Switched on Pop - Learning to love: Oasis

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

Oasis, the Manchester band led by brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher, conquered the charts in the 1990s with rock anthems like "Wonderwall." This month, they did something no one saw coming: Announced a reunion. In 2025, the band will play 19 dates in five cities across the UK and Ireland, their first shows with both brothers in the lineup since breaking up in 2009 due to long-simmering tensions between them. Formed in 1991 with Noel as chief songwriter and guitarist and Liam as lead vocalist, the band helped define the sound of Britpop alongside peers like Blur, Suede, and Pulp. Noel’s and Liam’s feuding made it seem like the band would never reunite, so this upcoming tour has generated a minor frenzy, resulting in insane ticket prices, the band’s songs surging in popularity on streaming services, and countless diehard fans zipping up their parkas in anticipation.  As two casual listeners to the band, we want to understand the hype behind this long-awaited reunion, so we went through the band’s catalog to uncover what makes this working-class Mancunian outfit so beloved, and see whether we can learn to love Oasis. Songs Discussed Oasis - Wonderwall, Supersonic, Shakermaker, Don't Look Back In Anger, Champagne Supernova, All Around The World, Go Let It Out, Stop Crying Your Heart Out, Little By Little, The Turning The New Seekers - I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony) John Lennon - Gimme Some Truth, #9 Dream Sheryl Crow - If It Makes You Happy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, when I saw you in DC last month when we were doing this workshop at the Kennedy Center for summer music students, I shared some exciting news with you in my life.

The most exciting. Mazel tov, new baby. Is this going to be a trip number three? Baby number three is going to be an adventure. And we're in a bit of a predicament because we only planned on having two kids originally. So we gave each of them one of our last names. So one has my last name, Sloan, and the other has Whitney's last name, Graham. And now we have a third kid.

It's like, oh, my God, what are we going to do? Either this third kid gets one of our names, and then it's kind of uneven. Like, oh, I have two and you have one. Yeah, or they're going to be hyphenated. Or it's hyphenated. or it's some kind of portmanteau of the two of our names. Ooh. Or we have to have four kids is the other option.

But either way, there's no clear solution. Alternatively, you could just go Grimes and Elon and come up with totally outlandish names that can't be spelled with alpha-numeric keyboard. Whatever solution we come up with, the conversation has had me thinking a lot about how complicated families are. Truth.

Get ready for this segue, Charles. Complicated families. Yeah. have also been on my mind because this summer, the Manchester band Oasis announced their reunion after 15 years of being broken up. Nice pivot. They're playing 20 dates in five cities across the UK and Ireland in the summer of 2025. Wait, I did not know that detail.

That is such a coming back from retirement way of touring. We're only going to five cities. You come to us. It definitely seems like a trial run to see if this can work. Because famously, Oasis was split apart by the internal tensions between the two brothers at the heart of the project, Liam and Noel Gallagher. Family feud takes apart what is supposed to be the biggest band since the Beatles in the 90s era. And Oasis hasn't really been in the news for a number of decades. The brothers have had their solo projects.

but a reunion never seemed like it was on the table until now. So for me, this is a cool opportunity because when I think of Oasis, I basically think of one song. The most overplayed song by beginner musicians picking up the acoustic guitar. Yeah, I feel like even as Wonderwall is incredibly popular, it's also kind of got a little bit of like a joke feel to it because it is so overplayed. I will lie, the combined feud. of this family and the overplayed nature of Wonderwall have always left Oasis as a kind of

of a band in my mind. I think I have a similar perception, Charlie, and I feel like this reunion tour offers both of us an opportunity to ask, what have we been missing? Okay, fun. So Oasis, let me give you a quick rundown of what you need to know about this band. they formed in Manchester in 1991. The brothers, Liam and Noel were the leaders. Noel as the chief songwriter, guitarist, and sometimes lead vocalist, and Liam as the typical lead vocalist

on many of their biggest songs. They helped usher in this era of Brit Pop in the 1990s, alongside bands like Blur, Swade, and Pulp. They had a number of chart smashing hits, starting with their first album, definitely maybe in 1994, and continuing with their opus' 1995's, What's the Story Morning Glory? I have to admit that part of my bias against the band Oasis is that I was learning guitar

at exactly their peak moment, and I think the overplayed nature of their music made me want to sort of go further back into the eras of the 60s and the 70s, things that they were probably pointing to as their own influences. And so, yeah, every time I hear something off of those seminal albums, it just puts me a very specific place that has a deeply personal subjective experience of Oasis. Then this is going to be a very therapeutic conversation for you, Charlie. Just to be clear, are we talking like $200 an hour, $300 an hour? Can I bill insurance? I don't like to talk price.

Well, I'll just send you an invoice after, okay? This could get expensive. Like you, I'm somewhat familiar with those first two albums. Turns out there's five more. They had another decade plus of activity. So we're going to get to listen to some of those. We're going to get to consider how the later material stacks up against those first two efforts. And we're going to listen to the sounds and the lyrics that define this band.

Now, you said something important. There's this sense of overshadowing that happened with Oasis because of the larger-than-life personalities of the two Gallagher brothers. Yeah. And their love-hate relationship is one of the most fascinating dramas, I think, in the history of popular music. Something that both of us with young children hope to avoid in our future family bands. There are so many great quotes from these two brothers. Noel called Liam, quote, the angriest man you'll ever meet. He's like a man with a fork in a world of soup.

That's poetic. They should put that in a song. He said, I liked my mom until she gave birth to Liam. Wow. This is just getting mean. Meanwhile, Liam came to blows with Noel in the studio once and recently called him Tofu Boy on Twitter, which I thought was a pretty savage insult. So this reunion is a huge deal. A lot of people thought it would never happen.

And the demand for tickets has been so immense that it's caused a lot of havoc. It created controversy with Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing where the price of the tickets would surge literally as you were looking at them. Resellers marking them up for thousands of dollars. But it's also put Oasis's music back into public consciousness. In addition to spurring many viral memes of fans zipping up their parkas to prepare for these concerts. Wait, why don't need a parka? That's like the iconic Liam Gallagher outfit, a parka with a big collo. that goes right up to your chin.

I hope that they're going to have these concerts in January. No, they're in July, Charlie. It's going to be hot in there. Bad choice of clothing. I want to understand the hype. So I propose we listen through the band's catalog and try and understand what makes this working class Mancunian outfit so beloved and see whether we can learn to love Oasis.

I am willing to put my biases aside momentarily and listen through and see where we end up on the other side. We have to start at the beginning. The first album definitely. maybe. It came out 30 years ago in 1994 and catapulted the band to success. I feel like a track like Supersonic is a good introduction to their sound. Super compressed rock drums, jangly, electric guitars, a little unnecessary pick sweep on the strings. It's getting indulgent. All right, guys, let's get to the point now. The sneer in that vocal. Okay.

I'm feeling very angry. It's kind of this great balance between very raw. The vocal is so annoying. And the drum production, though, is very precise. Like, it's rock and roll in almost like an ACDC kind of way, where it's very well produced, but it feels like it's crunchy and raw around the edges. Is one of these brothers going to come at me

for calling their voice annoying, by the way? I think they've got bigger fish to fry. Like their brothers. And I don't think they would necessarily take that as an insult. That annoying quality. Let's give it a more neutral kind of description, Charlie. I said annoying actually because I think the word annoying, it kind of like gives you that nasal quality that we're hearing in the vocal.

But yeah, it's a little bit too cruel. I feel like it's always being sung with a sneer. It's like, give me your autograph. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that's something we would hear in. like a Mick Jagger vocal a little bit even. Totally. The fingerprints of classic British invasion, 60s rock and roll is all over this 90s record.

Yeah. I mean, it's wild to listen to this and think, oh, yeah, rock and roll was popular in the 90s. It was going through a nostalgia cycle for sure. You can hear it even on this song. I mean, check out this lyrical reference that we get a little later in the track. That's the most badass yellow submarine reference that's ever. been had a song which in my household is currently overplayed and sounds you know more like a cocoa melon song than it does a beetle song in my imagination at this point returns a little bit of

edge to the to the fab four exactly i do feel like everything we've just been describing is a encapsulation of the oasis sound simple straightforward rock and roll a wall of heavily distorted guitars, riff-based bluesy licks, these annoying, sneering, in-your-face vocals. And then what about the lyrics themselves? Deep, metaphorical, profound, dealing with the deepest questions of life? I don't think you write about BMWs and yellow submarines and expect to be rewarded for your poeticism. They're nonsense. And I'm not saying this in a pejorative way. This is quoting Noel Gallagher lead songwriter. Here's how he described his lyric writing approach to an interviewer, quote, it means nothing to me. They're just words that you sing to serve the melody that makes you feel

good. That's it. I couldn't care less. He has a very advanced understanding about the role of popular music. Oftentimes the lyrics simply don't matter. You just got to be able to hum it. They have to feel good, they have to sound good with the melody. And I think as we keep listening, we're going to hear How masterful Nola is it doing that? What I add, it's also in the tradition of the Beatles, who famously would put nonsense words together, especially John Lennon in songs like, I don't know, Lucy in the Sky with diamonds

and Strawberry Fields Forever. Many of their iconic songs are absolute nonsense. Hallucinations at best, if you will. What's remarkable is how people take those nonsense lyrics and ascribe such profound meaning to them. And you're not being facetious. truly is remarkable. That's the beautiful thing about music. You can kind of do with whatever you want with it as a listener. Yeah. I mean, Noel has another quote I found where he says,

so what if it doesn't mean anything? The 60,000 people singing along to it, it means something to them. And it's like, he's got a point. Doesn't mean anything, but it does mean something. Let's move on to another track from definitely maybe that'll highlight some of these features. One of the first things I noticed about this is it's a 12 bar blues form. One of the most sort of classic core progressions in rock and R&B and blues. But tell me if you notice anything familiar about the melody in this one, Shaker, maybe. I don't think this is what you're looking for, but they're playing their guitars with such aggressive abandon in a style very similar to like Helter Skelter by the Beatles comes to mind.

I don't think you're wrong at all about that connection, Charles. You asked about the melody, though, yeah. No, the melody to this song is clearly. referencing the famous Coca-Cola jingle from the 60s, I'd like to teach the world to sing. I'd like to build. Wow. An oasis has quenched my thirst.

This is the song, spoiler alert, that is featured at the end of the series Mad Men when... Oh my gosh. Are you serious? They play the oasis song? No, no, sorry. They play the... Coca-Cola jingle. Yeah, I know that.

That's the end of Mad Men is he has the spiritual awakening. He's meditating. He realizes that the psychedelic era can be advertised to. Yes. Exactly. Coming on the heels of him listening to Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles, which I feel like is another sonic layer here as well. So here's another little wrinkle in the Oasis tale.

There's a lot of musical borrowing in their way. I mean, when you listen to Liam Gallagher sing, it's like a lot of John Lennon, I think. Yeah, the sort of rawness in his vocal, for sure. Exactly. And I feel like there's a lot of examples we could cite, but one that immediately comes to mind is his vocal performance on a track like, give me some truth from his solo album, Imagine. Where were you when I was getting high? Yeah, sorry.

I mean, Liverpool is not Manchester, but I feel like they have. a similar spiritual connection as these working class northern UK towns. Someone's going to get very upset about that comparison, but yes, I hear what you're talking about. But Liam Gallagher does not hide this influence. There's a hilarious interview he did recently. For Vogue, they do this 73 questions thing. Oh, that's fun, yeah. Someone made a super cut of all the questions that he answers.

with just the name John Lennon. What's currently on your mind? Ooh, John Lennon. What's a topic you could spend hours upon hours talking to me about? Ooh, John Lennon. If you couldn't be Liam Gallagher, who would you want to be? John Lennon. What's the best present anyone ever gave you?

John Lennon necklace. What would you say is the most incredible thing that you've ever seen? John Lennon. What's your most overused phrase? Ooh, all you say. John Lennon. If you go resurrect one person from history and put them in the world today, who would it be?

John Lennon. Why? Because he's a main man. William, can I ask you, what makes you happy? Makes me happy. No, wait, hold on. That is definitely spliced together. Those are not the real answers.

I don't believe it for a second. That's crazy. No, I mean, those are only, I don't know, eight of the 73 questions. But you're telling me, those were the actual answers. the same answer that was answered once wasn't spliced multiple times? No, no, no, no, no.

That's his answer to the question. Who do you want to be from history? Who's your most influential person? Who do you want to be? It's John Lennon. It's all John Lennon. So they're not hiding. They're wearing these influences on their sleeve.

Sure. But as they move from their first album, definitely maybe, to their second album. What's the story, Morning Glory? Those influences become a little more subtle, and they start to sound more like a band with their own identity. This is making sense to me

because I'd always known this narrative of like, oh, as this are the new Beatles and I didn't really get it. And to be truthful, I don't think I've ever listened to their first album. Like, some of those songs I've heard,

but I've never listened all the way through. So I didn't really get that transition. It's almost like, if you only know Radiohead from, like, kid A on, you would have missed the fact that they were a, like, rock band from the 90s in their first albums.

There's another transformation at work here that I think you're going to hear immediately. These songs on What's the Story Morning Glory are a little bit more melodic. They're a little slower. There's a little more space in the mix. A track like Don't Look Back in Anger is the perfect example of this new sound. Okay, but now I'm just hearing later Beatles work, frankly. Like the guitar lines sound like those country licks that George Harrison would do on Abbey Road.

There, I think, is some melaton on there that sounds like strawberry fields. There's nonsense lyrics about imagined people like Penny Lane or Lady Madonna or all of those, you know, made up songs. Polythene, Pam. Exactly. So it does have more of its own sonic identity for sure. But that rock band Beatles thing is more apparent. now than I had ever realized maybe having previously not heard that first album.

Okay, I love that. But fair to say those influences are a little more subtle, perhaps. Yeah, if you know, you know. And here we have a new sound as well. It's Noel singing lead on this one, not Liam. And you notice, you know, the annoying factor is a little lower. It's a little less abrasive, yeah. It's a little less abrasive, a little more tender.

And, man, that is a chorus that you don't forget. You hear it once? and you kind of will be singing for the rest of your life. That's a smash. That's an amazing hook. Hooks abound on this record. Even on some of the more kind of out there experimental songs, like the psychedelic track, Champagne Supernova,

clocking in an epic seven and a half minutes. Champagne Supernova is admittedly the only other song that I could name by title. I'm excited to listen. How many special people change? How many lives? We do have to live in strange, where were you while we were getting high faster than a cannonball. We do have to acknowledge this lyric that we just heard, which is one of the more maligned couplets in the oasis discography, slowly walking down the hall faster than a cannonball.

My brain is breaking right now. Listeners have questioned the logic of this phrase. But I refer you to Knowles or. earlier comment, 60,000 people can't be wrong. It means something to them. But also the songwriter is getting high, and so we can't trust their logic. And perhaps they're in this sort of like matrix-like relationship to time where time has slowed down, but they are neo. And so even though nobody else is moving, they're going faster than a cannonball. Oh, that's interesting. Or when you're on drugs and feeling kind of paranoid and you hear someone walking down the hall slowly and it sounds.

Faster than a cannonball. Faster than a cannonball. That's relatable. Maybe this doesn't deserve to be so maligned. Let's get to the chorus, which needs no defense. Doesn't mean anything, but it is so epic. And I feel like this is having a huge comeback in the music of Chapel Rhone, who's got Red Wine Supernova, we got Champagne Supernova.

What a great song. In addition to all those attributes, I find this song really interesting because I think it may have started the phenomenon known as the loudness wars. Really? In the 1990s, the overall volume of music began to increase. Like the literal decibel level began to go up. Well, hold on, hold on. Decible level is relative to where you are putting your volume knob.

What you're saying is that the dynamic range of songs was reduced such that the quieter moments would be as loud as the loudest moments so that everything would sound loud all the time. And this had to do with the creation of new limiting tools that allowed you to sort of push the sort of perceived loudness to its max. I'm sorry, it's relative,

champagne supernova in the sky. Yes, but Charlie, I am looking at graphs right now that are showing me that a Michael Jackson song from the 80s has a lower decibel level than an oasis track. Depends on where you put the volume not. Well, if you put them both at the same, same volume on the same set of speakers. But can we both be, can we both be right? No, no, no,

that is correct. That is correct. If they're on the same audio playback system, Oasis will sound louder and you'll probably want to hear it more because there is a loudness bias. Things that are loud are more exciting until the point where they're so loud that are ears fatigue. But yeah. Yes. And this is maybe not quite as relevant in an age where streaming services normalize the volume of all songs. But this was a big controversy in the 1990s and 2000s. I'll let you finish. I feel like we're having our own loudness war right now. We are having a loudness more. We are having a loudness war. And the thing is, loudness still matters. Okay. The streaming services would like to say that they so-called normalize the same level or what they really do is

that they try to normalize everything to the same luffs, which is a measure of loudness, which I mean, It's how we hear loudness versus decibels, whatever. It's this technical stuff. There are still songs which are perceived as louder on Spotify than other songs, and people are still pushing loudness to its limits. Yes. It's still going on. But it's a little bit more marginal.

Like, people are trying to get the last, you know, 5% right now. Okay. Well, no, I appreciate that. Can we wave the white flag? We can, yeah, we can simmer down. Okay. We can simmer down. We can simmer down.

Everything is a limiter on your attitude right now. Okay. So if this is still an issue, which I'm, You've convinced me it is. I think it's all Oasis's fault. They started this war by creating this impenetrable wall of sound. I mean, the wall of sound existed before them, but they compressed the wall of sound into this. What's greater than a wall?

A magic wall, fabulous wall. A cube, a cube of sound. I don't know. A wonder wall. A wonder wall. Wow. Just like we planned it. Fantastic segue.

We need to talk about the most iconic OASIS song now, the most iconic, and like we said at the beginning, perhaps the most derided as well. Let's set the scene a little bit. You're at a party, everyone's having a good time, and then someone, and let's be real, some white cis guy takes out an acoustic guitar, and he starts strumming a familiar chord pattern. Yeah. Still got it, Chuck.

I can see the mix of admiration and horror across the faces of everyone listening. Okay, let's listen to the actual track, and then I want to come back to your acoustic version for a moment. If this album is full of hooks, this song is the apotheosis of that hookiness. It starts with a hook, and it doesn't stop. Today is going to be the day that they're going to throw it back to you. By now, you should have. somehow realize what you gotta do i don't believe that anybody feels the way i do about you now can i give everybody a quick guitar lesson only if it's in a really mansplainy kind of way

that's the only way i know how uh okay good this is getting really contentious i don't know how this is going to end no no i meant that's more the character that you're playing not you specifically Thank you, thank you. Okay, so I think that this song is played appropriately where the intensity of the strumming tells you how he is feeling about you now. But everybody who's learning to play guitar for the very first time trying to mimic Oasis is learning the worst possible habit, which is strumming your guitar way too loud, way too hard, making everything go out of tune and just annoying everybody in the room.

Don't do this. Just like chill out. Sounds better. Sorry, that's all. So not only did they start the loudness war, they also ruined a generation of acoustic guitar strummers. The acoustic guitar strumming loudness war was started at the same time, and it drives me mad.

If you take out a guitar at a campfire and you strum that hard, you need to back up 20 feet. That verse is instantly recognized. and then when we get into the pre-chorus, there's another kind of unforgettable melody. But maybe... Sorry, do you have something to say?

I feel like we've been a little tough on Noel Gallagher's lyric writing. This is a good lyric. This is a good one. All the roads we have to walk are winding. All the lights that lead us there are blinding. That's some good songwriting. They're like lines that sound like a cliche,

but you are the first to write it. That's good lyrics. You know what no one had ever written before? Wonderwall Wonderwall is now a phrase that we take for granted but they had to make it up and it's another one of these things that doesn't really mean anything and yet

it's like so indelible Yeah, there's this sort of desperation in the way that he's singing needing to be saved don't totally understand what a wonder wall is again not from the British Isles perhaps this is some like archaeological find there's a Wonderwall I don't know

it may have to do it the whaling wall maybe Sorry. No, I'm definitely, the point being, the way that he sings is so sort of of its era. Like, we are pre-autotune and pitch correction. There were rudimentary techniques of getting perfect performances and really strong pitch. Sometimes that was just doing a million retakes. There were digital tools that could help you with this as well, like the Even Tide Harmonizer. But when he's singing, but maybe. Maybe. He's pitchy. He's not hitting the pitch.

He's going flat while he's singing. There is no vibrato to try to cover up pitchiness. It's just this direct in your face. I need help. I need your so-called Wonderwall. And the melody itself is very simple. Or not simple is the wrong word. I'm trying to say the melody is in a very small range.

It's very singable. That's what I'm trying to say. It's very singable. da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Singable for even those who can't sing. You don't really have to pop your voice up that high to hit any notes. It's very accessible. You can see maybe why this song has become this Campfire classic.

It's easy to play on guitar. It's easy to sing. But it's also very catchy, and it's got this powerful emotional payoff, even if you don't know exactly what it means. I hate what it's done to guitarists around the world. But I feel like I'm coming around. What have you done? So there's the first two albums in some of the most familiar iconic oasis tracks.

But Charlie, there's a lot more oasis left. What happens to this band after their moment in the sun? Let's get into it after the break. Attention Spotify. Has arrived on the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Carolina Herrera. A fragrance intense with character Gourman and addictive. Imagine a jasmine emvolventy, toffee caramelized and tonka-tostada.

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coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. We just got Wonderwald and now we have to listen to the aftermath. Now, Oasis's popularity never dims, but they also never quite reach the same artistic and critical success of those first two albums.

Are we missing out not being as familiar with the later Oasis discography? Let's see what we can discover about this band and how they changed and how they remained the same. I feel like this is sort of a Schroderger's cat. Like up into this moment, I never was going to hear the rest of their discography, but it seems I have no choice. How will I feel on the other side? Could be great. Could be terrible.

I don't want to start another loudness war, but I'm not sure that's the right application of Schrodinger's cat theory. regardless. I don't even think I said it correctly. Let's listen to all around the world from their third album, Be Here Now from 1997. It's that I would like it and hate it at the same time no matter what and we'll only know once I observe it. Okay, let's hear it. I mean, it does sound a little bit like more of the same. They have a tempo and they have a beat. It's that boom, gha, boom, ba-bon, It's the basic drumbeat that every drummer learns is their first drum groove. It's like this band invented being a amateur at your instrument. Sorry, sorry.

They're very consistent. I mean, that description makes me think of the way the Beatles always characterize themselves as a bar band. There's not a lot of pretension to high art here. But yeah, I think it's a fair assessment. It doesn't really feel like an evolution necessarily. this third album, Be Here Now, received critical praise, performed pretty well commercially, but it didn't quite match the stature of their first two albums. And I think in a lot of the band's perception, this is kind of an inflection point.

From here on out, the band will continue to be enormously popular, but their new material will garner less and less interest. So let's see why that might be, as we move forward to the fourth album, standing on the shoulders of giants. We can listen to a track like Go Let It Out. Better drum groove already. I like it.

Very hip-hop. Try to click we'll watch you got. Taste every potion. Because if you like yourself a lot, go let it out. Got a great groove. Bring the bass in. There's some turd table scratches

and some hip-hop influenced samples and interjections here. It's cool to hear the band. embracing something beyond the world of classic British rock. Yeah, but it's kind of like me saying sus or cringe. I thought that

really rolled off your tongue, actually, Charles. Skibbitty-d-d-d-p. Skibbitty-Skibbity. You lost me. Is that a thing? Is that a Gen Z thing? Yeah, yeah, it is. Point being, you know, sometimes trying to wear the coolest clothes doesn't actually make you look younger. It kind of makes you

look older. So this track isn't moving you in the same way that some of their earlier efforts did. Yeah, but some of that has got to be frequency bias that I've just heard those songs a lot. And so I have some kind of nostalgic connection to them. But I think part of it's also that I'm hearing in the third album, just kind of like a continuity of that sound without maybe some artistic evolution as the 90s are moving on. In this recording, it just feels like they're trying to grab onto what is cool. Like, hip hop is on the rise. And the thing is, 90s hip hop didn't sound like that track. I actually like the groove that they're playing. It's fun, but it's much more reminiscent of like 80s hip hop.

So it's kind of like how country music is always borrowing from hip hop 10 years after the sound was developed. I feel like Oasis are borrowing from hip hop in like not of their era. This is like Dr. Dre era, but we're referencing like Curtis Blow. Let's tune into their next album, Charles, from 2002. It's called Heathen Chemistry. Maybe we'll see if they're able to either recover their earlier sound or or provide a more convincing response to the musical trends of their moment. Here's stop crying your heart out.

The rock historian in me wants to say they should have been following the trend of going even more garage rock. Like this is the era of the white stripes, the hives, really raw, unadorned indie rock. And they're still doing the 60s thing. I feel like had they got a little more punk rock, a little less produced, this album probably could have broken through in that moment. I mean, it's a nice song.

I actually have no issue with it. I can see why it maybe didn't resonate in its moment. Based on everything we've heard, it feels a little bit too much more of the same, I think. And I do get the sense on some of these later albums that there's a bit of filler as well. A track like little by little doesn't be. really do much for me. Yeah, it's giving hallmark movie, like, sea list soundtrack vibes. But, you know, frankly, if all the lyrics are nonsense, doesn't that mean everything's filler? Well, there's filler and then there's filler, Chuck. But there's still, we have two more chances,

two more albums. Are you serious? Yeah, I'm serious. We're just listening to a fraction of each of them. All right, 2005, don't believe the truth. Can they recover their full? former glory. Let's listen to Let There Be Love. Okay, Dan, the life meets, again, Strawberry Fields, probably. You've got the melitron. You've got this sort of modulation into this sort of psychedelic moment. I also didn't know that Cheryl Crow would be coming up in the conversation. Where is the Cheryl Crow in this? Cue up if it makes you happy. Okay, if it makes you happy, is way too mundane, or commonplace, I should say, to copyright. But all I'm hearing is references.

I'm sorry. I feel like I'm not doing this justice. I think this song has actually got this nice harmonic progression. There's something good there, but this is where my ear is at. It's okay, Charles, because this time I'm right there with you. When we get to the instrumental section of this song, I'm hearing John Lennon's number nine dream. I'm definitely catching sort of that soft rock vibe to a certain degree.

The thing that the oasis is not doing well is that it doesn't have a clear sonic identity. When you want to make a section that is this sort of like psychedelic, like instrumental moment that is supposed to deepen your song, you can't just play the chords. There has to be some kind of melodic device or like if George Martin had produced this, there would be these string swells and sudden orchestrations that would provide ear candy and sonic interest. But the way that Oasis is approaching this modulating instrumental section that's very Beatles-esque, it's just kind of like playing the chords, adding some layers of chords, little groove, it's kind of boring. Charles, we've arrived at the last Oasis album, last chance for this band to recapture their fiery essence. What year are we in?

It's 2008. 2008, okay. Dig out your soul. Let's listen to The Turning. I like this track. Have we won you back? I think this is an interesting one. It has a little bit more of that raw sonic quality that I like about their music.

It does perform the same drum beat that we hear over and over again, maybe at a slightly higher BPM. That one, the beginner beat, exactly. The vocal I like. It reminds me a little bit of Trent Resner, a personal favorite, from Nine-inch Nails. It's just kind of this like intentionally ugly vocal that's this sort of pushing on the boundaries of our emotional comfortability. The raw guitars doing the same sort of thing. At the same time, I think this song continues to produce this challenge that Oasis has, which is you become huge for a sound. Do you keep serving up that sound and instrumentation to your core fans that just,

want more of the hits and more of the thing they love, or do you go and create sonic experimentations and try to do hip-hop beats and samples and things? It's always a challenging thing for a huge legacy act. Can you experiment and go into new spaces, or do you just keep repeating yourself? And I think this is bringing back some of the glory, but is also kind of repetition of what we've heard.

It's true. I mean, we're not here to rag on Oasis for not being able to sustain the hit power, of Wonderwall and don't look back in anger and champagne supernova. Like who could possibly do that? Yeah, yeah. And it's a tough needle to thread, like you said, both to maintain something essential to your identity as a band while also maybe trying to grow and evolve.

I don't envy that challenge. And, you know, ultimately, this was it. 2009, the band very anti-climactically split. And there was just a short statement from Noel, I can't work. with Liam anymore. It's so terrible. At least unlike other bands, they didn't, you know, have some mysterious note about creative differences.

He was just like, yeah, this isn't working. But is the final album there, Abbey Road? Like, does it deliver? Because I kind of feel like I did enjoy that song and I want to go back and listen more. It's the thing that caused the creative split. Perhaps it had some great creative juices flowing. I wish I could say it's an Abbey Road situation. Okay.

There's a lot. I mean, to be honest, a lot of these more recent albums kind of blur together in my mind having listened to them all kind of nonstop in the last couple weeks. Yeah. But I don't know. Maybe there's the possibility of some new music. If this tour goes well, if the brothers reconnect, maybe the next chapter of Oasis is still in sight. And all I have to do is go, phtoom to boom, and they'll have a hit. Yeah. There's some non-sense. sense words on there sung in a sneer. I'm feeling fine. I'm going to make it shine.

Every time I come around the line, I grind. Yeah. That's pretty good. That's not bad. Actually, one thing I've come to appreciate about Oasis is you know when you're listening to them. That's so true. I will hear any of these guitar riffs for the rest of my life.

I'll be like, oh, yeah, that's what I saw. I'll hear those Liam Gallagher vocals. those nonsense lyrics will be like, Oasis. They had a sound. And I was listening to their songs. I'm like, I feel like I'm hearing the same lyrics over and over again. Am I crazy? And I'm not.

The word shine or sunshine appears in 21% of all Oasis songs. And someone, thankfully, made a super cut of all these. We can't listen to the whole thing, but let me give you a little taste of this. shine super cut sun shi-i god I felt like I was coming around you know

Shien has their own sonic identity is so compelling to me I love acts that you can hear two notes and you know exactly who's playing like that is the mark of a true artist and now all I think is that they are

the best 60s cover band that just happened to kind of develop their own sound which was the shine sound and I don't know where this, Stradinger's cat, what was the experiment? Did I do it right?

I don't know where I ended up. I don't know. I'm not sure if I've learned to love Oasis or hate Oasis or if I feel exactly the same way I did coming in. Here's where I'm at. I'm not rushing to Ticketmaster to buy $3,000 tickets to see them in Cardiff. No. But the next time I hear someone playing Wonderwe,

wall on an acoustic guitar. I'm not going to sigh dramatically and roll my eyes. I'm going to sit down next to them and I'm going to sing along. As long as they don't strum that guitar too hard. Fair. Switched on Pop is produced by Rana Cruz, engineer by Brandon McFarlane, edited by Art Chung, illustrations by Arras Gottlieb. Remember the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture.

It's part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe at nymag.com slash pod. Find us on social media at Switch on Pop. Tell us what you love about Oasis, what you hate about Oasis, what we missed, the tracks that we need to listen to to change our minds and learn to love this band once and for all. And tell us if you are going to Cardiff. Yeah, yeah. And bring us along.

I would definitely take free tickets just to be clear. I would love to go. Okay, putting it out in the universe. What else? We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Do we know what that's about, Charles? No, not yet. but we're going to figure it out.

Okay, cool. So until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. Are we okay? We're okay. We're okay, okay. The loudness word has been sold. The loudness word ended in a truce.

Okay, great. Yeah. Peace, peace is. Peace reigns over the podcast. Peace reigns over the pod.