"Champagne Supernova" is a song by English rock band Oasis, written by Noel Gallagher. It is the closing track on the band's second studio album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995), and was released as the sixth and final single from the album in Australia and New Zealand on 13 May 1996. The Jam frontman Paul Weller appears as a guest guitarist and backing vocalist on the track. A music video for the song, directed by Nigel Dick, was released in 1996.[3] The single was not released in the UK.
The song was released in the United States as a radio single, becoming the band's second No. 1 single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. It also peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay, becoming the band's third top 40 single on that chart. The song is included on the band's greatest hits album Stop the Clocks and on the US release of Time Flies... 1994–2009. Supernova SN 2003fg was nicknamed "Champagne Supernova" after the song.
Background
Noel Gallagher claimed in 2005 that he had still not made up his mind as to what the song actually is about, having previously told an NME interviewer in 1995:
It means different things when I'm in different moods. When I'm in a bad mood, being caught beneath a landslide is like being suffocated. The song is a bit of an epic. It's about when you're young and you see people in groups and you think about what they did for you and they did nothing. As a kid, you always believed the Sex Pistols were going to conquer the world and kill everybody in the process. Bands like the Clash just petered out. Punk rock was supposed to be the revolution but did it do? Fuck all. The Manchester thing was going to be the greatest movement on earth but it was fuck all. When we started, we decided we weren't going to do anything for anybody, we just thought we'd leave a bunch of great songs. But some of the words are about nothing. One is about Bracket the Butler, who used to be on Camberwick Green or Trumpton or something. He used to take about 20 minutes to go down the hall. And then I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with "hall" apart from "cannonball" so I wrote, "Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball." And people were like, "Wow, man." There's also the line, "Where were you while we were getting high?" because that's what we always say to each other. But the number of people who've started clubs called Champagne Supernova is fucking unbelievable. And the album isn't even released yet.[4]
In a 2009 interview, Gallagher told the following anecdote:
This writer, he was going on about the lyrics to "Champagne Supernova", and he actually said to me, "You know, the one thing that's stopping it being a classic is the ridiculous lyrics." And I went, "What do you mean by that?" And he said, "Well, Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball — what's that mean?" And I went, "I don't know. But are you telling me, when you've got 60,000 people singing it, they don't know what it means? It means something different to every one of them."[5]
Critical reception
Steve Baltin from Cash Box declared the song as "another guaranteed smash at all of the same outlets that took 'Wonderwall' to the top of the charts. A melodic power ballad, 'Champagne Supernova' overflows with the songwriting talents of Noel Gallagher. Oasis is proving time and time again that there isn't another rock act out there that can touch the group as a singles band."[6]
The song has also been positively received in retrospective reviews. In 2020, The Guardian called "Champagne Supernova" the band's greatest song, saying it was the "perfect epitaph for swaggering mid-90s hedonism."[7] A 2021 ranking by Far Out named "Champagne Supernova" the band's 3rd-greatest song,[8] while a 2019 ranking by NME named it their 4th-greatest.[9]
The song was played at the majority of Oasis concerts. Noel Gallagher has stated, "I think it's the only song, since it was written, that we've played every night". During the Morning Glory Tour in 1995/96 and the Be Here Now Tour in 1997/98, the song's ending was usually stretched out by five or so minutes, with Noel playing a long improvised guitar solo. An example of one of these performances can be seen on the DVD ...There and Then.
After Noel's abrupt departure from Oasis in August 2009 and the band's subsequent dissolution, "Champagne Supernova" became the last original song they performed live together; the last song was a cover of "I Am the Walrus" by the Beatles, as was the case with most of their concerts.[11]
Brendan Lynch was hired to produce an alternate mix and a remix. The alternate mix was eventually released on the Deluxe Edition of (What's the Story) Morning Glory? while the remix was issued on the B-side on a promo-only 12" of Oasis' cover of Slade's "Cum On Feel the Noize". Known as the "Lynchmob Beats Mix", this remix has been reissued on promotional material for the band's greatest hits album Stop the Clocks.
Live versions of the track were released on ...There and Then and Familiar to Millions. A "clean" version, editing out the waves sound effects at the start of the track, was released on Assorted, a free CD issued with the January 1996 edition of Q magazine. It is also available on the Time Flies... 1994–2009 retrospective collection.
Filipino rock bands Mayonnaise and Suddenly Monday released on 10 October 2019 a collaborated cover of the song which garnered more than 2 million views as of 7 March 2022.[38]
Notes
^Released as a single only in Australia and New Zealand, where Helter Skelter Records distributed Oasis singles.[2]
References
^"Singles". oasisinet.com. Archived from the original on 21 January 2007. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
^ abChampagne Supernova (Australian CD single liner notes). Oasis. Helter Skelter Records. 1996. 663344 1.((cite AV media notes)): CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
^"Noel Gallagher – NME". Oasis Interviews Archive. 30 September 1995. Archived from the original on 13 July 2012. Retrieved 23 January 2017.((cite web)): CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
^Champagne Supernova (Australian cassette single sleeve). Oasis. Helter Skelter Records. 1996. 663344 4.((cite AV media notes)): CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
