Customer Reviews

Definitely Maybe

5 star:		(150)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

In 1994, Grunge rock had deteriorated from the fresh, brooding energy of Stone Temple Pilots and Nirvana to the contrived repetitions of Bush and Silverchair. The once mighty Pearl Jam ("Ten," and "Vs.") had evaporated artistically with Eddie Vedder's recession into increasingly greater self-obsession and personal misery. The era was clearly in its final throes and rock fans were primed for something different. A record that spoke to the idea of rock as possibility and exuberance.

Into this greasy world of longhaired suicide cases and pseudo-nihilism came Liam and Noel Gallagher with brash English smiles and swaggering Manchester impudence. "Definitely Maybe" is an album seemingly replete with one simple message - I wanna be a rock-`n'-roll star! It is this mantra that makes the record, and indeed the band itself, so important in an era where mediocre substance too often supersedes rock's spirit. "Definitely Maybe" brings us back to the days when lusty-eyed youths willed fame and fortune through guitar strings and makes us forget the languid, whining, shallow psychology that cried its way into so much of 90's rock.

While each song on the album stands on its own, it is the entirety of this effort that warrants notice. The message is clear: "In my mind my dreams are real," Liam grinds in the opening track, unsurprisingly named "Rock `N' Roll Star." And while so many of the songs are just out-and-out Brit-rock fun (i.e. "Shakermaker," "Up in the Sky," "Digsy's Diner," etc.), there are several seriously arresting tracks as well. "Supersonic" features Oasis at their punkiest, while "Slide Away" seems to transcend the album itself, leaning, in a way, toward much of Oasis' more mature work yet to come. "Cigarettes and Alcohol" is as appropriate a maxim as can be expected from the Gallagher's - defiant, working-class urban dissenters first and artists second. And "Live Forever" is a salient single with some of the greatest in recent rock lyricism: "Maybe I just wanna fly / wanna live, I don't wanna die / Maybe I just wanna 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."

"Definitely Maybe" is not an album of subtle orchestration or complex conception, but then that was never the point. In the mid-90's, as in the mid-70's, rock had begun to take itself too seriously as a genre, and had consequently rendered itself an overblown parody. Oasis is to grunge what the Sex Pistols (and Punk in general) were to 70's rock - a slap on the wrist. A reminder that rock is not about art - it is about anti-art. It is about fun; expression; defiance. And with these as standards, "Definitely Maybe" is an album that immerses itself deeply within the spirit of rock stardom as it was once perceived - and an album that proves beyond any doubt that the spirit is still alive.

In the UK, "Definitely Maybe" was the biggest selling debut album of all-time. Here in the US, the album wasn't nearly as successful, but that doesn't mean it isn't a great album. Quite the contrary, "Definitely Maybe" is the album that launched Oasis into superstardom. Though US fans are more familiar with their second album, "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?" and its mega-hits "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova", "Definitely Maybe" is certainly worth a listen from anyone who liked "Morning Glory" even a little bit. The album's most successful single, "Live Forever", is a timeless classic. This song contains brilliantly uplifting lyrics, an very unique melody, and superb vocal performances by the brothers Gallagher. This song ranks among my favorite Oasis songs of all-time. Other standout tracks include "Slide Away", a "sort-of ballad" containing outstanding lyrics and a blistering vocal performance from Liam Gallagher. This track has an incredibly catchy chorus, but the layers of electric guitars that enrapture it make it hard to call this song a traditional ballad. "Cigarettes and Alcohol" is a full-on rock and roll track with a great melody and awesome guitar riffs. If you can get past the morally deplorable lyrics you'll find this song to be the best rock song on the album. "Rock and Roll Star" is another great rock song on this album, and its lyrics are much more insightful than those of "Cigarettes and Alcohol". Though "Cigarettes and Alcohol" is a catchier tune, "Rock and Roll Star" is clearly the winner in the lyrics department. It's just classic Oasis rock and roll. "Supersonic" is one of the most unique songs on the album, as, like most of the songs on this album, it contains a very catchy chorus. It's not really a full-on rock tune, but it's not a slow ballad, either. Unfortunately, however, the lyrics are nothing more than complete gibberish, so don't waste your time trying to find some "hidden meaning" in this song, 'cos it just isn't there. Still, this song is a treat to listen to. "Digsy's Dinner" is one of those happy, uplifting Beatlesque tunes with comical lyrics and a catchy tune. It's not hard rock by any means. "Up In The Sky" is also an uplifting tune that clearly "borrows" something from The Beatles. Again, the lyrics are mediocre but it's still an enjoyable tune. The album's final track, "Married With Children", is a slow but enjoyable acoustic number with some very funny lines, such as "I hate the way that you are so sarcastic, and you're not very bright." This is the only acoustic number on the album, and it sounds nothing like the rest of the album, which has much more of an edge. The reason I don't give this album 5 stars is that it contains a few tracks that are marginal at best. These include "Shakermaker", "Columbia", and "Bring It On Down". "Columbia" and "Bring It On Down" aren't horrible, but they contain neither innovative lyrics nor memorable melodies. Both of these songs were early Oasis tracks, so clearly Noel Gallagher's songwriting has improved as the album progressed. "Shakermaker" is a blatant rip-off of "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" used in the old Coca-Cola commercials, and its lyrics are gibberish. This is by far the worst song on the album. I mean, come on, Noel? If you're going to rip off the music, at least write some decent lyrics to make up for it!!! I'm completely baffled by the fact that this track was released as a single in the UK, while classics like "Slide Away" were never released. In any event, "Definitely Maybe" can best be described as "Morning Glory" with more of an edge. It's not all hard rock, but it's not filled with the mid-tempo, very melodic tracks that make up "Morning Glory". Still, "Definitely Maybe" contains more than a fair amount of truly great songs, and is well worth a listen for any Oasis fan.

Straight outta Manchester, England comes a breath of fresh air in Oasis. These guys pour their heart & sould into all their records, and Definitely Maybe stands out against the rest.

Most people crown Morning Glory as the best Oasis album, but I gotta tell you, that they are wrong. Up in the Sky is the only track that I skip over, and this song would be a chart topper for other wanna be bands!

The highlights on this album are Columbia & Supersonic and they happen to follow one another (track #5 & #6 respectively) on a solid debute album. It's fitting that they lead off with Rock N' Roll Star. It's like the Gallagher brother's knew they would hit stardom! Shakermaker is a great 2nd track as it highlights their musical range!

If you like Definitely Maybe, & I know you will, Be Here Now, Morning Glory, & the Masterplan are all excellent Oasis discs to add to your collection!

Wow. 10 years is a long time. 10 long years it's been since Definitely Maybe was released. This is an album that, for millions of people in the UK atleast, defined a generation.

When this album came out i thought it was the most amazing thing i'd heard. It got me into music, i stopped being embarrassed about liking a particular type of music 'just in-case' it wasn't popular.

Fortunately for me, it just happened to be one of the most important bands to emerge from England for many a moon. Oasis led an assualt on the british music scene like no other band had done for years, catching the mood of a nation perfectly. It is fair to say that if you listened to this album for the first time in this day in age, you would probably notice it's age. For me, this is it's beauty. It encapusulates everything that the music scene in the mid 90's needed.

I can understand why the general American populace didn't embrace Oasis as the British public did. Too much arrogance and angst whilst touring wouldn't wouldn't encourage any new listeners. Trust me when i say that all the BS that surrounds the gallagher brothers feuding, fighting and bitching just clouds the fact that Oasis just do really good songs.

I've never given an album such a glowing report in my life, but when i really think of all the good times i've had listening to this album, no album i know of deserves such praise.

I hope i haven't rattled on for too long...

Buy It, an essential to anyone's CD collection.

Cheers!

Almost made a two word review: "Slide Away" The best vocals ever

other great tracks:
-Rock n' Roll Star
-Live Forever
-Columbia
-Supersonic
-Bring it on Down
-Cigarettes and Alcohol
-Maried With Children

Only complaint: They didn't include "Cloudburst"

With this album Oasis made British rock n roll cool again. After the demise of fellow Mancs, The Stone Roses, the British rock scene grew stale. Definitely Maybe reignited it with cocksure arrogance accompanied with a pop friendly beat and rip roaring anthems. The working class had a band to answer "student" groups like Radiohead. Living in the "black economy", Oasis gave the rest of the world a glimpse into their lives much like Gangsta Rap gave white America a glimpse of inner city life. Songs like "Bring it on Down", "Supersonic", and "Cigarettes and Alcohol" spoke of a drug fueled existence. While "Rock N Roll Star" showed their self assured attitude. "Live Forever" is the stand out track and sums up the whole Brit Pop period so much so it was chosen as the title for a movie on the period. Noel Gallagher writes the songs but vocalist Liam Gallagher takes it and makes it his own, he could be the Ronald Reagan of 90's music scene. One of the best rock albums of all time I highly recommend it for any serious music fan.

I first heard Oasis's debut album when my brother played me a tape of "Definitely Maybe" one day in the fall of 1994. I quite liked some of the songs on it and remember finding "Live Forever" vaguely familiar, probably because I must have heard it playing on the radio or something when it was released as a single, or maybe, retrospectively speaking, because it was so good I thought I must have already heard it somewhere before. However, I didn't really pay the album much mind until almost a year later when I was in the record section in the basement of a retail store and they played "Definitely Maybe". I stayed in the record section to listen to the album and decided I would buy it.

It was loud, it was exciting, it was the plug to fill the void in music that had been prevalent for too long, particularly in the early 90's when music didn't really seem to know which way to go, except "back" perhaps. Hence, people like Sting, Annie Lennox, Brian May, Rod Stewart, Paul Weller, Freddie Mercury and Elton John all scored their first hits in years in the early 90's. The fact these people were deservedly being taken note of again was no bad thing by any means, but I think it showed that people back then wanted some quality talent, some established popular heroes who were consistently reliable for making good songs. Suddenly though, here was music from a band that was new and really worth listening to, and they opened the floodgates for other guitar bands such as Blur, Pulp, Radiohead, Suede and Supergrass. There was a new, exciting feel to the music (which the British media in all their naivety tediously stuck under the same umbrella and called "Britpop"). It was intelligent music with a social message but delivered by everyday working class people who weren't talking down to you or trying to be pretentious pop stars.

The album gets off to a great start with the full-tilt rock of "Rock `n' Roll Star". Powerful guitars drive the song with Liam's unmistakable vocal delivery, singing like he really means it. And that's the difference between Oasis and most bands of the last 20 years. They sing it and they play it because they really mean it, not just because they want you to think they mean it.

"Shaker Maker" is a good, clever song with Beatles-esque imagery in its lyrics, and the song has been around for long enough now for me to forget any close association its melody might have with the New Seekers' Coke song, "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing". It's not one of my favorite Oasis songs, but it showed this group weren't just an out-and-out rock band but instead could come up with clever melodies and lyrics for songs that had an air of wit and whimsicality to them as well, as they further demonstrated with "Digsy's Diner", "Married With Children", "She's Electric" and "The Importance of Being Idle". This in more ways seemed to show their influence of the Beatles.

"Live Forever" was the song that made people sit up and take notice a bit more, but who was to know back then whether or not this band were capable of achieving anything else as good, or even better. Remember, Oasis didn't come to the attention of the masses until "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?" the following year. Noel even said if he thought anyone was going to take notice of the band in the way that they did he might have thought twice about ripping off T. Rex for "Cigarettes and Alcohol". Actually, the song's riff borrowed from the T. Rex song "Get It On" was in fact ripped off by Marc Bolan and co. from an earlier Chuck Berry song anyway.

"Columbia" is another standout track on this album with its infectious, relentless groove reminiscent of The Happy Mondays but played from a wall of sound that sounds like nobody but Oasis. "Supersonic" was the band's first single and a good song but again not one of my favorites, although a band could do a lot worse than launch their music career with a song like that, and many have. It has great attitude, with the first line being "I want to be myself. I can't be no-one else". Probably my least favorite song on the album is "Bring It On Down", a snarling, boisterous song that leans towards punk and somehow just fails to hit the mark.

"Slide Away" is still my favorite song from the album and one of my all-time favorite tracks. When Oasis released a DVD to mark the tenth anniversary of "Definitely Maybe" in 2004, somebody on the DVD commented that the sign of a great album is when people talk highly of a track that wasn't even released as a single, to which they were referring to "Slide Away". I'd have to agree with that. The song moves at just the right pace with a blend of wonderful melody, lyrics and chords and I particularly love the ad-lib section of the song from the end of the last chorus to the fade, complimented perfectly by Noel's lead guitar work.

So, overall a classic album that is held in very high esteem by me and the British music-buying public over a decade later, but is it the best debut album ever? Definitely maybe.

Definitely Maybe is quite simply one of the greatest Rock 'n' Roll records of all-time. Oasis presents the songs with such swagger and confidence that you can't help but enjoy the album. The record kicks off with the massive Rock 'n' Roll Star. This is the best example of the Oasis swagger. They are claiming to be stars even though they had yet to even sell one record. More highlights include the psycadelic political statement "Up in the Sky", the amazing anthem "Live Forever", and their tribute to the Sex Pistols "Bring it on Down". For me the best track of the record is the groovy and trippy "Columbia." Originally supposed to be an instrumental track, Liam takes on a world of his own with Lennonesque vocals. This is one of the few Oasis tracks that instigates the slide guitar. Truly a brilliant listen. What more can I say, their are really no flaws or weak tracks on this record. To me, this and "Revolver" by the Beatles stand alone as the essential rock 'n' roll records. Classic. *****

In the history of rock n' roll*, there probably aren't 20 better albums than Definitely Maybe. Oasis, under pressure to throw together enough material for a full album after signing with Creation Records on the strength of a handful of songs, accidentally made one of the best albums ever. It's not hyperbole to say that every song on this album is damned good, if not great.

Oasis has always been accused of being derivative, and there's alot of evidence of that on Definitely Maybe. "Cigarettes and Alcohol" is T-Rex's "Bang A Gong (Get it On)" retooled. The chorus of "Shakermaker" is lifted directly from the Coca-Cola song, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing." Yet, the album is fresh. Liam Gallagher's vocals are fantastic; he's a one-of-a-kind singer. The guitars are big and loud. Swagger just drips from every song. Whatever their sources of inspiration, the Gallaghers have always put their own stamp on their songs, made their own sounds. Paradoxically derivative and unique, Definitely Maybe was so groundbreaking that bands have been trying for the last decade to capture its sound, its magic. There's a lot of Definitely in both of Jet's albums, for example.

This is a must-have album for any rock fan. Like Revolver, Kick (INXS), Joshua Tree, and Achtung Baby (just a few examples off-the-cuff), Definitely Maybe captured the spirit of the time in which it was released and sent rock in a different direction. What "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" were to the British Invasion, the Definitely Maybe album was to the "Brit Pop" movement.

If you're a rock n' roll fan and this album hasn't found its way into your collection, you've really been missing out. Order it today. If I could give it 10 stars, I would!


*By "rock 'n roll" I mean straigh-forward, guitar-driven music. I don't mean to include soul, R & B, hip-hop, "soft rock" or other styles that sometimes get lumped in the "rock 'n roll" category.

Oasis finally released their debut album "Definitely Maybe" in August of 1994, and what a triumphant debut it is. Oasis had already been kicking around for a quite a while before this album came out--terrific early songs such as the scorching "Take Me" and the hauntingly desperate "Colour My Life" remain officially unreleased although they've been much bootlegged. Noel Gallagher worked painstakingly to get "Definitely Maybe" just right, reportedly having the band record the whole album three times due to dissatisfaction. Looking beyond all the hype, tabloid coverage, and so forth, "Definitely Maybe" is truly a superb and timeless album that deserved to be a smash hit, which it was. Much has been made of the derivative nature of Oasis' music--'borrowing' the T. Rex "Bang A Gong" riff for "Cigarettes & Alcohol"; ripping off that Coca-Cola jingle for "Shakermaker"--but the thing is, this truly sounds like an album that should take the world by storm. The production here is phenomenal--with crisp and booming drums, rich guitar tones, and Liam Gallagher's frequently sneering vocals, song after song jumps out at you and captivates with a uniquely huge and bracing sound. Noel seems to be tapping into a variety of British influences, from the Beatles, Stones, Who, and Kinks, all the way through the likes of the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Spaceman 3, and My Bloody Valentine. The music hall-flavored "Digsy's Diner" and the album-closing acoustic ballad "Married With Children" are fun and enjoyable songs that mix things up a bit. As for the rest of the songs, each and every one is a gem. The contemplative "Live Forever" and the passionately yearning "Slide Away" are soaring rock 'ballads'. "Supersonic" and the uptempo "Bring It On Down" are edgy rockers. "Up In The Sky" is a blissful, psychedelic-tinged feel-good song. "Columbia" is an infectious, relentlessly rocking groove-tune. "Rock 'n' Roll Star" and "Cigarettes & Alcohol" are enthusiastic, celebratory rockers. "Shakermaker", which does bear resemblance to the Beatles instrumental "Flying", uncannily incorporates that Coca-Cola melody into a 12-bar blues format and adds a soaring bridge. Noel's lead guitar work is terrific--although his playing isn't technically virtuosic by any means, Noel is a master of 'serving the songs' and knowing just what notes to play for maximum impact, plus having such great guitar tone doesn't hurt--just check out the extended song-ending solo on "Bring It On Down", the blazing leads on "Columbia", or the long fade on "Slide Away" for proof. Granted, there's not a whole heck of a lot of variety here in terms of arrangement--it's pretty much guitars-cranked-up-to-11 on song after song--but what a great sound.

I think most serious music listeners have a handful or so of albums that had that 'life changing' impact that marks a turning point of sorts in their lives--"Definitely Maybe" definitely had that impact on me when I first bought and played it back in March of '95, and it still sounds great all these years later. No doubt about it, "Definitely Maybe" is a must-have album.

(P.S. I do want to point out the Japanese CD version which slips in two more great songs--the rocking "Cloudburst" and the Noel-sung acoustic ballad "Sad Song"--while keeping the rest of the track listing intact and in the same order. "Sad Song" can be found on the Japanese "Don't Go Away" CD single but with an unfortunate 'sudden ending' (admittedly a minor gripe), making the Japanese "Definitely Maybe" version preferrable. "Cloudburst" can also be found on the "Live Forever" UK CD single.)