Song of the Day: Oasis, "The Girl in the Dirty Shirt"

Oasis are returning for a series of huge concerts this summer. I will not be attending, but I have friends who are hardcore fans who have been able to think of little else since the announcement. There’s been a lot of texting back and forth about the potential set list, largely surrounding the question, “Do they play anything that came out in the current century? Do they even play anything past Be Here Now?” The first two Oasis albums (1994’s Definitely Maybe and 1995’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?) loom so large and are so universally beloved that they probably don’t need any songs beyond that era. Plus both Gallaghers seem to carry quite a bit of disdain for their own latter-day work (in a recent interview, Liam forgot that he made an album called Don’t Believe the Truth).

One of the albums they have regularly dismissed is 1997’s Be Here Now, largely because Noel was doing a metric ton of cocaine that he says marred the recordings. That has always rubbed me the wrong way, because I adore that record (I can hear the blow too, but that’s a feature and not a bug). Part of that is based on nostalgia, as I can vividly recall the hype and anticipation that led to its release. But it also has a bunch of killer songs: the swaggering first single “D’You Know What I Mean?”, the stately “Stand By Me,” the anthemic stadium chant “It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!).”

And of course there’s “The Girl in the Dirty Shirt,” my favorite track on the album and one of my favorite tunes in the entire Oasis catalog. Noel wrote it for his first wife Meg Matthews, and he was actually inspired by her wearing of unclean tops because she hadn’t packed enough for the tour she was accompanying him on. I loved the song right away (I didn’t put it together until later that one of those reasons is it’s basically the same chord progression as “Cry Baby Cry,” one of my favorite Beatles tracks), but it became even more meaningful to me when I started dating a girl around the same time Be Here Now was released. She was always very well put together, but if given the opportunity her preference was to wear a favorite Gap sweatshirt that she obviously felt incomparably comfortable wearing. One night we were out getting ice cream and she dripped chocolate soft serve on that sweatshirt, and it mildly devastated her. (She wasn’t worried about the fate of the sweatshirt, but she didn’t like that she was out and now looked a mess.) I managed to talk her down, and I count it as one of my first great feats of boyfriendom. From that point on, she became my very own “Girl in the Dirty Shirt,” and she always knew what she was worth to me.