An Oasis in the Pulp: My Brief Flirtation with Brit Pop?

When Definitely Maybe came out in 1994, I had not entirely solidified into my 1990s role as a primarily punk music listener. I loved much of what came out that year under the mantle of alternative rock. Cue Mr. T Experience's "Alternative is Here to Stay" for an appropriate soundtrack to the mainstream acceptance of alternative sounds that was foreshadowed by 1980s new wave. I bought records by Pavement, Wilco, the Meat Puppets, Tripping Daisy, 311, Liz Phair, the eels, and many others that popular media tangentially connected to the "Alternative Explosion" if they were not part of specific, related genres. 

Oasis's first record was somehow different in my estimation because I seldom listened to other Britpop at the time. However, Blur's "Girls & Boys" and a track or two by Supergrass also caught my attention. There was something more rocking and seductive about their debut LP. Was it more specific rock and roll lyrical subject matter? Tracks like "Rock 'n' Roll Star," with its repeated mantra, "It's just rock 'n' roll," and "Cigarettes & Alcohol," with its classic rock parable that these staples are more important than finding a job, "when there's nothing worth working for" were partially responsible. 

Perhaps, I never thought they sounded that much like the Beatles on this record when media seemed to paint them as something of a second coming of the Liverpudlian mop tops. Maybe some of the pop craft in their melodies might place them as spiritual successors but American media especially seemed to be looking for the next big thing from "across the pond." The contentious sibling rivalry between the Gallagher Brothers probably did not hurt matters either. Even the term, Britpop, reinforces this expectation.

Oasis's first record  had more rock energy to me than some of their rivals along with some "clever" lyrics that set them apart in my teenage mind. I have since come around to many of their contemporaries. Oasis's lyrics built on classic rock and roll tropes and reconfigured them for a 1990s  mindset. I loved "Supersonic" because of its audacious drug lyrics: "I know a girl called Elsa / She's into Alka Seltzer / She sniffs it through a cane / On a supersonic train." There was  something infectious in how they reworked rock cliches, while others I listened to focused on a different aspect of socially conscious lyrics. When I listen to the record now, I still love the hooks and more concise songwriting than what came later. 

I cannot fault them for being more experimental and trying for a bigger sound on their later records. That Definitely Maybe was the fastest-selling debut album in British history at the time still surprises me. They did not really take hold in America until their second album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? By then, I reacted to their "sudden" popularity among my peers with my usual 1990s condescension for the popular and stopped buying their records. I missed out on many good deeper album cuts and only found appreciation for some of the big hits later. I think it might be time to fully explore other Brit Pop records I missed in my haste to be "cool." I have found so much good music when I delved into other stuff I missed at the time.