Me: Fuck, the paper towels I want are on the top shelf.
The Sir David Attenborough That Lives In My Brain: Being smaller-than-average presents an added challenge to foraging ... but necessity is the mother of invention. A little creativity turns a baguette into a tool, and voilà--
shallan and adolin's marriage just gets funnier the longer you think about it. shallan's family is on the verge of bankruptcy because she Murdered Her Father so she decides to Rob A Princess instead of just asking for help like a normal person. she's not sure if she should go through with the robbery until the princess, now her teacher, murders several people in front of her in a live action trolley problem. the robbery succeeds, because jasnah has been hiding magic powers from the world via fake jewellery for the past six years. however, the guilt and shallan's own magical powers, as well as her doomed romance with an assassin, disturb her so badly that she fakes a suicide attempt to avoid talking things out. she ultimately admits to robbing jasnah, who had no idea she'd been robbed, and nearly dies again at the hands of her assassin boyfriend. jasnah is wary of her, but ultimately decides she's not too dangerous, so it's only right to help out this poor idiot girl who she definitely does not care about what are you talking about. how to help her? firstly, fix the damn soulcaster. secondly, get her mother to arrange a betrothal between shallan and her cousin. why her cousin? because adolin has managed to piss off literally every single woman in alethkar, and shallan is so ignorant of red flags that she, as previously mentioned, fell for an assassin. the betrothal goes ahead, minus the stumbling block of jasnah seemingly being assassinated mid-journey. shallan ultimately makes it to the shattered plains. on her first date with adolin she asks him if he's ever shat himself in battle. true love.
After watching Liam make an entire solo career out of songs about wanting Noel back, Noel released Council Skies.
Here are some assorted thoughts on the album--peppered throughout with some Noel interview quotes--that look at the tracks through the lens of the journey Noel took back to Liam/Oasis.
There's a twist, though: here, the tracks will be discussed in the order Noel now says he wishes he'd gone with for the tracklist, meaning "Think of a Number" first and "I'm Not Giving Up Tonight" last.
Also, since Noel made a point of saying in an interview that "the entire track listing was set in stone very, very early, apart from [TOAN and INGUT]," this post is working on the assumption that that means tracks 2 through 9 are meant to connect to each other in a certain way and that that's why Noel didn't want to move them.
Under the cut we go.
"Think of a Number"
The title comes from the first line of the song: "Let's think of a number / And I'll try to guess your name." It's a challenge to the listener--about money? Basically saying, "Name your price"?
I'm going to stop here for a second to address what Noel has said about this song in the press, because I think based on the lyrics and available evidence that there are potentially two heavy subjects being addressed simultaneously, and the fact that those two subjects ended up working out very differently for Noel in the end may have contributed to his internal debate about whether or not TOAN should open the album.
First, when asked by Rolling Stone if CS is a divorce album, Noel responded, "One or two songs. I wouldn't say the entire album is like that. But I wouldn't go as far as to describe it or pigeonhole it as that. But certainly 'Dead to the World' and 'Think of a Number' are directly about that, yeah."
If you want to read TOAN as being totally about his divorce, there's your reason to do it.
For evidence that's a little more read-between-the lines, there's this--Jo Whiley asked Noel about the song in a February 2023 interview, about a month before its release as a single, and after she praised the song for being "majestic," they had this exchange:
Whiley: There's a line in there that says, "you were my hero," and I wondered who that was about.
Noel: Yeah, "You were my hero, and you left and took your bow."
Whiley: Mm.
Noel: Uhh...I wouldn't like to say what that's about. (soft laugh)
Afterward, they go to a song break, and when they return, Whiley briefly says how poignant TOAN is and that she knows "where it's coming from." She sounds soft and understanding here (and kind of apologetic?), which to me indicates that while they were off the air for the song break he told her it was about his divorce.
So--take him at his word in the RS interview? It's just about the divorce and not to do with Liam/Oasis/reunion?
Enter Clint Boon, who listened to Council Skies, heard TOAN, and decided he'd tell Noel, on live radio, "It sounds like you're reaching out to somebody." And then, when Noel became flustered by the implication, Clint excitedly teased him about it.
It's a small moment, but IMO it lends weight to the possibility that TOAN is, at the very least, not solely about an emotionally, financially costly divorce but possibly also about Noel reaching out to someone else during said divorce. Someone whose identity Clint was comfortable teasing Noel about.
Because, as anyone who follows/followed pre-reunion speculation is aware, the question about whether or not Noel and Liam would ever reunite was connected, fairly or unfairly, to questions about Noel's personal life. So I don't think it's impossible for a song he says is about his divorce to also have allusions to discussions with Liam.
What's one possible example of a lyric in TOAN that could be read as alluding to reunion? The "number" of the title. Yes, it could be a reference to a divorce settlement. But one of Noel's standard interview bits post-Oasis was joking about how much money he'd need to be offered to agree to a reunion.
Then there's the line that Clint highlights in the clip above: "Let's drink to the future / I hope it comes 'round again." The second part there--hoping that "it"/the future comes around again--indicates that whatever the two people are toasting has already happened in the past and is desired a second time around. I think it's the image of Noel toasting the chance for a second opportunity at something that made Clint ask him if he was trying to reach out to someone.
FWIW, "Let's drink to the future" is revisited in the album's title track: "And we might drink to better days . . . thinking of what might have been and what the future says." And that track is most decidedly not about the divorce.
Even the identity of the hero who left could be up for debate if you choose to subscribe to the theory that Noel may have felt at different points of Oasis that he wasn't the one who "left" first, especially since Noel singing about someone having left him is a recurring theme in songs written well before the divorce.
Anyway, on to the rest of the song, Noel points out in the track-by-track that he thinks one reason it should have opened the album is because the song's lyrics "paint a really pessimistic picture of the future, which is what I was feeling at the time." These are some of TOAN's other lyrics: "Forgive my indecision / I don't know what I should do" and "The truth won't hurt nobody / Why do we still play pretend? / Don't ever tell me that you love me / Cos this might be the end."
This early on in the story the album is telling, there are no guarantees that what's coming in the future, whether personal or professional or both, will work out. That's why he qualifies his statement above with "at the time." The lyrics show him as cautious and even downbeat.
It falls to someone else, then, to be loudly and unfailingly optimistic.
Which is a good segue to...
"Pretty Boy"
Per Noel, this was the first song to be written for the album. It was also the first single he released as well as the first song he played at every stop on the tour. It was, in short, inescapable.
And it also happens to be the most "all the songs are about Liam" song of Council Skies. Others have already done great work pointing out the various possible references to Liam, so here the focus will be on the messaging of the song and where it fits on the tracklist. Because, again, if Noel had his way, this song would have appeared right after TOAN, which is fitting, because that felt like a negotiation, which here is continuing--pretty boy says he wants, no, NEEDS something that Noel says he cannot have.
Noel then proceeds to spend the rest of the song either issuing warnings to the pretty boy or reflecting on his own discomfort--he wants to be free, he wants to change his star sign, etc. In October 2022, an Italian radio host questioned Noel about why he no longer wants to be a Gemini, assuming that it meant that Noel thinks he is two-faced, but he shut that down and said, "No, that's not what it means. It means that you can, uh, see both sides of any argument. So you have--you have dual, uh, you can understand--it's a communication and understanding thing. . . . I always fancied being a Leo."
So his indecision from TOAN persists in this conversation with pretty boy. What is it that pretty boy wants that is stressing Noel out? Getting Noel/Oasis back is as good a guess as any, especially since that would fit their very public back-and-forth--Liam wants it, needs it, acts like the cat from Shrek about it, but Noel isn't so sure. In the Italian radio interview, he points out his ability to "see both sides of any argument," which he feels is a hindrance in the context of whatever psychodrama he has going on with pretty boy.
Well, we know there were plenty of arguments against the Oasis reunion, some of them coming from people whose opinion Noel respects.
So at the behest of pretty boy, he's faced with a hard choice and has not yet reached a decision, which is why it's fitting that the end of the song focuses not on pretty boy but on Noel's moody reflection on how he is getting in his own way.
And things aren't getting better any time soon....
"Dead to the World"
As noted earlier, Noel told Rolling Stone that this is one of just two songs on CS about his divorce. Additionally, when the interviewer at Hot Press asked, "Are we to glean . . . that the song's about Sara?", Noel responded, "Yeah, that was written in the middle of a relationship breakdown."
The lyrics give a sense of what we can then assume was his mental state at the time--lost and questioning. As he says quite honestly in the track-by-track about composing the song in the studio, "Even the words were quite quick. And I was going through a bit of a turbulent time at home, and it all just seemed to come out in that song."
It is worth mentioning that in the track-by-track and in other interviews, he says that the line "you can change all the words and still get them wrong" is inspired by the night he heard some Argentinian Oasis fans singing the wrong words to songs outside his window, which you might not think fits a divorce song (and Noel says in the track-by-track that he isn't sure why that line is in there), except for the fact that it is confusing and even frustrating imagery that matches his confused and frustrated circumstances at the time. Also, as habitualvoyeur points out here, the Argentinian fans aren't the only ones known for changing Noel's lyrics.
A few other items of note--one line says, "If you say so / I'll bend over backwards for love." Noel willing to do anything at the word of the listener, all for the sake of love, is an idea that he will return to later in the album but in a much more uplifting context.
Also, FWIW, when Liam did his usual "is it a mean tweet or am I doing free publicity for Noel's songs?" routine for the release of DTTW, he praised it thusly: "How can such a mean spirited little man write such a beautiful song knowing ME knowing YOU as you were LG x." The ABBA allusion there would also seem to indicate that Liam knew exactly what the song was about, even though, to my knowledge, his tweet appeared before Noel first publicly stated that the song was about his divorce.
Back to the lyrics, what's left ambiguous--and rightly so--is what made him dead to the world in the first place. In the Jo Whiley interview, he says, "It's quite a personal song. I guess when people hear it, they'll kind of understand why, but it's about being too tired to argue, by just, like--you know, there's a saying, 'dead to the world.' I had to explain to the French girls in the band what it meant, uh, and, uh, it's like when you're in the deepest of sleeps."
And that's a state that he obviously cannot stay in--he has to be woken up.
"Open the Door, See What You Find"
This is a turnaround from DTTW. Whereas that song was melancholy and about Noel being asleep, this one is upbeat and feels a bit like suddenly waking up--the first line is "Sunrise in the palm of your hand." Noel says in the track-by-track, almost bashfully (!!), "When Chris plays the drumbeat, you just want to go into 'Supersonic.'" It's telling that that's where his mind went, and not to a NGHFB song. He later adds, "It's just pure sunshine...it's just so uplifting."
Also in the track-by-track, Noel tries to connect the door imagery to what life was like during the pandemic, and he adds that he had to rewrite parts of CS to keep it from sounding too much like a lockdown album. Doors aren't new imagery for either Noel or Liam, though--for great fan thoughts on this, see here and here.
Per Apple Music, Noel says of the song's message, "If it's about anything, it’s about looking in the mirror and accepting who you are."
Whatever Noel does find, he must like what he sees because he notes in the song that when he opens the door, "it's warm outside."
So, through that door is....
"Trying to Find a World That's Been and Gone: Part 1"
I did a gif set for this song a while back that looks at connections between this song and others, so I don't feel like I have too much to add here, but I'll try.
The previous song was basically Noel trying to figure out who he is and what he wants in the aftermath of the dramatic DTTW.
Now, with this song, he's back to talking about "you and I," so he's moving on to address someone with whom he has a relationship--and he does admit in the track-by-track, after attempting to make the song about post-pandemic life, that the song could be about trying to get back a relationship that's been lost. In the lyrics, he wishes that he and the listener could "turn the page," and he actually flatters the listener, whom he says "give[s him] the will to carry on" and can help him find the place he belongs. Whereas the tone of "Pretty Boy" was at times chiding ("You know you can't have it!"), here the tone is humble ("D'you think I'll ever learn?") and conciliatory.
Then, by the end of the song, these two people aren't just "you and I"--they are a "we" again, united in a common cause that involves a common past: "As we try to find a world that's been and gone."
The first three songs were marked by frustration, confusion, and hesitation, leading to his revelation in "Open the Door." And now a decision has been made--the goal stated.
Also, obviously, the lack of "Part 2" on CS is suspicious. Noel says in the track-by-track that originally the song was longer but that it didn't move him as much as the shorter version, so he cut out the second verse and the bridge.
But why call it "Part 1" without releasing a "Part 2"? The only reason to tack "Part 1" on there is if you want to prime your audience for the idea that the two people at the center of the song are still on their search for the world they are trying to get back to.
"Easy Now"
In interviews, Noel calls this his big "Oasis-y" number of the album and claims that it was a surprise to him that he wanted to continue on with it when he typically abandons anything that feels too much like Oasis. That in itself seems a pretty big hint, as much as it was a hint earlier that "Open the Door" made him think of "Supersonic." But though "Easy Now" sounds like an Oasis song, it is also positively littered with lines that call back to earlier NGHFB songs, like "A Simple Game of Genius," "The Dying of the Light," "Flying on the Ground," etc.
Noel gets weird about what the song means in the track-by-track, first singling out the line about seeing someone on the street and not knowing the person's name, until he finally admits--as seen in this clip--that the song is about "friendship, defiance, and, yeah, devotion."
So, Oasis reunion vibes? He addresses someone with "rainy eyes" and asks that person to "[a]lways be prepared to see through everybody's lies." He talks of the future, of waiting for someone, of someone being guided home. As noted above, these aren't novel concepts for him to address in NGHFB songs (they're not even novel for this album, as one sees with the next few songs), but, again, it's telling that such positive, uplifting ideas about a homecoming appear in a song that he publicly connected to Oasis in so many interviews.
As for where the song fits in the journey, whereas the previous track, "Trying to Find a World," was softer and beseeching, this song is more full-throated in its efforts to reassure the listener: "I'll be there / I'll wait for you, I swear." In other words, Noel's gaining confidence.
"Council Skies"
Per Noel for Apple Music, "The song is about trying to find young love on a council estate, trying to find beauty in the big, bad city," which looking at the lyrics makes clear.
One of my favorite lines is "Hiding what we find behind the sun" because of the implications: Oasis is associated with nothing if not sunshine, and the idea of something precious hidden behind it is very beautiful. It's one of the things about the song that seems to deliberately evoke the idea of Noel/Liam/Oasis.
Also, this--one of the CS reviews noted that with this song Noel recycles the same chords he used for "Pretty Boy." IMO, that could suggest that Noel was either consciously or unconsciously trying to create a connection between those two songs.
Then there's the even more obvious similarities to the lyrics of an earlier NGHFB song from Chasing Yesterday, "The Ballad of the Mighty I," illustrated in venusasnb's post here.
"The Mighty I"..."Pretty Boy"..."Council Skies".... At the very least, there are subconscious similarities happening here between these three songs.
"There She Blows!"
I don't need to say a lot about this song that hasn't already been said except that I think Noel trying to play it off as some ultra-shocking drug-induced and ultimately meaningless nonsense is ridiculous, especially as he can't keep straight from interview to interview which book supposedly inspired the lyrics. In the track-by-track, he claims that the song is about a ship commander who is sailing all over the seven seas in search of a girl, and, yeah, that man knows what he wrote.
Anyway, the track placement is interesting, because though the song is about a love triangle, it's not next to either one of the divorce songs--instead, it follows "Council Skies," his "young love on a council estate" number. If the previous track was about the dreams Noel had with Liam on their council estate, then that neatly establishes why the "finest commander that the world had ever known" would be so heartbroken at having been discarded.
Notably, though, Noel says the commander's heart was broken "'cause I told him that I love you more." Telling someone something doesn't make it true.
And reckoning with the decisions that were made here, all the way around, needs to happen in order to move forward.
"Love is a Rich Man"
This song's been one of the biggest surprises for me in analyzing the lyrics because the first time I heard it, I thought, "Well, this is a divorce song."
I don't think that anymore. Why?
1. In the 2023 RS interview, Noel very clearly identified only two songs as being about the divorce--and this was not one of the two he listed. If he was being honest and specific enough to connect TOAN and DTTW to his divorce, why not mention this one?
2. He says in the track-by-track that the song is "uplifting." Would he use that word to describe a song about getting divorced? Maybe if the song had a clear "celebrating my freedom/I love being single" spin or something like that, but that's not what's happening in the song, which is about a relationship.
3. Speaking of which--in DTTW, Noel sadly reflects that he would "bend over backward for love." In this song, he also makes promises to the listener, but all of them are to do with performing--he says he'll be the listener's "dancing horse" and "clown," he offers the listener "a catwalk," and calls the listener the "star of my favorite story."
Yeah, they're all metaphors. But they're also all metaphors that happen to fit what needed to happen for an Oasis reunion to take place. The reunion means Noel is, in the most public way imaginable, Liam's again ("your dancing horse," "your clown"). It's an admission to the world, which for years had heard Noel say over and over that he'd never reform Oasis, that Liam was right to hold on. And, yeah, it's meant Noel risking looking a bit like a clown--see ggtia's fantastic illustration of that here, btw.
But Noel looking foolish, which he had to know was a risk based on all of his previous statements, apparently matters little if the reward is ruling the world together with Liam.
So it feels a bit like, with this song, Noel is reclaiming from DTTW the idea of making a sacrifice for love. There, it did not work out. But now, it may, hence Noel calling this song "uplifting."
Another possible callback to DTTW is this line: "I'll give you what's left of my dreams in the morning." In DTTW it was "I can lend you a dream 'till we meet again," which also echoes a line in "If I Had a Gun." But who else has used this imagery? "I think it's true what they say that the dream is borrowed / You give it back tomorrow / Minus the sorrow"--Liam's "Once." And the line here in this song is closer to Liam's version than it is to IIHAG or DTTTW because of the "morning"/"tomorrow" references.
Also, "what we knew, it's not coming back" brings to mind "You Know We Can't Go Back," which was one of the Chasing Yesterday songs Noel brought back for the CS tour.
So now we're almost to the end of the album, which means it's time to look at the song Noel now says he wishes he could put at the end.
"I'm Not Giving Up Tonight"
Noel explains his thinking pretty clearly in the track-by-track: "[T]his should be the closing track on the album because it ends with a lot of hope, you know what I mean? 'I'm not giving up tonight' and all that. . . . I guess the sentiment of it is a song of defiance, you know?" He also tries in the track-by-track to connect the song to the idea of coming out of lockdown, but IMO that's more of Noel trying to dual-meaning/universalize the song, as he tried to do with "Trying to Find a World."
What's notable about INGUT is that it revisits ideas from his other song of defiance, "Easy Now"--Noel rescuing someone from a storm and Noel being guided home, here in this song by "the good lady." Is the "good lady" Liam? A personification of music or of the spirit of Oasis? Any of those leads to reunion, so maybe it doesn't matter.
In another line, Noel says that he is waiting in the lady's room with "silver and gold," and that made me think a little of "Bag it Up," the first track on Oasis's last album, Dig Out Your Soul. Maybe, probably a coincidence. But I had the thought, so there it is, and it certainly doesn't make it harder to connect the song to the idea of reunion.
Why did Noel go with this as the first track, though, especially since fucking with the track order fucks with his narrative and means that CS opens with happy defiance and ends with melancholy indecision?
During the press tour, Noel gave variations of the same answer--that he just didn't think TOAN was strong enough to open the album. But he insists he never considered moving any of the other tracks to first place instead. It was always going to be either TOAN first or INGUT first, because he wanted everything else to stay just where it was.
To me, that sounds like he was fixated on CS as a message and that some shift in his thinking happened sometime in 2022 (which is when he was finalizing the album) to make him realize he wanted to change that messaging. According to Noel, the moment he realized he fucked up, he tried to fix it, only to be told that it was too late.
So why did INGUT go first? What message does that send? Liam's own pandemic-era album opened with the soaring, rocking "More Power" that he then released as his first single and publicly dedicated to Noel. Liam surely opened with "More Power" because he wanted to send a certain message. And if Noel wanted to send a message of his own, "I'm Not Giving Up Tonight" is a more forceful choice than the more hesitant, bottom-lip-worrying TOAN.
Plus, if TOAN really is in some way about the possibility of reunion, and if things weren't yet ironed out by mid-2022/when he finished the album, then I can see Noel thinking that putting TOAN at the end would make it an unanswered question/cliffhanger reflecting that uncertainty.
As for why Noel changed his mind and decided he wanted a happy end to the album after all, he gave interviewers various answers--that it would better illustrate the journey out of lockdown, that he just likes to end albums on positive notes, etc.
It almost seems in hindsight like he was using his complaint about the tracklist to hint the only way he really could at that point that something had changed for him--he just couldn't say what, even if he badly wanted to. People would eventually find out that at the time he was doing this press tour, the reunion was already well in play, and that the "dreams under the council skies" were once again not dreams, but reality.
Whew. Thank you for reading! Comments, criticism, suggestions, alternative takes on the songs, etc. welcome.
