When I was in college, I took a class about Victorian novels. For a class project, one group made a short film, a bizarre mash-up of
Dracula, and I think
Wuthering Heights. The film was utter shit, of course. It didn't really have any choice in the matter. But the one thing I gave the filmmakers credit for was their choice of Jeff Buckley's "Eternal Life". The song isn't actually about eternal life, so much as about American political strife, but you had to give them credit for trying. This past weekend, mostly as a favor for a friend, I saw a popular movie about teenage vampires, which also wasn't particularly good. And at the end of the movie, apropos of nothing, they played the Radiohead song "15 Step". I was honestly disappointed, even though I think that the song is fine. (Okay, I guess the part about "how come I end up where I started?" makes a little bit of sense for a movie about someone who has been a teenager for 90 years, but I'm meeting them way more than halfway here. Hell, we're talking about a band that has a song titled "We suck Young Blood", and "Reckoner was the best that they could do?) When we got back to the car, I grabbed my iPod and put on the song that was the obvious choice for the closing credits, Oasis' "Live Forever".
I can't really explain what it is I like about Oasis. I mean, the brothers Gallagher seem to go out of their way to be the most unlikable people in the music industry (and reflect for a moment on the magnitude of that particular achievement). They've probably made twice as many bad albums as good albums. But for some reason I still kind of like the band, mostly because of a handful of songs that I adore- "Don't Look Back In Anger", "The Masterplan" and "Live Forever" chief among them.
Then again, reading the wikipedia page about the song makes me desperately want to hate the song that got Noel Gallagher into his little brother's band. "Inspired by the Rolling Stones' 'Shine A Light', 'Live Forever' features a basic song structure and lyrics with an optimistic outlook that contrasted with the attitude of grunge bands popular at the time." This struck me as so self-important and prattish that I'm half-convinced Noel wrote it himself. The grunge reference, although it strikes me as mostly bullshit, apparently comes from Noel's claims that he wrote the song in response to Nirvana's "I Hate Myself And I Want To Die", and taking the song's title at face value. Besides being silly, this is also apparently impossible. The wikipedia page says that Noel wrote the song in 1991, while the Nirvana song was from the In Utero sessions in 1993. So someone is lying here, and I don't really care who, since I think that both Noel and the wikipedia editor (if they are, in fact, different people) are lying assholes, and I mean that in the best possible way.
When you look at the lyrics of the song, despite their "optimistic outlook", you come to the conclusion that they are either slightly profound, or profoundly slight. (I'm sorry, but once the phrase popped into my head, I knew I had to use it.)
"Maybe I just want to fly
I want to live but don't want to die
Maybe I just want to breathe
Maybe I just don't believe
Maybe you're the same as me
We see things they'll never see
You and I are gonna live forever"
Proclaiming that "you and I are gonna live forever" seems quite self-assured, but this confidence would seem to be undercut by the four "maybes" proceeding it, or is this the point? That the singer isn't sure about anything except for the fact that he's going to live forever with whoever he's singing to. (According to wikipedia, which we've already shown might not be the most reliable of sources, the song is addressed to the Gallagher's mum. I had always assumed that it was a love song, possibly because I added the implied rhyme of "baby" to all of those "maybes" subconciously.) The bit about "I want to live but don't want to die" is either an incredibly obvious sentiment, about as meaningful as singing " I want to be thin but don't want to be fat", or, if one is feeling charitable, a subtle recognition of the problem of wanting to live meaning that you inevitably have to die, a reading that is harder to reconcile with the subsequent proclamation of eternal life. The bit about " Maybe I just don't believe", if taken as a religious statement, is interesting when taken with the declaration of living forever, perhaps suggesting that religious salvation is unnecessary and the love alone is powerful enough to grant eternal life, but this seems like another overly charitable reading. Really, the only line here that still like after a perfunctory examination is "We see things they'll never see" , which is still essentially meaningless, but at least has the benefit of sounding good.
I have an Oasis bootleg of nothing but acoustic live performances, and it's this version of the song that I like a lot more than the electric studio version. The sparser instrumentation (there are no drums on this version) and the slightly slower tempo bring out the song's best quality, which is the earnest nature of the vocals. Or maybe it's because the version I like has Liam on vocals instead of Noel. The added emphasis on the lyrics should hurt the song. After all, they are the kind of lyrics that sound a lot better than they actually are, if you follow. It's an odd thing, maybe it's a testimony to some deep human response to the notion of immortality, although I kind of doubt it, but somehow the lyrics still make you feel something, and I still like the song, even after I've demonstrated to myself why I shouldn't. Which is, of course, entirely appropriate for my favorite song by a band that I like despite the fact that I despise them.
