Rise

Format

• ---

  9781623564230Magazines + Books  £7.00

Label

Bloomsbury

33 1/3

Oasis - Definitely Maybe

Books Magazines Oasis's incendiary 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe managed to summarize almost the entire history of postfifties guitar music from Chuck Berry to My Bloody Valentine in a way that seemed effortless But this remarkable album was also a social document that came closer to narrating the collective hopes and dreams of a people than any other record of the last quarter century In a Britain that had just undergone the most damaging period of social upheaval in a century under the Thatcher government Noel Gallagher ventriloquized slogans of burning communitarian optimism through the mouth of his brother Liam and the playing of the other Oasis 'everymen' Paul McGuigan Paul Arthurs and Tony McCarroll On Definitely Maybe Oasis communicated a timeworn message of idealism and hope against the odds but one that had special resonance in a society where the widening gap between high and low demanded a newly superhuman kind of leaping Alex Niven charts the astonishing rise of Oasis in the mid 1990s and celebrates the lifeaffirming communal force of songs such as 'Live Forever' 'Supersonic' and 'Cigarettes amp Alcohol' In doing so he seeks to reposition Oasis in relation to their Britpop peers and explore one of the most controversial popcultural narratives of the last thirty years