Don't Look Back in Anger
by Oasis
- 81
- BPM
- C major
- Key
- 8B
- Camelot
- 34
- Danceability
- 6
- Acousticness
Noel Gallagher gave different accounts of how he wrote "Don't Look Back in Anger". He told Esquire it came to him in Paris on a rainy night, after Oasis had played a strip club, back in his hotel room. He told Uncut that he had the chords in Paris, then fumbled on acoustic guitar at the Sheffield Arena soundcheck. Liam asked whether he was singing "So Sally can wait", and Noel took the line. The title mixes David Bowie's "Look Back in Anger" with the Bob Dylan documentary Dont Look Back. The lines about the fireplace come from his mother, Peggy, who used to line her three boys up for a Christmas photo for their grandmother.
Noel played the unfinished song at Sheffield Arena on April 22, 1995, telling the 12,000-strong crowd he had only written it on Tuesday.
The recording at Rockfield Studios nearly ended the band. Liam felt left out, went to a pub, and came back with about 30 friends who disrupted the session. A fight followed, and Noel left. He returned three weeks later. The single came out on February 19, 1996, with Noel on lead vocals for the first time. It reached number one in the UK.
Don't Look Back in Anger runs at 81 BPM, the tempo of boom-bap hip-hop, reggae and slow R&B. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.96 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 741 ms. It is in C major, Camelot 8B, which shares its notes with A minor and mixes cleanly with F major and G major.
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