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

for stupidity: The blood on the trax and it must be mine/the fool on the hill and I feel fine
for just sheer awkwardness: Sitting upside a high chair, the devil's refugee is gonna be blinded by the light that follows me

Since 1997 I've been wondering what the fuck "touch down bass" is, and why on Earth it's "living on the run".

"I dig his friends! I dig his shoes!" - given the right delivery and a good song this could be a pretty witty lyric.

Worst: "'cause you see me I got my Magic Pie/think of me yeah that was me I was that passer by" or "I got something in my shoes, it's keeping me from walking down the long and winding road and back home to you".

all this talk of shoes has reminded me that this is apparently a real lyric from the last Kings of Leon record:

I walk a mile in your shoes
And now I'm a mile away
And I've got your shoes

That's kind of funny actually.

Better than any of Noel's lyrics anyway.

Oh I wasn't calling them out, I think it's legitimately hilarious. Never gonna listen to the actual song, mind you.

I feel like "Give me just a smile and would you make it snappy/get your shit together girl!" is another one of those "could work with the right delivery / context" lines. No saving that Magic Pie one, though.

haha, i remember all my dorky britpop friends desperately trying to make themselves like this album. the 'devil's refugee' line seems like just run-of-the-mill '90s rock lyric bullshit, but it's got to be 'fool on the hill and i feel fine' for taking beatles references to a new level of awkward pointlessness.

haha, i remember all my dorky britpop friends desperately trying to make themselves like this album.

Even more hilarious to watch them doing the same with Standing on the Shoulder of Giants iirc.

Genuinely stupid record. Drugs are bad, kids.

This was the one with All Around the World right? Even as a died in the wool Oasis hater I remember thinking that song was particularly risible.

all this talk of shoes has reminded me that this is apparently a real lyric from the last Kings of Leon record:

I walk a mile in your shoes
And now I'm a mile away
And I've got your shoes

― Simon H., Friday, January 24, 2014 7:28 PM (13 minutes ago)

This is an old joke, isn't it? Not a KoL original.

yeah "I don't think I dig his friends! I dig his shoes!" is worth a cringe.

ok lol THAT should be the lyric

stupid, stupid, stupid record. also the most fun oasis record

A lot is made of Be Here Now "killing Britpop", but I think by the time the album appeared, the musical landscape had already mostly shifted. OK Computer was already out by that point, Blur had put out Blur at the beginning of the year, the Manic Street Preachers had become incredibly successful on the back of 'A Design For Life' and Everything Must Go. In hindsight, I get the feeling that a lot was riding on Be Here Now to rejuvenate the whole Britpop thing and keep the Britpop thing going (because, let's face it, record companies loved Britpop because even the lesser bands were selling a lot of records). I think we all know what happened instead, though... a big, hyped-up pre-release campaign to something which actually didn't mean all that much. The Emperor's New Clothes. The band were coked out of their skulls and had completely lost touch with reality, and were still talking about themselves as if they were the dog's bollocks, but where during the time of Morning Glory millions would have agreed and even goaded on the Gallagher's self-belief, during the time of Be Here Now that whole schtick just looked increasingly delusional, and reactions became more "seriously? really? shut the fuck up!".

"Coming in a mess going out in style/I ain't good-looking but I'm someone's child" is a good second-tier late 80s glam metal lyric

Some of the B-sides are really no better, either: 'Angel child, tonight this is your life. Angel child o'mine!'

Wouldn't it be easier to actually single out any good lyrics?

Then again...

This record is so over the top and terrible and awesome and fun and I love it so much and hate it so much for so many different reasons. Like this is sort of the 90s equivalent of a coked-out mess.

i remember a bunch of ppl apologetically going 'they always waste the bad stuff on the albums, the GOOD stuff's on the b-sides,' which always struck me as a weird way to do things now, even then buying cd singles felt to me like the kind of thing you only did if you were already an obsessed fan, but a lot of 'the masterplan' is pretty good, definitely on par with the first two albums.

The Morning Glory b-sides are far better than pretty much anything that appeared on Be Here Now. The Be Here Now B-sides are mostly pretty terrible, apart from maybe 'Stay Young' which is probably Gallagher's best song of this period.

not even the best Britpop song called Stay Young tbf

Who else around this time released a song called 'Stay Young'? I can only think of Ultrasound's, and I don't really see them as being a Britpop band. They were kinda part of that weird late '90s post-Britpop thing where bands were either making mournful acoustic-guitar based music or trying to be more of an "art rock" thing.

thinking of so young?

who the fuck are okkervil river?

i was definitely thinking of Ultrasound! they were artier than most Britpop tbf but cmon that's a thunking great Britpop song

also lol, pitchfork indie brotha

I walk a mile in your shoes
And now I'm a mile away
And I've got your shoes

― Simon H., Friday, January 24, 2014 7:28 PM (13 minutes ago)

This is an old joke, isn't it? Not a KoL original.

it's an old old joke. I think maybe billy connolly told it once? So probably older than billy connolly.

yeah google says connolly:

"Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that who cares?... He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!"

Turrican otm. i remember being jaded and bored with the whole oasis thing (i had loved the first two albums) by the time BHN was about to hit the shelves. the first single (and the ludicrous video) only confirmed that the album wasnt going to be worth bothering with. dave fanning played it in full on his radio show soon after it was released and it was apparent that the jig was up.

I think it was probably the lingering goodwill in America for "Wonderwall", but "D'You Know What I Mean" was inescapable on alt-rock radio for the first month it came out, but then none of the other singes did much. I do remember friends of mine that absolutely loathed Morning Glory really repping for "D'You Know What I Mean" though.

I loved the 1st album thought 2nd was decent bought the album day it came out (was it a thursday?) never played it since 2 days after. Even though my parents bought me that vinyl box set for the christmas that year.

Yet its still better than what followed. WHY did I buy sotsog WHY

not even the best Britpop song called Stay Young tbf

― pessimishaim (imago)

not even the best Britpop song with "Stay" in title.

if diana hadnt died their ballad from that album woulda been #1 and the album woulda done well but it stalled totally at that point.
fucking weird times.

Oh god yeah, the videos to all the Be Here Now singles are ludicrous, and no doubt cost quite a fair bit of money to make. It's pure speculation, but I reckon the video to 'All Around The World' alone cost far more to make than all of the Definitely Maybe-era videos combined.

It's the ultimate in style over substance, really: a lot of money and time was obviously put into the packaging of the album (and its singles), the videos, the stage set (probably the only time Oasis ever had stage props: the band walked onstage out of a phonebox, opened by a guy in a top hat with a pocketwatch, if I recall... a far cry from the no-frills approach of before), even the production of the record with all the strings and brass sections, the BBC making a documentary to launch the release of the album, the whole fucking security surrounding the album was insane...

All of this time, money and effort spent on presentation and building hype, and the parts which mattered were mostly phoned-in.

I saw them 3 times, the last time was the 2nd day of Loch Lomond. No stage props at all were needed. Tho video screens were at Loch Lomond but that was when they attracted the stadium rock crowd (and lost the indie kids with be here now) and the stadium rock fans need something more than 4 or 5 blokes just standing there.
Its weird as i knew tons of people who didnt like them on the first album "all hype" but once they got big gig size they were all over them. They only went to see rem/bon jovi/rhcp/eagles/rod stewart/u2 at the likes of hampden or murrayfield. and they would still go to those venues until they split.

Yet its still better than what followed. WHY did I buy sotsog WHY

― ۩, Friday, January 24, 2014 9:36 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The band should have called it a day before Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants, in my humble opinion. I mean, sure, Oasis had always been 'The Gallagher Brothers Show' to some degree, but they still very much were a band. Guigsy and Bonehead may not have contributed much musically to Oasis, but that particular line-up of Oasis (either with McCarroll or White) had a chemistry to them which disappeared entirely once Guigsy and Bonehead left. They felt like a brand from that point onwards, and it definitely wasn't the same.

btw i hope everyone realises britpop is not a real thing

Also some Oasis fans genuinely think the only band better than them is the beatles. I swear I cant think of a more close-minded set of fans now yet up until loch lomond tons of people hoped they would go dance and do a screamadelica. I wonder what would have happened if they had done that instead of be here now? Would dad rock have not happened? Or would OCS and Cast & co just got bigger than them?

OCS were one hit wonders when they played loch lomond/knebworth. Prodigy,chemical brothers played too and they got just as big as those dad rock bands that got big in the wake of oasis. So why did dad rock last longer?

i still think Hey Now from Morning Glory's 2nd verse is their worst ever lyrical moment and worse than any here, because it actually goes some way to ruin a halfway-brilliant song. to wit

The first thing I saw
As I walked through the door
Was a sign on the wall that read
It said you might never know
That I want you to know
What is written inside of your head

i mean..

the poll options itt are one of the funniest things i've ever seen on ilm, bravo turrican

A good friend of mine is an oasis nut, loves all their records. hes not too keen on be here now but reckons theres 3 or 4 good songs on it. although he couldnt even deny that the noel solo lp was bad. how bad must it have been?

xxxpost:

Ocean Colour Scene wouldn't have got anywhere without the endorsement of Paul Weller and Chris Evans. You have to remember, Ocean Colour Scene had already had one failed album behind them at that point (the self-titled album from 1992, which was more baggy than anything else). Paul Weller gave Steve Cradock work while Ocean Colour Scene were between record deals, and Chris Evans was basically responsible for championing 'The Riverboat Song' and having them on TFI Friday as often as possible. If not for the Weller & Evans endorsements, it's quite possible that Moseley Shoals still would have been more successful than the debut (people were still buying huge amounts of records after all), but it's equally possible that they just would have ended up as one of the endless amounts of Weller-endorsed acts that didn't do an awful lot.

Cast were probably signed because John Power used to be in The La's. Their debut album was released the same month as Morning Glory, and well before 'Wonderwall' was a hit, and ages before Ocean Colour Scene put Moseley Shoals out.

early OCS is real jarring when you've heard what came after. pretty good too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Py8h7poouQ

Also some Oasis fans genuinely think the only band better than them is the beatles. I swear I cant think of a more close-minded set of fans now yet up until loch lomond tons of people hoped they would go dance and do a screamadelica.

― ۩, Friday, January 24, 2014 10:00 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup, hardcore Oasis fans circa 2014 are idiots, pretty much. The weird thing is, I don't recall many people even connecting Oasis with The Beatles until after Definitely Maybe. Circa the first album Noel Gallagher seemed to be more keen about talking about The Sex Pistols or The Stone Roses or The Smiths.

And it's often forgotten that he did that collaboration with The Chemical Brothers ('Setting Sun') post-Morning Glory and that definitely fuelled rumours that Oasis were going to go all Screamadelica.

xpost:

Yeah, the first OCS album is by far the most interesting thing they ever did.

As soon as I heard the title Be Here Now I knew this was going to be total bullshit

"fever" has that "acquiesce" minor to major trick

if the songs had been good enough they wouldnt have been too long. The album sucked cuz the songs were shit. Shorten them down and they would still be shit. Do people really only have the concentration span of a sparrow that they cant like anything more than 3 or 4 mins long?

― ۩, Monday, January 27, 2014 8:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's nothing wrong with 7 minute long songs, or 9 minute long songs, or even 20 minute long songs, providing they have enough ideas and inspiration in them to justify the length. If a songwriter sets out to write a song, or a band writes a piece of music and the tracks naturally end up being that long, then that's fine. The thing with Be Here Now is that virtually every song is calculated to be an epic, and the sense is that Noel Gallagher has written songs that could quite comfortably be 4 minutes long, but he's deliberately stretched them out... either by going for slow tempos ('D'Ya Know What I Mean?'), multiple key changes ('All Around The World'), needless repetition (pretty much all the songs, but 'It's Gettin' Bettr (Man!!)' is a prime offender towards the end), or by inserting as many guitar breaks as possible into the song. 'Magic Pie', for instance, could have comfortably ended about 4 minutes in, but then there's that unnecessary extended outro followed by one last chorus which doesn't even need to be there!

Then there's the massive amount of overdubs, which make the songs even more of a slog to get through. 'Champagne Supernova' worked well because of its relative production clarity, whereas something like 'My Big Mouth' (one of the shorter tracks on the album) has my brain switching off halfway through because it just feels like it's being bombarded with too much trebly noise. Definitely Maybe was a loud album for its time, but it didn't tire your ears out trying to listen through the murk.

Lots of OTM stuff upthread. Hillarious to think about now, but I was 15 in 1997 and the first two albums I ever bought were What's The Story and Definitely Maybe. I knew lots of people who'd gone to the gig in Páirc Uí Chaoimh the year before where they'd heard new songs that were supposed to be amazing (no YouTube then!). I remember buying Be Here Now the weekend it was released and talking about it to the guys I played soccer with. It took us about 2 weeks to go from 'this is brilliant and Oasis are the best band in the world' to 'this is muck'.

A lot of us started listening to the Beatles around then. I remember taping There And Then (live video recorded on the Morning Glory tour) off the TV that Christmas and I was big into the cover of I Am The Walrus at the end with the Bootleg Beatles at the end - it had a weirdness that none of the Oasis stuff had. We started lending each other Beatles albums in school. I got a loan of The Beatles Anthology 6 video (covering Revolver/Sgt. Pepper's) and saw the Strawberry Fields Forever video, and especially the A Day In The Life video, which left my jaw on the floor, and I was basically done with Oasis after that, and off in a completely different direction.

I still have a lot of time for the first two albums and related b-sides though. With hindsight, Definitely Maybe sorta fits into the Creation Records shoegaze catalogue, occupying the same position as Arcade Fire's first album does for the Montreal post-rock bands. There's this great big pea soup of guitars which doesn't seem indulgent yet, and the guitar tone isn't classic rock-y the way it is on Be Here Now. Onstage the band acted like a shoegaze band with a sound guy who'd put the mic too high for the lead singer. Liam sounds great, and young (what ruined Oasis? The songs nosediving, the classic rock pretensions piling up, or Liam's voice going to shit?). Noel definitely had a talent for hooks and melodies, and it would have been interesting if he'd been in a songwriting partnership with someone who could write meaningful lyrics or push him musically.

all 3!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I remember somebody doing an alternate track selection for BHN using b-sides as substitute tracks.

Mine:

My Big Mouth
Stand By Me
Stay Young
The Fame
I Hope, I Think, I Know
Be Here Now
I Got The Fever
Don't Go Away
It's Getting Better, Man!!!
Going Nowhere

I still have a lot of time for the first two albums and related b-sides though. With hindsight, Definitely Maybe sorta fits into the Creation Records shoe gaze catalogue

Agree 100%. Everyone just repeats that "they copied the Beatles," but a track like "Some Might Say" is heavily influenced by shoegazing.

yeah they were huge Ride fans.

Good post imo ecuador

Mine:

My Big Mouth
Stand By Me
Stay Young
The Fame
I Hope, I Think, I Know
Be Here Now
I Got The Fever
Don't Go Away
It's Getting Better, Man!!!
Going Nowhere

― Driver 8, Friday, January 31, 2014 2:58 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's actually not a bad configuration!

I'll take the accompanying Magic Pie EP over that:

D'ya Know What I Mean
Magic Pie
Fade In-Out

^^^just the right amount of coked-up multitracked idiocy

Just trying to imagine an alternate universe where Oasis release the Magic Pie EP as shown above...

*giggles* Maybe add All Around The World on the end of that for the full sturm-und-drang blow-out. I think that those four tracks would have gotten it out of their system quite nicely. Well, quite horribly. And nicely.

It'd be a long EP... that's over half an hour of Be Here Now's runtime right there!

lol ok maybe not then, keep it pure

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

needs a run-off

yeah, I voted for the long and winding one and I want to see its shittiness rewarded

naw The blood on the trax and it must be mine/the fool on the hill and I feel fine is way worse.
3 shitty beatles references to your 1

Columbia is the obvious Oasis go to shoegazing track imo

well, 2 + dylan for the uncut readers

needs a run-off

― ۩, Saturday, February 1, 2014 12:12 AM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hahahaha... yeah, 'cause that'll go down well!

Columbia is the obvious Oasis go to shoegazing track imo

― Master of Treacle, Saturday, February 1, 2014 12:38 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I always used to overlook 'Columbia' back in the '90s, but when I listened to Definitely Maybe a few days ago it suddenly felt like a standout track!

it always was!

btw turrican C'MOWN

there is so much GOOD shoegaze out there, oasis is so not a go to band

25 Years Ago, The Biggest Rock Band Dropped A Perfect Album That Nobody Was Ready For

oh fuck off

a challops that big needs an incredible piece of writing to justify it, not that piece of meandering pointless shit

I was too young to notice when this band was a thing everyone had to care about but my encounters with fans in the intervening years have been so overwhelmingly negative that I feel like I almost lived through it- but I hoped even the fans hated this one enough that we could avoid the cycle this time. how naive

no offence to the oasis fans who aren't the most aggressively incurious britrock worshipping racist homophobic misogynist loudmouth wankers in britain I know you're out there but I'm sure you're aware of the scale of the problem

Don’t go away sounds like a Train song

I bought it on the day it was released, was a huge deal for me. I think “getting better (man)” was my favorite track

p good album

the excess is the whole point.
i love this album.

yeah v much the only Oasis album I need

What do you think of Don’t Go Away? What are you hearing?

that's one of the worst songs on the album yes

https://neilk.substack.com/p/on-oasis-the-gallaghers-d4abcb889d59

yes, a classic bit of polemic

I still like most of this album and the song 'morning glory', was also impressed hearing 'roll with it' in the supermarket recently, happy to leave the rest

lose 'don't go away', 'i hope i think i know', 'the girl in the dirty shirt' and it's all hits, a blistering soup of N Gallagher overdubbed twelve times, the plaintive miasma of cool britannia in its greatest throes, the immersive folly of the scene that truly celebrated itself

a challops that big needs an incredible piece of writing to justify it, not that piece of meandering pointless shit

― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length),

uh am I misreading you? Sheffield trashed it.

“Don’tcha know”

i love the whole morning glory album, it truly spoke to me in silly ways when i was in high school. i imported a gigantic liam gallagher poster and hung it above my bed. ian curtis on the opposite wall. weird opposing heroes, but they both spoke to me. Be Here Now i bought on the day it came out. i thought "this fucking sucks". when Standing on the Shoulder (uggggggh) came out it seemed like a massive improvement, although now when i listen back, nope, that one sucks too. Oasis the band died at the end of Champagne Supernova. That fadeout is the sound of them going away to die. their ghouls reappeared on Be Here Now, it's their "excess" album, but really it's just their coke album, and it sounds exactly like that -- massive dickheads leaping way beyond their scope of knowledge, truly believing that every idiotic word that comes to mind is actually truly powerful on some level. no one listens to oasis for the lyrics (? right?) but the songs weren't there either, so they just did the really tedious act of stretching out every single song to the limit and playing things over and over, hoping to find new meaning in the 18th repetition, which somehow works when it's spacemen 3 but does not at all when it's oasis.

definitely maybe 8
morning glory 10
be here now 2

i actually really like ‘d’you know what i mean’ but yet have never felt the urge to listen to the rest of it

there are good songs on it but listening to it sucks

be here now is at least better than most of what came afterward but that's not saying very much.

the tunes are mostly decent, you can at least hear how it could have been worthwhile if they weren't so coked out making it. it's a kinda fascinating artefact

i saw Oasis three times -

once in 1994 when Live Forever had just been released - this was very exciting vibe-wise although I felt (and still feel) a little bemused by the hype

once in I dunno early 2000s when Andy Bell was playing bass (?!) - this was fine, I didn't pay much attention, it was at a festival

but they played in Sydney in 1998 at the end of the Be Here Now tour and it was once of the flattest/worst performances from a major band I have ever seen - just woeful. I think Noel Gallagher apologised later for how shit it was.

"We were appalling last time," he said. "We owe the Australians one. If anyone saw us, they saw the band at its worst. I'm desperate to get back there to set the record straight. An Australian tour is pencilled in. If people will have us, we'll definitely come back."

"When we were in Australia [in 1998], it was meltdown time. By the time we got there we'd been on the road for seven months. There was a lot of drinking and nonsense. We'd had enough of touring. We'd been doing it for four or five years and it was one tour too many. If we had the chance to go back to Australia, I'd be the first on the plane."

From here

Stoked to have seen this historically important show!

Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn) at 11:35 21 Aug 22

a challops that big needs an incredible piece of writing to justify it, not that piece of meandering pointless shit

― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length),

uh am I misreading you? Sheffield trashed it.