Liam Gallagher & John Squire
On 26 January 2024, Warner Records released Mars To Liverpool, the second single from Liam Gallagher and John Squire’s collaborative album. John Squire wrote the song. Greg Kurstin produced it in Los Angeles and played bass, Wurlitzer and Hammond B3. Joey Waronker played drums. Squire covered electric and acoustic guitar. Gallagher sang. Julian Burg and Matt Tuggle engineered, Mark “Spike” Stent mixed, and John Greenham mastered. The track runs 3 minutes 41 seconds and sits second on the album, which Warner issued on 1 March.
The chorus is a travel joke delivered in a Manchester bark. “Can anybody get me from Mars to Liverpool?” comes after a verse that apologises for last night and notices, in the morning, how close the whole thing came to ending. Squire’s guitar chimes and answers the vocal instead of burying it. Kurstin’s organ fills the holes. The pocket is tighter than a pub jam and looser than a pop edit. It sounds like the brief the pair had already stated in public: Oasis attitude on the vocal, Stone Roses craft on the guitar, without pretending the two bands had merged.
Kit Monteith directed the official video, posted on Gallagher’s YouTube channel on 2 February 2024. By then the album date, the tracklist and a first run of shows were public: UK dates plus stops in Ireland, France, Germany, Italy and the United States. The recording itself had been short. Gallagher had gone to Squire’s studio in Macclesfield, ideas followed, and the album was cut in roughly three weeks with Kurstin. Squire said at the time that those Knebworth shows were still in his head when he started writing, and that he tried to keep the record from being only one kind of rock song.
I think John’s a top songwriter. Everyone always bangs on about him as a guitarist, but he’s a top songwriter too, man, no two ways about it as far as I’m concerned.
(Liam Gallagher, as quoted by Rolling Stone, January 2024)
On the Official Singles Chart, Mars To Liverpool peaked at No. 17 in the week of 8 February 2024, catalogue GBAHT2301501. Lead single Just Another Rainbow had reached No. 16 in January, Gallagher’s highest UK singles placing in fifteen years. Mars To Liverpool did the next job: a second song on the radio before the album’s first week. When Liam Gallagher & John Squire opened at UK No. 1, this was already the track from the video. Live, it stayed near the end of the set. At Wolverhampton Civic Hall on 14 March 2024, the second date after Glasgow Barrowland, it arrived after I’m So Bored and before Mother Nature’s Song, with Jumpin’ Jack Flash as the encore.
The single is not a reunion and not a side-project sketch. Squire wrote it, Kurstin framed it, Gallagher sang it, and the chart did the rest. If you want the 2024 collaboration in one song before you play the whole album, Mars To Liverpool is the one they chose to send out second.
