Love Spreads: My Sister Lover's Big Sister
Warning: this is the written equivalent of
take it as seriously or as unseriously as you like.
In Oasis lore, one of the biggest mysteries that gets raised, but not interrogated, is the origins of the infamous My Sister Lover. Because, in the midst of all the other crazy is the great big question of ... how? How ... how ... did this song about incest come to be written, recorded and released? How was Noel Gallagher not tackled in the booth? Why did all of the band look at each other and decide not to stage a mutiny rather than put a sick groove down about fucking one's sister?
In some circles of fandom, the band My Sister Loves from King Tut's that Oasis got their break from is more than enough either to explain the existence of entire song. For the more skeptical, My Sister Loves is more typically seen as potentially what gave Noel G enough of a giggle to start mulling over a song about incest. I believe this is partially true in that it inspired the title. However, I think there is a far bigger influence that is referenced from time-to-time, but predominantly underestimated: Love Spreads.
If you know Oasis history, you know that the band were heavily influenced by The Stone Roses and that The Stone Roses would be a likely place for Noel to get inspiration from. As it happens, the influence of Love Spreads has been discussed, but only in borrowing the use of the term sister in a romantic sense (which actually Love Spreads doesn't do, but we'll get there). Looking at both songs though, the similarities are far greater than that:
Both talk about a sister in terms of faith and replacing the idea of God with her (a pretty specific theme, it has to be said):
She gives me light when the sun goes down
She gives me strength that I don't drown
She gives me hope and destiny
She gives me air so I can breathe
Faith in the Lord is something I can never have
Faith in my sister is gonna set me free
Faith in the Lord is something I will never have
'Cause the Lord I know don't got no faith in me
She didn't scream, she didn't make a sound
I forgive you, boy, but don't leave town
Cold black skin, naked in the rain
Hammer flash in the lightning, they're hurting her again
Let me put you in the picture
Let me show you what I mean
The messiah is my sister
Ain't no king, man, she's my queen
Both talk about capturing this image of God and freezing it:
The dream I have can never be
To photograph what the eyes can't see
Let me put you in the picture
Let me show you what I mean
Both songs end with a similar repeated refrain reinforcing the relation between narrator and the sister:
Let me put you in the picture
Let me show you what I mean
The messiah is my sister
Ain't no king, man, she's my queen
The messiah is my sister
Ain't no king, man, she's my queen (ad nauseum)
You're my lover
I'm your brother
You're my lover
I'm your brother (ad nauseum)
The extent of the similarities to me are too great to believe it's a coincidence, nor do I think it that much of a stretch for coke-blasted Noel Gallagher to have put My Sister Loves and Love Spreads together in his mind and start rubbing his evil little hands. This is high speculation but the inspiration of Love Spreads is perhaps how a song like My Sister Lover got past everyone. Far easier to sell an incest anthem if you frame it to a Manchester band as being a cheeky play on the Stones.
If it is a silly play on the Stones though, what's the issue? Why is this considered forbidden media by the band and especially Noel.
Because where My Sister Lover and Love Spreads diverge is where things get really weird. Despite the similarities, there are distinct differences both ideologically and thematically between the two songs. Love Spreads is the presentation of Christ's love as black and female. Divinity is in the marginalized and oppressed, in those that give life. When we hurt them, we hurt God. (sidenote: these lyrics on faith potentially gives an extra explanation as to why Liam and John get on so well). My Sister Lover is more atheistic, almost humanist. Faith is not in a deity but a person with hope and guidance found in the narrator's human connection to them rather than an unknown Christ.
Both are presenting a picture for the audience, but in Love Spreads the picture is the statement. The audience is invited into the picture, intended to witness the newly conceived image of Christ in holy glory. The image of Christ is illuminated: the 'dream' realised. In My Sister Lover it is opaque: a 'dream' that can never be. We know there is an image because the narrator tells us so, but it is purposefully obscured. There is a suggestion that we will live to find out what that image is, but as we'll get into, that unveiling is not something the audience is necessarily invited into.
Whats so interesting as well is the barrier of intimacy stretches further than the elusive image. In Love Spreads, after setting the scene and recounting the words of the lord, the singer remains in conversation with the audience. In My Sister Lover, there are two conversations happening with only the chorus being addressed to the audience. The vast majority of the song seems to be addressed to the sister:
A feeling sleeping deep inside
You hide it so I'll never find
Today, I think I'll waste your time
You never notice, you are blind
The dream I have can never be
To photograph what the eyes can't see
To fight to live another day
We live to find out, come what may
These stanzas don't make sense if aimed at the audience. Whilst they may be blind, they aren't hiding anything and the 'I' and 'you' in the later stanzas are established to be the narrator and their sister. The first stanza then is a far more intimate conversation where the narrator implies that both he and the sister are hiding something from each other. He cannot find the feeling that is hidden in her, she cannot see what he sees and why he is wasting her time. The stanzas are an admittance to an obscurity, a known unknown. What is certain is that whatever that obscure feeling is, its tied to the impossible dream of the narrator.
(In many ways the deification of the beloved, the idea of living to fight another day and the implication of the narrator standing back and watching them makes My Sister Lover the thematic precursor to If I Had a Gun, but they will kill you for saying it.)
In the context of that direct-indirect communication with the sister in the first two stanzas, the shift to addressing the audience changes meaning and morphs into a form of deflection. The narrator cannot work out the feeling in the sister and his sister cannot see what he intends. But he can tell the audience exactly what the sister means to him:
She gives me light when the sun goes down
She gives me strength that I don't drown
She gives me hope and destiny
She gives me air so I can breathe
Faith in the Lord is something I can never have
Faith in my sister is gonna set me free
Faith in the Lord is something I will never have
'Cause the Lord I know don't got no faith in me
The transition from the uncertain obscurity and confident clarity in the stanzas is telling. When talking to the sister, the narrator distinctly lacks confidence but once he addresses the audience, the narrators understanding of his feelings to his sister becomes clear and assertive. Is this confidence real or performative? Is this the truth or something else?
The complexity of finding an answer to this is highlighted by the refrain where the dual conversations merge into one:
And you're my lover
I'm your brother
You're my lover
I'm your brother
You're my lover
You're my lover
You're my lover
You're my lover
The 'You and I' of the stanza suggests that we have returned to the more intimate conversation, implying that the uncertainty has been resolved. No matter what, they are lovers. However, when one puts the song back into context, this becomes more complex. The elephant of course is that our writer Noel Gallagher doesn't have a sister (or at least not one he acknowledges or knew about at the time), but he does have a little brother; a little brother who is the one intended to sing the song and be the mouthpiece for his brothers tune about incestuous love. We know this connection between songwriter and singer, and Noel Gallagher isn't stupid or oblivious. This declaration of lover and brother is shocking in itself, but is doubly shocking in the context and Noel knows this. The communication between narrator and sister in the refrain is as a result no longer only intimate but part of the performance intended to antagonise the audience.
The intended intrusion of the audience into the private conversation of the song throws the entire authenticity of the first two stanzas into doubt. If the whole song is meant to shock, then the feelings hidden deep inside are not sacred and personal but part of the outrage. Noel has taken Love Spreads and stretched the unfortunate implications to make a lurid parody. The song is no longer about love and doubt but an exhibitionist, combative piece that at the same time humiliates the younger brother giving voice to it. In short, a little bit evil. I would fully accept if anyone does take that reading, but looking at the first two stanzas, i think that's too simple.
What convinces me that there might be more to it is the lack of sex, innuendo or allusion in the setting of the scene in the first two stanzas. If the song was meant to be only an outrageous incest song, you would expect something provocative there. Instead the stanzas are heavily weighted on complex emotions with any desire being uncertain and misread. The narrator adores the sister not for her body, but her soul, his faith in her, how she shapes his destiny. He does not leer at her or lust for her. He loves her, or is in love with her on an emotional, spiritual level and aches about the unfulfilled dream that neither of the pair can release even to each other. That is very unusual for a joke song about incest. So what is My Sister Lover? Is it a Love Spreads riff that takes advantage of their reputation as siblings for outrage to scandalise the audience for a joke, or is it a genuine love song? I would argue its neither, and both.
Although My Sister Lover was probably inspired by Love Spreads and maybe did start out as a straightforward poke-fun, the narrative of the song itself is a far more complex attempt to resolve the unresolvable, the dream that cannot be and acts as a coping mechanism for it. Faced with the complexity and the irreconcilability of what is going on in the first two stanzas, the song first heightens the hidden feelings into something holy and defiant and then muddies them by leaning into shock and outrage. The very fact alone that Liam is singing it creates more distance, the feelings are no longer the songwriters, but projected onto the singer. My Sister Lover lingers in uncertain space between parody and sincerity, not convincing enough in either direction to be accepted or denied.
