World of Chig   

28.10.02



"Please don't put your life in the hands of a rock'n'roll band."

#18 Don’t Look Back In Anger oasis


[734] Writer: Noel Gallagher. Producers: Owen Morris & Noel Gallagher.
02 Mar 96 – 16 weeks on chart initially (plus 8 and 3 later = 27) – #1 for 1 week; 02 Mar 96


The second number one for oasis, and the first time they’ve featured in our countdown, but one of their chums is coming up very soon.

‘Some Might Say’ was oasis’s first UK #1 and their sixth single. Each single, from their debut ‘Supersonic’ onwards, had reached a higher chart position; 31, 11,10, 7 and 3, so it was only a matter of time before they reached the top. The next two singles after ‘Some Might Say’ both stalled at #2, ‘Roll With It’ famously losing the August ‘95 Battle of Britpop to blur’s ‘Country House’. As Noel Gallagher commented later, blur may have won the battle, but they lost the war in the long run.
‘Wonderwall’ stalled behind Robson & Jerome’s ‘I Believe/Up On The Roof’. Just seven weeks later, the Mike Flowers Pops would also take it to #2 for Christmas, unable to displace Michael Jackson’s ‘Earth Song’.

‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ made #55 in the USA. Here, it went straight in at #1, ending the five week run of Babylon Zoo’s ‘Spaceman’ (the Levi’s ad music), but it never stood a chance of making it to a second week on top, as Take That’s final single, ‘How Deep Is Your Love?’ was released the week after. Over three spells in the chart in 1996-97, the oasis single totalled 27 weeks – one of the longer runs in modern day terms. So far, oasis have had six #1s, the most recent being ‘thehindutimes’ in April this year.

Mike has this single as his #1 number one, so I’ll let him explain what it means to him;
“Like a lot of people, I first realised this was a classic at the end of the final episode of ‘Our Friends In The North’, when it was perfectly used to sum up the mood; people looking back at their youthful lives with mixed emotions, and achieving a sense of resolution. It's one of those songs whose lyric looks all wrong on paper, but which works brilliantly on record, where it evokes a powerful series of emotions in quick succession.

The song took on new levels of personal meaning for me three years later, after the death of my stepmother (also called Sally), when I had to work through something of an emotional crisis, re-analysing everything about the direction my life had been taking, and my attitude towards my sometimes troubled past. I found something reassuring and redemptive in this record, which went above and beyond anything that its creators could have envisaged for it. That's part of the wonder of great pop, though - although seemingly ephemeral, it can have this almost accidental capacity for transcendence.”


Not wishing to take anything away from that at all, I'm with Dan on this one, as he says of this, his #7 choice; "Nice song, though I suspect it's utterly meaningless.”

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