“Someday you will find me / Trapped beneath the seaside / In a methane pooper nova in my eye…”
Thirty years ago, Oasis released ‘Champagne Supernova’. It famously makes little sense. Physicists are stereotypically bald because of the amount of frustrated hair pulling caused by this zinger in particular:
“Slowly walking down the hall / Faster than a cannonball.”
Cannonballs are notoriously quite speedy once they’ve been ejected. Maybe Noel Gallagher was referring to a stationary cannonball patiently waiting its turn inside the cannon. Cannonballs are not sentient. They do not decide to wait. They have no views about song lyrics and whether they align with basic physics. However, you could write a song called ‘Cannonballs Are Sentient’, and if 60,000 sing the lyrics back to you, are you wrong?
Indeed, Gallagher himself said:
“Are you telling me, when you’ve got 60,000 people singing (‘Champagne Supernova’), they don’t know what it means? It means something different to every one of them.”
As an autistic person, this scenario is theoretically an absolute nightmare for me. I want words to mean what they mean. After almost four and a half decades on this cruel and chaotic planet, I am tired of interpreting what people really mean – just tell the truth and keep it simple. But I also appreciate how liberating the nonsense of art can be. ‘Champagne Supernova’ is controlled chaos with a brilliant melody. That’s a trite review, but who cares? Noel Gallagher doesn’t care. The people singing the unscientific lyrics don’t care. What matters is their own meaning. Does ‘Champagne Supernova’ make you happy? Great. Does it remind you of being young and worry-free? Great. Does it remind you of your deceased dog? Great.
So, it seems rather pointless to look back in anger at ‘Champagne Supernova’. Music is for people not peer review. All together now:
How many cannon balls wait in line?How many cannon balls pass the time?Where were you while they were stayin’ still?
Slowly walkin’ down the hallFaster than a cannonballWhere were you while they were stayin’ still?
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