The first Oasis single Liam wrote, and it lasts two minutes
Dick Carruthers filmed the video in a London park. Liam Gallagher sits under a tree with an acoustic guitar. A dog runs through the shot. Nicole Appleton, then his fiancée, is in the clip. The video runs 2:47. The song on the album is shorter than the film.
Songbird lasts 2:08. It is track five on Heathen Chemistry. Liam wrote it and sings it. It is the first Oasis single that is his alone, and the first Oasis single that is not a Noel Gallagher composition. In notes later printed with the Stop the Clocks box, he said he wrote it in France after sitting under a tree, called the moment biblical, and called the song a one-off, written for Appleton. The sleeve gives Mike Rowe a pump organ on the track. Alan White is on drums. Andy Bell plays bass, Gem Archer and Noel are in the band around him, and the arrangement stays small: acoustic guitar, a plain beat, no stack of electrics. Big Brother released the single on 3 February 2003. The album itself had been out since 1 July 2002, produced by Oasis at Wheeler End and Olympic and mixed by Mark Stent.
That February, midweek reports had the single heading for number one. That would have been Liam’s first self-penned chart-topper, and the band’s first number one since The Hindu Times the previous April. It entered the UK chart at number three on 15 February. Scotland gave it number one. Canada reached number two. Ireland and Italy both placed it in the top ten. The B-sides were (You’ve Got) the Heart of a Star and a live Columbia recorded at the Barrowlands in Glasgow in October 2001.
I like beautiful things. It’s not all dark in Liam World. I take me shades off every now and again and have a look at the world and see some nice things.
(Liam Gallagher)
Noel, interviewed by Patrick Kielty, joked that Liam had decided to write a song about his bird and then said the title in two flat words: song, bird. The joke fits the record. There is no bridge to hide in and no second guitar army. Liam’s vocal is close, and the pump organ is the only extra colour on the sleeve. It is also the only track from Heathen Chemistry on Stop the Clocks, the 2006 compilation, and the only Liam Gallagher song on that set.
Liam’s earlier writing credit on an Oasis album was Little James, on Standing on the Shoulder of Giants in 2000. That song was not a single. Songbird was the first time the label put his name alone on an A-side. The rest of Heathen Chemistry leans on Noel’s longer songs, Stop Crying Your Heart Out and Little by Little among them. This is the short one in the middle, two minutes, written for Appleton, sung without the stadium shout. Britain gave it three, not one. Four years later, on the hits disc, it is the song of his that the track list let stand.
