Our exploration begins with Oasis’ debut album, Definitely Maybe – consider this a pre-concert homage to tide me over until I'm actually standing in the crowd at Celtic Park in May. We won’t even touch classics like ‘Supersonic’ (309 million streams) and ‘Live Forever’ (489M), instead we’re focusing on the five songs with the least streams: ‘Shakermaker’, ‘Bring It On Down’, ‘Columbia’, ‘Digsy’s Dinner’, and ‘Up In The Sky’, and deciding if each is rightfully overshadowed or if it’s a hidden gem.

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‘Shakermaker’ – A Single Sabotaged by Suing & Soda

‘Shakermaker’ was the second single off Definitely Maybe, peaking at number 11 on the UK charts. Yet its stream count remains low (40M), falling below non-singles ‘Columbia’ (43M) and ‘Rock N Roll Star’ (119M). Its downfall can be largely attributed to its soda-related lawsuit in which Coca-Cola sued Oasis $500,000 USD on account of plagiarism for a 1971 song featured in an advert. This led to Oasis distancing themselves from the track and dropping it from live setlists, but not before Liam famously joked “Now we all drink Pepsi”. 

The meaning of the song is up for debate: critics claim the lyrics to be nonsensical, while fans defend them by saying they portray a whimsical daydream, or an escape from reality. In ‘Shakermaker’, Noel paints a picture of the epitome of a British 70s childhood – houses made of plasticine, and familiar characters like Mister Benn and Mister Soft.

Ultimately, I believe this song to be rightfully overshadowed. The legal debacle surrounding it has undermined its uniqueness and has tainted it enough that even Oasis have distanced themselves from it. I don’t believe it to be a bad song by any means – its sonic density gives it a truly Oasis psychedelic feel – but relative to other slower tracks on the album such as ‘Live Forever’ and ‘Married With Children’, the lyricism and overall emotional sway of the track do not compare.

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‘Bring It On Down’ – The Downfall of Tony McCarroll

‘Bring It On Down’, much like ‘Shakermaker’, has a turbulent backstory: the track’s creation marked the start of the end of drummer Tony McCarroll’s time in Oasis. Creation Records boss Alan McGee foresaw this aggressive and raw track to be the band’s first single, but McCarroll couldn’t quite grasp the technical demand for the song’s drums. 

During a Chinese-takeout-induced spur of inspiration, Noel composed ‘Supersonic’ – a track so good that the rest of the band didn’t believe that he could have created it that quickly and that immediately superseded ‘Bring It On Down’ as the band’s debut single. While McCarroll eventually pulled through on the drums, he was dismissed from the band not long after, and the track’s destiny lay in ‘Supersonic’s shadow. 

I believe this song to be a hidden gem. The band felt it important that this track reflect the energy of their live performances – after recording sessions at both Mannow Valley and Pink Museum Studio, it wasn’t until producer Owen Morris got his hands on the tapes and used his ‘brick-walling’ technique (in which the audio is compressed and volume-density maximized) that ‘Bring It On Down’ took on a visceral sound. Personally, I believe that the song’s frenetic drum beat and guitar in the intro mirrors the feeling of a plane taking off – which is exactly the sensation Noel intended the album to evoke as a whole. Alongside the angsty and slightly unnerving lyricism – Liam states “I’ll be scraping their lives from the soles of my shoes tonight” – this song’s stream count of merely 37 million does not do it justice.

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‘Columbia’ – Not the country, the hotel, obviously. 

‘Columbia’ is one of the first songs that Noel ever wrote for Oasis, and while the lyricism is entirely credited to him, it was Liam who created the melody and chorus. Initially intended to be entirely instrumental, Noel stated that he wasn’t trying to impress anyone with his lyrics. ‘Columbia’ is named after the Columbia Hotel in London.

After watching the 1996 Knebworth live performance of ‘Columbia’, I was sold. The intro immediately captures the audience and lures them into a punk-rock-infused trance, which is only further deepened with Liam’s unmistakable raspy vocals. Noel then comes in with his signature falsetto to harmonize and create a chorus that the crowd is eager to chant along to. The song is relatively slow sitting at 101 BPM, but the rich guitar and heavy beat keep the audience engaged. This particular live performance is perfected with Liam’s emphasis on “Come on, come on” alternating with Noel’s “Yeah, yeah, yeah” – a back and forth that mirrors their tumultuous, yet occasionally harmonic, brotherly relationship. In essence, ‘Columbia’ is a structurally unique and sonically hypnotic hidden gem that any Oasis fan, or even Britpop or rock fan, should have on their playlist.

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‘Digsy’s Dinner’ – Lasagne! 

‘Digsy’s Dinner’ is named after Peter ‘Digsy’ Deary, Noel’s Liverpudlian musician friend, and describes a mid-afternoon tea of lasagne and strawberries and cream. The song is both a tribute to an era in which Noel could write free of critic’s inhibitions and a ‘piss-take’ (McGee’s words, not mine…) mocking the lyrical style of their rivals, Blur. 

‘Digsy’s Dinner’ is a fun song; it’s undeniable that it reinforces a sense of camaraderie among fans when they all shout “Lasagne!” together at live gigs, but sonically it does not stand out. For this reason, I believe it to be rightfully overshadowed – it simply does not measure up to most other tracks on the album. And as mentioned previously, it’s not actually intended to.

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‘Up in The Sky’ – Politics + Music = ?

‘Up in The Sky’ is a track with a myriad of interpretations, some describe it as a tale of class divide, others of the isolation and loneliness packaged with fame. Noel explained as an attempt to distance Oasis from political rhetoric:

It's basically about people who think they're the voice of a generation, or the figurehead of a movement. It's just saying, 'Why are you lot down here looking up at him?' This band is about the music; it's about the songs. It's not about us. [...] I wouldn't ever make a political speech, and I'd sack anyone in a band who started doing that. [...] We are overtly political once every five years, when we all go out and vote Labour. But then we turn around and go back to being a band again.

Noel was explicitly uninterested in pushing any kind of political messaging, a topic of much contestation as of recently (think Macklemore versus Ed Sheeran). There’s something to be said about a song about not singing about politics, because at the end of the day, isn’t that exactly what they’re doing in this track? Regardless, I think this song is a hidden gem. It blends more sophisticated, Beatles-inspired 60s psychedelia with punky, youthful 90s Britpop. And if anything, I think the aforementioned contradiction might actually contribute to its allure.