The year was 1994, I was 16. An impressionable age, and the music at that time was fucking dull. Nirvana was brilliant, but Kurt Cobain was a twisted punk soul that became misguided. Phil Collins was still doing things. Pop was just another new face singing over a sequencer that had been left on for 2 and half minutes. And then…

Suddenly there was Oasis. And immediately my teenage years had a soundtrack.

I was 16 and getting high in my mate’s house (his parents were away), and some guy said to me, “fucking hell, you look caned Jelly!”, and as I grinned, Supersonic came on the hifi, and I lay there in a haze of wonder. I’d never heard anything like that. I’d heard Rock and Roll, but nothing that seemed to ooze confidence and attitude like that.

Then a year or so later, I was in a pub, with my body struggling to cope with the new toxin I was shoving in it. We could still smoke in pubs in those days, and I was stood by the bar, with a cigarette in my mouth ordering beer. Cigarettes and Alcohol came on the jukebox, and it made me stick my chest out, strut around and find the nearest girl to get off with. (I’m aware that some people may not know the full definition of “get off” – so: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Get%20off&defid=2559916).

And now I’m 18. And still a virgin. I’m in a club. A shit club called “Strattons”. Dreadful place. The floors are sticky with sweat and spilled beer and christ knows what else. The last song of the evening comes on, and it’s a track from the newer Oasis album: Don’t Look Back in Anger. Some girl just grabs me and we sing at the top of our voices until the lights come up and we have to get out. I offer to walk her home and when we get back to hers, the night continues and I proceed to lose the last bit of my childhood whilst my new favourite album plays in its entirety in the background.

That relationship went nowhere. But the first time my heart did get broken, I was wandering home, and Live Forever randomly began playing on my walkman (yeah, walkman).

So you see. Definitely Maybe is not only my favourite album of all time. It accompanied me through the trickiest and greatest times of my formulative years.