As one of my friends once said: “Lainie can’t just like a song it has to be all ‘I had an obsession in a past life.’” This statement was provoked after I claimed this song gave me chills, making me weirdly happy as if my past self was obsessed with it. I first heard “Don’t Look Back in Anger” at a bar called Drop Kick Murphy’s in Edinburgh, Scotland. My friends and I had decided it was time to leave when the band started playing the opening chords to this song and the vibe of the crowd transformed. When I tell you every person in this room knew this song and were singing it together, I was blown away. I turned to my friend who was singing along and immediately asked for the name of the song. Ever since the pandemic, I have learned to appreciate the opportunity to gather in crowds and being able to experience live music. That’s why music is so powerful because it can bring everyone together and connect people from all different backgrounds.

A similar experience happened to me at the Harry Styles concert at Wimbledon when the whole crowd was singing along to “Angels,” which I had never heard before. The girl sitting next to me, whom I befriended, looked at me dumbfounded when she saw I wasn’t singing along. I explained that I had never heard “Don’t Look Back in Anger” before last weekend, and she quickly pulled out her phone to give me a list of British classics. I put all of her suggestions together into a playlist called “British Songs a girl told me I Need to know” that even included American classics, such as Sweet Caroline and American Pie. Although we never exchanged contact information, this girl became my friend for the duration of this concert as we sang along to all of our favorite Harry songs and bonded over our love for one direction. 

Behind the Lyrics:

I love learning the message and meaning behind a song. Although the message of this song is rather straightforward, I still feel it is important to hear it from the artist’s point of view. This song was written by the guitarist and main songwriter of Oasis, Noel Gallager who claimed: “It’s about not being upset about the things you might have said or done yesterday, which is quite appropriate at the moment. It’s about looking forward rather than looking back. I hate people who look back on the past or talk about what might have been.” It is so easy to look at the past and think of all the things we could have done differently or things we should have said that we didn’t or vice versa. We can be so hard on ourselves and get caught up in the past and forget to think about all the opportunities that lie ahead. Another aspect of the history of the song that stuck out to me was the inspiration from John Lennon and the Beatles. Despite the beginning piano chords that resemble the songs “Imagine” and “Watching the Wheels,” the lyrics were also pulled from Lennon’s memoir tapes. Gallagher acknowledged that the lyrics “so I start a revolution from my bed ‘cause they said the brains I had went to my head” comes directly from Lennon’s memoir tapes as he was reading Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties. This line refers to Lennon’s notorious Bed-ins for Peace, which were nonviolent protests against the Vietnam War in 1969. Gallagher received criticism for these similarities, but he released a statement saying that it will encourage other kids to look up the song that inspired theirs, making it a tribute rather than appropriation.