wonderwall.
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what is it about that song? does anyone really know? it makes me emotionally full, like i've just finished a banquet of souls, i'm never quite sure how to react to it, and at the same time, i feel like i've been reacting all the while. wonderwall was track three on the first record i remember conciously going to get. yeah, i'm that young. it doesn't mean it was the first record i owned, it means it was the first one i went to the store meaning to get, knowing before i walked in the door to peaches that i was going to drop some cash on some oasis. and it was beginning of the end. because i've heard wonderwall everywhere that mattered since then, in original, cover, and even the occasional karaoke version. i shit you not. and no, i'm not one of those people who goes to karaoke to sing. i'm one of those people who goes to karaoke to watch, ridicule, and occasionally laugh my ass off at this guy i love. so its 7:30 on a tuesday night here in southwest virginia and my fingers are aching because i've been sitting here playing oasis songs for the last hour and lets face it, i've been spending less and less time with this guitar i hold onto like my youth. but when i start wonderwall, i get stuck there. i want to hear the ryan adams version, but it makes me want to cry, and there's something almost bitter in the way a Gallagher sings it, either one, that almost makes the song sound emotionally floundering. i've never gotten a chance to sit down with the oasis boys and ask them about what they actually meant, but wikipedia expounds that it is their most popular song (though, incredibly, not my favorite of their catalog), to see where the hell it came from, but i do know it was voted favorite british song of all time in 2005 and that pubs come to a complete standstill when just about any oasis hits the jukebox, and pints are raised and all the words are sung along to, or at least, that's the story i hear from the other side of this elusive pond. There's something in the beginning of that song that always had me wondering, had me thinking, "i don't believe that anybody feels the way i do about you now". because let's face it, thats a whole bunch of words that could go one of two ways. a unique emotion isn't always one of love, and honestly, rarely is. sure, we can all just take it at face value, ride the current that Wonderwall is nothing more than a love song, and just move on, but i just think its more complex than that. it is a love song, in a narcissistic, kind of way, but its also the kind of love song, if we're going to look outside the idea of self, that's a little depreciating. and they're my favorite kind. It is, of course, one of those songs that's not about what you want it to be about. its not, after all, a love song at all. well, it sort of is, but not really. see, when the song came out the press decided for Noel that the song was about his then girlfriend, who then became his wife, who then divorced him in 2001. And as he so eloquently put it in the press, "the meaning of that song was taken away from me by the media who jumped on it. How do you tell your missus it's not about her once she's read it is?". In all reality the song is about an imaginary friend that's going to come save you from yourself. And I've always known that. It just sort of cheapened the whole thing to bring it up in conversation, so i've been relatively silent about the whole fact. I've solaced myself with that idea when men have stood on stage and sung it to me like i was the most important thing in the world, because its a thematic move in my life, the guy who wants to bed me sings oasis, its been happening for the better part of a decade now. And yes, I date a type. And no, no one's ever sung it to me quite like the last one, and no, i don't think i'll ever get over him. and yes, i've come to terms with that.At the end of the day it is still beautiful, and in all honesty i only pick it apart to forget how much it really affects me, how much of my music taste came out of that one single, the fact that i'd have no idea who that ryan adams kid was if he hadn't covered the song, the fact that i've been obsessed with britpop ever since, the fact that what's the story is one of the only records you can throw in on a car trip with a punk, a mod, a hipster and some seemingly normal person and everyone knows the words.
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