some might say

And B-sides… ‘Some Might Say’, by Oasis

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

Launching our second new feature of the year, we’re going to celebrate the flip-sides to some famous chart-toppers. In my posts on every UK #1 between 1952 and 1999, I’ve stuck fairly rigidly to reviewing just one side of each chart-topping disc. On occasion I may have mentioned them in passing, and I’ve always given them a spin if they’re listed as a double-‘A’; but by and large I’ve avoided the B-sides.

To be honest, I was born at the tail end of the B-side era, so sometimes overlook their importance. By the mid-to-late-nineties, when I started buying music, the bonus tracks on a CD or cassette single were often just remixes of the A-side, or maybe a live version of an earlier hit. And the download/streaming era has killed off the concept for good. But cast an eye back further, to the days when an act’s singles were the main event, rather than a plug for their current LP, and the ‘other’ side of a hit single was a source of countless hidden gems.

And besides (see what I did there), many’s the big chart-topping hit that was originally intended as back-up to a song that, for whatever reason, didn’t catch the imagination. ‘Rock Around the Clock’, ‘Maggie May’, ‘I Feel Love’… The list is long, and often surprising. So, let’s kick things off with one of the last bands to recognise the power of a good B-side…

‘Some Might Say’ made number one in April 1995, Oasis’s first chart-topping single. You can read all about that song here. It was only their sixth release, but already the Gallaghers and co. had built a reputation for spoiling their fans with cult classics hidden behind the actual hits. ‘Half the World Away’ on ‘Whatever’, ‘Listen Up’ and ‘Fade Away’ on ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’. But on ‘Some Might Say’, the lead single from their soon to be multi-multi-platinum second album ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’, Oasis included not one, not two, but three great B-sides. Starting with…

‘Talk Tonight’ is a classic of the Noel-with-an-acoustic guitar genre, a common theme for their B-sides. It was written about a woman in San Francisco, to whom he escaped after a concert went wrong (another common Oasis theme). Oasis at their best produced songs about very specific moments – visiting a park with a woman you barely know – that feel very universal. Everyone has some absent friend with whom they would like to talk tonight.

‘Acquiesce’ meanwhile is Oasis with a capital OASIS. One of very few tracks on which the brothers share vocal duties: Liam at his sneery best on the verses, Noel stretching his vocal chords on the chorus. Plus, the lyrics speak to their brotherly bond: Because we need each other, We believe in one another… (Noel has claimed that the only reason he sang the chorus was because Liam couldn’t reach the high notes). The moment when the pair collide at the start of the second verse is possibly the best five seconds in Oasis’s entire back-catalogue.

For a famous rock band, the moments in which Oasis let loose and just fucking ROCKED are actually quite few and far between. ‘Headshrinker’ may well be the heaviest song they ever recorded, with ten-tonne weighted chords, and lyrics like Lost in the fog, I’ve been treated like a dog, And I’m outta here… about an unhinged lady-love. Their biggest hits may have long since been lost to bland ubiquity, but gems like this remind us that on their day Oasis could be pretty punk.

Noel Gallagher has long since bemoaned the fact that he used up so many great songs as B-sides, especially after years of fame (and booze and drugs) had blunted his songwriting edge. Stick any of these three featured songs onto ‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’ and they would instantly be the best tracks on the album. But then again, chucking classics like these away on the one CD single encapsulates the carefree, live-in-the-moment ethos of early Oasis, and of Britpop before it soured, and was a huge part of their appeal.

I hope you enjoyed this first installment in what I hope to make a semi-regular feature. If you have any suggestions for B-sides (to UK #1 singles) that I can feature, please let me know in the comments!

720. ‘Some Might Say’, by Oasis

/ UK #1s blog / 25 Comments

I’m both thrilled and downhearted that we’ve reached the beginning of the Oasis era. Much like I wrote in the intro to my last post, on Take That’s ‘Back for Good’… What can I add to the three decades’ worth of column inches dedicated to Britain’s most polarising band.

Some Might Say, by Oasis (their 1st of eight #1s)

1 week, from 30th April – 7th May 1995

Basically, what to say about Oasis that isn’t cliched? I need to approach this completely subjectively, then. Which isn’t hard, because Oasis were my first big musical love (OK, second… but we’ll deal with that Spice Girls-shaped elephant in the room when the time comes…) ‘Some Might Say’ has never been among my very favourite Oasis records but, actually, this is a good thing, as far as this post is concerned. It hasn’t been overplayed to death, and I’m glad that this made #1, and not the two #2 hits that followed.

On the other hand, I’d rather their two preceding singles – ‘Whatever’, or ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’, had been the first chart-topper. ‘Some Might Say’ has some of the vim, the punkish energy of ‘Definitely Maybe’ – I’d say it’s the song from ‘What’s the Story…’ that could most easily slip onto their debut – but signs of bloat are already appearing. After a brilliant glam riff opening, it settles into a slightly plodding, overlong rock song (why, oh why, is this five and a half minutes long?) And, despite the long-held belief that Oasis were a rejection of grunge’s misery and introspection, there are some very heavy, grungy chords in the chorus.

I had a pop at Gary Barlow’s lyrics in that last post, and I have to call Noel out here too, even if this is where I tip into well-trodden cliché. Oasis lyrics walk the line between revelatory and ridiculous. One minute you’re thinking ‘Yes, profound!’. The next you’re thinking ‘Maybe not…’ Some might say they don’t believe in heaven, Go and tell it to the man who lives in hell… is a great line. Some might say you get what you’ve been given, If you don’t get yours I won’t get mine as well… is more at the ‘maybe not’ end. (Though we can all agree that The sink is full of fishes, She’s got dirty dishes on the brain… is a lyric for the ages…)

The star here, as in many of Oasis’s early songs, is the man interpreting these words, and making them his own. Liam. The last true rock star, and one of the all-time great frontmen. A beautiful moron (‘Some Might Say’ doesn’t have a proper video because he never showed up for the shoot), his sweetly aggressive vocals attack his brother’s unwieldy lines and transform them. Just try singing this song like he does. It’s very difficult – your voice ends up straining, and cracking, and getting lost among the walls of guitar (Oasis were, thankfully, never fans of understated production.)

Like I said, I once loved Oasis – growing up male, in small town Scotland, in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s, it was all but mandatory – but it is a love that has faded. I’ve accepted that they were limited, that they did have a habit of ‘borrowing’ riffs and melodies (even now I’ll listen to a Kinks album track and hear a bit that sounds familiar…), and that they believed their own hype a little too much. And yet, they were never as bad, as unoriginal, as much a Bargain Bucket Beatles, as some critics were desperate to make out.

Anyway, I’m writing as if this was their one and only chart-topper, not as if they have seven more to come. It’s easy to forget just how phenomenally successful they were. All seven of their studio albums entered the charts at #1, while ‘Some Might Say’ was the first of eight singles in a row to make either #1 or #2, between 1995 and 2000. It might not be the perfect song to be crowned their first chart-topper – the first chart-topper of the Britpop era even – but Some might say, We will find a brighter day… is perhaps the perfect summation of the Oasis manifesto.