Cigarettes and Alcohol // Oasis
Having grown up on a council estate in Manchester, it’s probably safe to say that the Gallagher brothers would be somewhere towards the front of the pack of those feeling none too cheery towards the establishment. Oasis pretty much cemented themselves as the voice of the working class throughout the ’90s, and none so much more than with the single ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ from their debut album Definitely Maybe.
The song offers a rough and shameless look at the apparent futility of working class life and how vices such as those mentioned in the title can act as a remedy to this. Noel Gallagher’s raw guitar riff, though obviously borrowed from T. Rex’s ‘Get It On’, still does its job and packs a punch, as do his lyrics, sung with loud proclamation and swagger by frontman Liam; with lines such as “Is it worth the aggravation / To find yourself a job when there’s nothing worth working for?” and the roaring yet ultimately bleak chorus of “You could wait for a lifetime / To spend your days in the sunshine,” the song is a fantastic statement on western class divisions that brilliantly expresses the disenchantment collectively felt by those at the bottom end of the cut.
Words by Samantha King