Oasis - Definitely Maybe 320cbr (Big Papi) 1994

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.