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06th Nov 2015

Not everyone is happy with Noel Gallagher lending his song to a John Lewis ad

Nooruddean Choudry

“I don’t want interesting! Rock ‘n’ roll’s not about that. To me, it’s about f**king utter gobsh*tes just being f**king headcases.”

So says Noel Gallagher in an interview for Esquire, in what is a rant about the middle-0f-the-roadness of modern rock. The indie legend wants music to be exciting, dangerous and provocative – not media-friendly or ‘nice’.

The comments have gone public on the same day that John Lewis premiered their annual Christmas advert – a surgical prang at the heartstrings that expertly manipulates the public into feeling ‘totes emosh’ and dashing out to buy a telescope for granddad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuz2ILq4UeA

The ad features a plinky-plonk cover of Oasis’ Half the World Away, by a breathy Norwegian singer called Aurora. You know the drill: an old classic performed in a saccharine sweet child-like voice at half the normal speed.

It seems a fair few observers feel there’s something of a contradiction in Gallagher bemoaning the tedium of commercial pop pap one minute, and then lending one of his songs to be sanitised into a very easy listen the next…

https://twitter.com/lightspeed_/status/662600252348854272