Released 24 April 1995 A-side Some Might Say Length 4:21 | Format CD Genre Rock, Britpop | |
Recorded October 1994 at The Congress House Studio, Austin, Texas | ||
"Talk Tonight" is a song by English rock band Oasis, written and sung by the band's lead guitarist Noel Gallagher. It was released as a B-side on the UK #1 single "Some Might Say" along with "Acquiesce" and "Headshrinker" and appears on the B-side compilation album, The Masterplan, as well. In the United States, it was released as one of the B-sides to Wonderwall. This song also appears in remastered form on the 2014 deluxe version of (What's the Story) Morning Glory?.
"Talk Tonight" is one of many acoustic B-side tracks sung by Noel, and was at the time, the most vulnerable song he had ever attempted. It was inspired by the near-breakup of the band in Los Angeles in autumn 1994, when Noel walked out without telling anyone and headed for San Francisco. He stayed with a girl, revealed in 2016 as Melissa Lim, he had befriended during a previous show there. According to the sleeve notes to The Masterplan, she talked a distraught Noel "off the ledge" and took him to the park where she played as a child. It is also mentioned in the Oasis book by Paul Mathurs, Take Me There, that his friend also had an obsession with Snapple Strawberry Lemonade, which contributed to the line in the song, "all your dreams are made of strawberry lemonade." The song also featured on the DVD Live By The Sea after Noel makes a mistake on the track "D'Yer Wanna Be A Spaceman?".
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in November 2016, Melissa Lim met Noel backstage at Bottom Of The Hill in 1994, she recalled: "He came over and sat down next to me, I had never been backstage before, so I asked him, ‘Where’s the afterparty?’ And he goes, ‘What afterparty? Can I hang out with you tonight?’”. 3 days later, after a disastrous performance at Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles, and after a dispute with Liam, Noel went to Lim's apartment in Nob Hill. “He was very upset,” said Lim. “I took him in, fed him and tried to calm him down. He wanted to break up the band. We went to Huntington Park to clear his mind. We listened to music. We went record shopping". After bringing back magazines and Snapple Strawberry Lemonade (as referenced in the song) Lim then convinced Noel to return to Oasis, “San Francisco has a reputation of being a place where bands come to die, like the Band and the Sex Pistols,” says Lim. “I wasn’t going to let it happen on my watch. I told him, ‘You can’t leave the band — you’re on the verge of something big.’”
Although in the film Supersonic, Noel claims not to remember Lim's name. Lim stated "Keith Richards can remember the name of his milkman from when he was 8 years old,” she says. “I don’t know what’s going on with Noel, and that’s fine. I was a part of something that touched so many people. That’s good enough.”
The song is included on Oasis' compilation album Stop the Clocks.
Paul Weller played keyboards when Oasis performed this song on Channel 4's The White Room in 1995.
An extract of the song was used in the 2008 GCSE Music Listening Paper Exam.
The song was featured in an episode of popular British soap EastEnders at Jase Dyer's funeral.
The song was performed at Oasis' MTV Unplugged concert in August 1996.