23 February 1996
U2 were post-punk. Bon Jovi and Guns N’ Roses were hair metal. Even Coldplay were bedsit indie. What those bands have in common is that as soon as they reached stadium-sized success they instead started making stadium-sized soft rock: slow churning guitar chords; performative pseudo-profound lyrics; try-hard anthemic choruses. Yes, I mean all that pejoratively: however much fun it may be to sing along with your mates after a few beers, soft rock makes for bland songs and boring music.
So, whatever the prevailing media-cultural nomenclature may have been, ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ is the sound of Oasis going from Britpop to soft rock. Noel won’t be writing any more of the wistful, romantic ones like ‘Slide Away’, ‘Live Forever’ or ‘Acquiesce’; instead it’ll be Beatles references and downcycled wordplay. What’s worse than the awfulness of the lyrics in ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ is their prominence, like a junior infant proudly showing off their potato printing: “Slip inside the eye of your mind” is cringey ’60s psychedelia, and that’s the opening line. “So Sally can wait / she’s knows it’s too late / as she’s walking on by” stinks of one-minute this’ll-do effort, and that’s the chorus. Add to that the landfill-indie drumbeat and guitars, and ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ is tired, dreary, bloated and unforgivably lazy. But hey: Baz, Daz and Gaz roared along to it at Knebworth and that stag do in Temple Bar, as did plenty of lads here on their Saturday nights of legendary horseplay, so what do I know.
