Maybe The Songs That We Sing Are Wrong

Oasis “It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)” (Live at Knebworth, 8/11/1996)

Oasis’ shows at Knebworth in 1996 are a crucial part of the band’s legend, an event that is demonstrably the apex of the band’s success. Over the course of two nights they played for around 250,000 people, with the capacity for each show roughly amounting to playing two stadiums at once (or about 7 simultaneous Madison Square Gardens.) The show itself is basically a greatest hits – almost everything from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, about half of Definitely Maybe, a bunch of non-album tracks that may as well have been A-sides, and two songs that would later end up on Be Here Now, the famously bloated album that brought their level of success down to merely “quite popular.”

“It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)” is one of those Be Here Now songs, clearly written from the perspective of someone riding high on an extraordinary hot streak. It would be easy to snark on this song for how its “I’ve only just begun, I will NEVER FAIL!” bravado ended up on a record that sorta flopped out, but it would miss the point that this sort of defiant optimism is really just Oasis in their default setting. “It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)” was basically Noel Gallagher moving back into Definitely Maybe sun-sheee-iiiine mode, but whereas songs like “Rock N Roll Star” and “Cigarettes & Alcohol” were written from the POV of aspiring rock stars, he was at this point the real deal and was now giving advice on how others can live their own dream. The verses are very “believe in yourself and just do it, mate!” but Liam Gallagher sings it with the reassuring conviction of someone who knows for a fact that this kind of thing can actually work out sometimes. Noel can’t help but slip in a few lines that suggest how fleeting success can be, but that just adds to the YOLO spirit of the music.

The Knebworth shows have been bootlegged in radio broadcast quality audio for many years now, but it was wise for the band to officially make it part of their discography. It’s useful for lore, but even beyond that there’s a real spark to these recordings. The sheer magnitude of the audience stokes the band’s ego but also puts them in a sort of do-or-die position of needing to bring the goods. You can hear tensions between Liam and Noel throughout the set, but that’s part of the performance – if they don’t do a bit of that, a quarter million people would go home feeling a little cheated. And you definitely want to hear it here, on a live document of a band at their absolute pinnacle. It may be all downhill from this moment on, but this moment was like the summit of Everest.

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