One of the most memorable moments of my entire life is when I first heard Oasis.
In fact, when I was first contemplating writing a blog, my desire to write and re-visit why Oasis has had such a big impact on me was one of things that helped me decide what I would blog about.
Definitely Maybe came out in 1994, over 20 years ago. But each listen now is still as fresh to me as hearing the newly purchased tape on my Dad’s car stereo as we drove home from Colchester (side note: Colchester is the hometown of Damon Alburn, of Blur – whose rivalry with Oasis was created into a huge story through the 90’s as the two bands conquered the UK).
But to really get to the moment that Oasis changed my life, and the media with which they did it, I would have to go back to earlier that year, standing in my brother’s bedroom as he excitedly played me his white label single of Live Forever / Up In The Sky.
What was I thinking as I heard Live Forever? My first reaction, which is still true today, was to prick up my ears when the drums opened, a kick and hi hat against the floor tom. You didn’t – and still don’t – hear that too often. They pricked even further and I started grinning when the warm, big Gibson distorted guitar came in on the tonic and on the downbeat, along with these cool rough rock and roll vocals, that have a slight Lennon-esque echo to them.
When the song got to the chorus I was beaming, wide eyed and nodding my head at my brother. Awesome.The downbeat of the chorus explodes with an E minor, and Liam belts…not just sings…belts out his melody; his first note is suspended against the chord, the second note is the tone above. The melodic phrase repeats itself, but satisfyingly resolves as the music hits the D major, and allows the song to take a breath, while Liam himself pauses. He then launches into repeating the melodic phrase over another minor chord in the scale, and resolves that too on the relative major of that minor chord. The whole progression repeats and then changes melody and chord to end the chorus, singing the tag line ‘You and I, we’re gonna live forever’.
But I want to focus my attention on the E minor to D major and the accompanying melody. The reason this moment changed my life is because it seemed impossible. It seemed impossible to have a such a mundane chord progression, which normally brings down the energy (because you are falling down bass notes), but yet here is was so uplifting and powerful.
How many Elton John songs have a falling bass note that heightens the emotion but doesn’t increase the energy? That’s what this chord progression does by its very nature – often popular songs resolve this sequence on the fourth of the scale, so that these three chords are then the chorus progression (think Trouble by Taylor Swift, which incidentally falls into the trap of trying but failing to have a really big chorus with this progression. If Max Martin hadn’t phoned in much of the song – I mean, what’s that verse, right? – I would say he was schooled by Oasis here).
Somehow in Live Forever this chord progression is more powerful than starting the chorus on the tonic – the G – which is what you would expect from a jubilant, hopeful song about living into something positive and amazing. One of the things I hear all the time from songwriters who want to write commercially mainstream songs is that a positive song should have its chorus start on the tonic, the major. And every time I hear that a piece of me dies. The other pieces of me want to play them Live Forever. And then tell them to get out.
Live Forever was not just any upbeat, positive song. It was a rallying cry, a passionate, defiant shout to the heavens, with a swagger and arrogance that, in comparison to the grunge of the early 90’s, was so fresh, and intoxicating.
The chorus doesn’t just ask the question, or say I’d like to live forever. It tells you. I am going to live forever. You are listening to someone who is so assured of themselves, that you can’t help being inspired and fired up. And it’s not just the singer that is going to live forever. You and I – we’re going to live forever. I defy anybody to listen to the most upbeat, positive songs that are in the mainstream at the moment and tell me it fires them up as much as Live Forever.
There was an ease to this chorus that still amazes me. Noel Gallagher will be the first to admit that his lyrics don’t really make any sense. Oasis don’t strike me as the most intelligent people in the world. They don’t wake up with Yesterday in their head, and I don’t attribute any musical genius to them. The guitar playing doesn’t hold a candle to some of their contemporary guitar players like Bernard Butler, John Squire or Jonny Greenwood (both technically and creatively). But they did do something that I still cannot explain. They found a way to tap right into the heart of their listeners, and get them fired up, with a breathtaking effortlessness. And they did it again and again and again. (Side note: the recording of the album was anything but effortless, and Definitely Maybe very nearly didn’t come out. Imagine that).
Live Forever was Oasis’s emissary in the world. It was the first single that successfully charted in the UK and put them on the map. It heralded the beginning of a whole new era of Brit-rock, based on big, positive music, chunky guitars, and many many throwbacks to 60’s production and styles of writing (and even music videos). In interviews Noel Gallagher has talked about Live Forever being inspired by a reaction to Kurt Cobain’s unhappiness with his life and wanting to die. Oasis created a whole new tapestry in the UK, at first a reaction to grunge, but then so much more – linking so many of the richest parts of UK music into a whole new style, and inspiring band after band to write amazing songs throughout the next decade, and even now.
Oasis didn’t just change history, they created it.
They affected millions of music listeners and songwriters in the UK and around the world. They defined the next ten years, and kick started an arms race in the UK where everyone vied to write better and more Brit-rockier songs than the other – and my friends and I were the winners every time that happened.
And they started all of that with Live Forever; with one of the most inspirational choruses in popular music history – which begins on a relative minor, that moves down – not up – to the next chord, and whose melody doesn’t even begin on the downbeat.