks. He lasted one day of previewing the tracks before the bands management told him he couldn't preview any more because he didn't talk over them enough.

Journalists were apparently asked to sign NDA's not to discuss the album with anyone, including their own girlfriends! Even within Creation Records, their own record label, the Oasis camp effectively alienated themselves from the rest of the label because they were being incredibly paranoid and secretive about the whole thing.

It did sell well (1.8 million in total) but it sold over half its sales in those first two weeks. Think by the time the third single had come out it pretty much stopped selling completely. Morning Glory had sold over 4 million by that point so it really was a disappointment for the record company. Just looking at Wikipedia I'm kind of surprised to see it has still sold more copies than Definitely Maybe. Also surprised to see Dig out Your Soul is their worst selling album overall. Always assumed it was SOTSOG.

and not once between then and the album coming out (all throughout the writing and recording and putting the album together) did someone step in and say "uh, guys, this actually isn't very good!" or "you may wanna fix these lyrics up" or "you may wanna shave a few guitar tracks off the final mix" or "Noel, it would be a really bad idea to make the songs go on for this long"...

― Toni Braxton-Hicks (Turrican), Saturday, January 25, 2014 2:19 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's this bit from some old Melody Maker review that floats through my head where the writer is talking about the song 'Round Are Way' and the fact that no-one in the entire chain, from the band in the studio to the people printing the record sleeves, had it in them to tell Noel that he was spelling the word 'our' wrong

dig your own soul is far and away the worst album title and I hate to think what it might contain

You know that thread recently where the musicians playing on the album were saying "We didn't know it was bad when we were working on Bowie's "Never let me down"

Same thing. Everyone's hyped up on these Oasis sounding songs, the trees and the woods can't be seen..

Thing is, around half of "Be here now" is alright, half of what's left is curate's egg stuff, and a bunch of stuff isn't good at all..

xpost Dig yr own soul isn't so bad.

The Be Here Now era was just fascinating.

yes, the story of money in the culture industry, how fascinating. also produces fascinating threads with lists of hundreds of difft shades of nostalgia pills and the same ancient brit dudes blathering on about said pills. nothing could be more fascinating.

at least turrican's exhuming of interviews is cringeworthy entertainment for a few lines.

but seriously, there are like 1.999 x 10^99 more interesting topics than oasis and 1.998 x 10^99 more interesting topics than britpoop.

the shrill as fuck treble-y production on BHN is what kills it. you can squint and imagine I Hope I Think I Know and My Big Mouth easily fitting onto Definitely Maybe if you mess with your bass and 'mid' settings enough.

matt p: shame hardly anyone else seems to be interested in them (i deny the existence of britpop btw)

see now this is why we can't have crap things

;_;

standard form from matt p there

This thread has made me want to actually listen to BHN, which I have never done

Worst most moronic Oasis album title

i am listened to the alt mixes of dig out ..

they really should have worked more with richard fearless.

they really should have worked more with richard fearless.

shrill as fuck treble-y production = sounds better to coked-up ears

the shrill as fuck treble-y production on BHN is what kills it. you can squint and imagine I Hope I Think I Know and My Big Mouth easily fitting onto Definitely Maybe if you mess with your bass and 'mid' settings enough.

― piscesx, Saturday, January 25, 2014 5:36 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, the trebly production and the insane amount of rhythm guitar overdubs really torpedoes 'My Big Mouth' in particular. I'm sure it sounded absolutely stupendous to the band and Owen Morris while they were making it in the studio, but on most home stereo systems it just sounds like static.

In fact, it's curious how Owen Morris never worked with Oasis again after Be Here Now.

yeah, don't believe the truth is very annoying too as a title (again hate to think what horrors lie within), makes me think of that band thom yorke's brother or cousin was in, the unbelievable truth

I have a friend who pretty much solely listens to Oasis. He claims to like other bands, but I've never heard him play them, not even the Beatles.

The only album we have of theirs beyond Be Here Now is Heathen Chemistry which I have been far too frightened to listen to, based on the reviews I've read.

there really is a lot of oasis fans like that.
see also beatles,u2,elvis, michael jackson etc but oasis ones are the worst now.

like i can understand 60 year olds only listening to beatles 70 year olds with elvis but early 20s or even teenagers only listening to oasis is really depressing

The others (bar maybe U2), I could see making a case for (namely *I* could just about survive solely on any one of those discographies), but Oasis are just your dull meat & potatoes lager-rock. There's not really that much diversity there.

I do like the first two albums a lot though.

A quick scan of his FB music list shows a lot of artists, mostly British ones from 60s-90s, and a scattering of Americans; James Brown, the Doors and the Beach Boys. Britpop is definitely the guiding musical force in his life though. For context's sake, we were born at the beginning of the 1990s.

the real killer, replete with a sluttish early-70's rock-beast bassline

btw I very nearly voted Give me just a smile and would you make it snappy/get your shit together girl! before realizing it wasn't "pick yr fav out of these cringeworthy lyrix"

i like the 1st 2 also (saw them 3 times in the mid 90s) but ...well you know how shite they are since.

Who was that really bad band that came out on noel's vanity label? So bad that even their diehard fans didnt even buy in to them.

my sister was born in 1990, she was lucky to have me as a brother

xpost beady eye?

23 Jan 2014
kitchenperson 0.50 stars

^^^lol RYM

haha naw, Proud Mary? something like that

The cover of Standing on the Shoulder of Giants is so abominably dated: you can tell it's from 2000 instantly.

23 Jan 2014
kitchenperson 0.50 stars

^^^lol RYM

― John Fitzgerald Chicken (imago)

Ha! I was planning to listen to all their albums one by one (on YouTube so my Lastfm wouldn't be ruined) but I only made it to SOTSWG which got the same rating. I couldn't find a single enjoyable thing about either of these albums. Maybe I'll make it to Heathen Chemistry one day.

Proud Mary are an English blues/rock band from Royton, Oldham, Greater Manchester. The band was discovered by Noel Gallagher, and was the first to sign to the Oasis star's Sour Mash label.[1] which the oasis star had recently formed" to give me something to do on my days off "[2] The band have toured extensively with artists including Neil Young, The Who, David Bowie, Stereophonics, The Black Crowes, Ryan Adams, Paul Weller, Ocean Colour Scene, The Happy Mondays and Oasis to name a few (Proud Mary were the first signings to Noel Gallagher's Sour Mash label and Gallagher produced their first album.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Mary_%28band%29

holy shit theyre still releasing albums

"Sour Mash" release Noel's albums now.

the chart position for their first album says #9, but when you go to that album's page, it's revealed that that is on the indie chart...not nearly as impressive.

dare I ask what they sound like?

shite