People love one hit wonders, but they always leave you wanting more. People don’t like it as much when a band debuts with a thermonuclear explosion like Oasis did with Definitely Maybe, and the cynical would say it’s all downhill from there. Whatever you want to say about it the follow up, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory and its massive hits, you can’t say it was a step down in quality. Oasis led by songwriter Noel Gallagher were shot out of a cannon in 1994, from there it wasn’t downhill, but no looking back.

Freshly acquired from the Sony BMG music club when I was a Junior in high school, my neck snapped toward my cd player where I would find the track number 3, and that’s the first time I remember hearing, “Live Forever.” It would become, and remains, my favorite song. It has everything you could want in a Noel Gallagher classic, from the lyrics, “Maybe you’re the same as me, we see things they’ll never see, you and I are gonna live forever” to the used before, but never this well, chord progression and finally two simple but respectable guitar solos, timeless.

Written and recorded in a single night in Liverpool, “Supersonic” is the single we all wish we wrote. Noel once described that he wrote the song in about a half hour, they ordered Chinese take out and by the time everyone had eaten it, the recording was finished. “I need to be myself, I can’t be no one else” is the only ethos you need to take from this album if you don’t find three others sprinkled among the eleven tracks. On one of their live releases, Liam is heard heckling Noel to, “Write a coupla’ more of theses babies.” I’m sure he would if it were that easy. When you’re the brother who got all the talent, sometimes you write a hit in 30 minutes that Liam could only dream of, and the rest of the time you have to put up with him singing it.

If you catch me on the right day, I will tell you that, “Slide Away” is the best Oasis song, and the best song Noel Gallagher has ever written. If you catch me in a sour mood I will tell you it’s in the top five, and you should get your head examined if you don’t think Noel Gallagher is the best songwriter of my lifetime. Written during one of the numerous Definitely Maybe recording sessions, its origin story is the stuff of legend. Noel reached out to his friend and guitarist of The Smiths, Johnny Marr with a request for more guitars for the record. One of the guitars Marr sent was on old Les Paul that Noel took to his room for the night where he claimed, “The song wrote itself.” It is said to be written about Noel’s soulmate, a relationship that ended when they had to go on tour. You can hear what he lost, “Slide away, and give it all you’ve got, my today, fell in from the top, I dream of you and all the things you say, I wonder where you are now.”

I didn’t have a chance to get to how great the stolen riff is on, “Cigarettes and Alcohol“ or the fact that it kicks off with the huevos of, “Rock’n’Roll Star” or the magical jam session that is, “Columbia.” Noel is the only autograph I ever kept, the reason I learned guitar, the best show I’ve ever been to with my dad. Buy me a drink and I’ll sing you a song, it will probably be Oasis. Probably from this album, possibly you’ll like it. No, Definitely…Maybe.