YOU have to admire the audacity with which Noel Gallagher pinches musical ideas, and Oasis reforming is a chance to enjoy these classic acts of theft all over again. Here they are ranked from worst to best.
Mucky Fingers (2005)
After a couple of albums which even easily-pleased Oasis fans thought were shite, Gallagher had a minor songwriting renaissance when he rediscovered his ability to successfully rip people off. The title is taken from the Rolling Stones but the music itself is incredibly similar to I’m Waiting for the Man by The Velvet Underground. Kudos to Noel for turning some of the most groundbreaking music ever recorded into yet another plodding rocker.
The Turning (2008)
Noel’s record collection clearly consisted of a handful of glam rock greatest hits, so by the time Oasis’s final album limped into view he was running out of people to plagiarise. This song nicks the electric piano riff from Cliff Richard’s Devil Woman, showing how desperately uncool the Mancunian chancers had become by the late noughties. Taking further inspiration from Cliff, Noel is releasing a calendar this year; he pulls the same boring pose in every single photo.
Shakermaker (1994)
I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing was a song made world famous by a Coca-Cola commercial. Using such a tune as the basis of your band’s second single was either a pretty bold gambit or an act of sheer desperation. Whichever, Gallagher used all the wit and guile he could muster to disguise the theft by not even changing the lyrics. To be fair, he probably didn’t really expect anyone to hear it outside of Manchester’s Boardwalk club.
Step Out (1996)
This was hastily pulled from the Morning Glory album after Stevie Wonder selfishly pointed out that he’d written the chorus, a move which prevented Oasis’s second album being even more mediocre. The song eventually ended up as a B-side to Don’t Look Back in Anger, co-credited to the Motown legend. That’s one way to be able to claim you once co-wrote a song with Stevie Wonder.
Cigarettes & Alcohol (1994)
In which Noel reworks T-Rex’s Get It On and then claims that it’s okay because it all just comes from the blues anyway. Marc Bolan’s massive 1971 hit wasn’t even that old when Cigarettes & Alcohol was released, and, like most of Noel’s borrowings, is not exactly forgotten. It would be like a new band today ripping off 2006’s I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor and claiming it ‘all just comes from the tradition of Western music’.
Whatever (1995)
Despite the frequent comparisons and an artless cover of I Am the Walrus, Gallagher’s pilfering fingers largely stayed away from the Beatles songbook, probably because he couldn’t get his head around all the clever bits. He did, however, steal this tune wholesale from Neil Innes who wrote loads of Fab Four pastiches for The Rutles. The original, Innes’ How Sweet to Be an Idiot, now works as an affectionate paean to the average Oasis fan.
