Oasis Definitely Maybe

I first heard Oasis's debut album when my brother played me a tape of "Definitely Maybe" one day in the fall of 1994. I quite liked some of the songs on it and remember finding "Live Forever" vaguely familiar, probably because I must have heard it playing on the radio or something when it was released as a single, or maybe, retrospectively speaking, because it was so good I thought I must have already heard it somewhere before. However, I didn't really pay the album much mind until almost a year later when I was in the record section in the basement of a retail store and they played "Definitely Maybe". I stayed in the record section to listen to the album and decided I would buy it.

It was loud, it was exciting, it was the plug to fill the void in music that had been prevalent for too long, particularly in the early 90's when music didn't really seem to know which way to go, except "back" perhaps. Hence, people like Sting, Annie Lennox, Brian May, Rod Stewart, Paul Weller, Freddie Mercury and Elton John all scored their first hits in years in the early 90's. The fact these people were deservedly being taken note of again was no bad thing by any means, but I think it showed that people back then wanted some quality talent, some established popular heroes who were consistently reliable for making good songs. Suddenly though, here was music from a band that was new and really worth listening to, and they opened the floodgates for other guitar bands such as Blur, Pulp, Radiohead, Suede and Supergrass. There was a new, exciting feel to the music (which the British media in all their naivety tediously stuck under the same umbrella and called "Britpop"). It was intelligent music with a social message but delivered by everyday working class people who weren't talking down to you or trying to be pretentious pop stars.

The album gets off to a great start with the full-tilt rock of "Rock `n' Roll Star". Powerful guitars drive the song with Liam's unmistakable vocal delivery, singing like he really means it. And that's the difference between Oasis and most bands of the last 20 years. They sing it and they play it because they really mean it, not just because they want you to think they mean it.

"Shaker Maker" is a good, clever song with Beatles-esque imagery in its lyrics, and the song has been around for long enough now for me to forget any close association its melody might have with the New Seekers' Coke song, "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing". It's not one of my favorite Oasis songs, but it showed this group weren't just an out-and-out rock band but instead could come up with clever melodies and lyrics for songs that had an air of wit and whimsicality to them as well, as they further demonstrated with "Digsy's Diner", "Married With Children", "She's Electric" and "The Importance of Being Idle". This in more ways seemed to show their influence of the Beatles.

"Live Forever" was the song that made people sit up and take notice a bit more, but who was to know back then whether or not this band were capable of achieving anything else as good, or even better. Remember, Oasis didn't come to the attention of the masses until "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?" the following year. Noel even said if he thought anyone was going to take notice of the band in the way that they did he might have thought twice about ripping off T. Rex for "Cigarettes and Alcohol". Actually, the song's riff borrowed from the T. Rex song "Get It On" was in fact ripped off by Marc Bolan and co. from an earlier Chuck Berry song anyway.

"Columbia" is another standout track on this album with its infectious, relentless groove reminiscent of The Happy Mondays but played from a wall of sound that sounds like nobody but Oasis. "Supersonic" was the band's first single and a good song but again not one of my favorites, although a band could do a lot worse than launch their music career with a song like that, and many have. It has great attitude, with the first line being "I want to be myself. I can't be no-one else". Probably my least favorite song on the album is "Bring It On Down", a snarling, boisterous song that leans towards punk and somehow just fails to hit the mark.

"Slide Away" is still my favorite song from the album and one of my all-time favorite tracks. When Oasis released a DVD to mark the tenth anniversary of "Definitely Maybe" in 2004, somebody on the DVD commented that the sign of a great album is when people talk highly of a track that wasn't even released as a single, to which they were referring to "Slide Away". I'd have to agree with that. The song moves at just the right pace with a blend of wonderful melody, lyrics and chords and I particularly love the ad-lib section of the song from the end of the last chorus to the fade, complimented perfectly by Noel's lead guitar work.

So, overall a classic album that is held in very high esteem by me and the British music-buying public over a decade later, but is it the best debut album ever? Definitely maybe.

With the swaggering chords of the opening "Rock'N'Roll Star," Oasis announced that big, brash Brit rock was here to stay--at least for a few years. They wore their rock & roll with an angry young sneer, a Mancunian petulance wedded to a vision of cathartic release. Their supersonic two-guitar attack took them "Up in the Sky," where they would "Live Forever" or burn out in a blaze of alcoholic glory. Noel Gallagher's songs weren't subtle--or shy of overt plagiarism--but, spat out in the Lennonesque snarl of little brother Liam, they took on a venomous power that had millions of young Brits taking them at their own arrogant word. In the U.S., meanwhile, the response was more Maybe than Definitely