Daily Jam - Live Forever

In the mostly British press-created rivalry between 90’s Britpop powerhouses Blur and Oasis, I was always firmly entrenched in the former’s camp, an Albarn and Co. flag waver and cheerleader. But damn it, if the latter didn’t get their cigarette stained and booze soaked meat hooks into me every once and a while. Oasis’s “Live Forever,” from 1994’s Definitely Maybe was one of those meat hooks.

Through my life, I’ve had the good fortune to be able to hear many a perfect pop song, several of which actually surfaced during my formative years, my awkward years, my years of musical revelation and self discovery. I listened to a lot of good stuff in high school, though I listened to a lot of shit too, but that’s a different story. Growing up through the rise and fall of grunge, gangsta rap, and Britpop, I was fed all manner of great pop songs, but that shiny nugget from Manchester still sounds just right.

For all of the mainstream hoopla that would surround and follow Oasis only a year later, “Live Forever,” and plenty of the rest of Definitely Maybe, still maintained a sense of the shoegaze sheen that came before it, guitar tones echoing in your ears, teeth rattling. It was not quite the polished Britpop sound that would explode over the middle of the decade, but it was all the better for it. “Live Forever” has this timeless quality to it, like it could have surfaced as a single during pretty much any era, an homage to any and all of the deceased and flamed-out icons of the time, a glorious celebration. But it is still of the 90’s, a musical and cultural reaction to the doom and gloom persisting in rock n’ roll at the time that culminated in the death of Kurt Cobain. Oasis’s Noel Gallagher has even said that he wrote “Live Forever” in response to Cobain’s “I Hate Myself and I Want to Die.” If only every song that was influenced by Nirvana, either directly or indirectly, could be so good.

While Oasis would never again grab a hold of me quite like they did in 1994, “Live Forever” has been firmly imprinted into my brain for all time.

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