10 Legendary Rock Songs That Were Insanely Controversial

For as long as Oasis has been around, there have been countless critics that have pointed out how much copycatting they have done. While Noel Gallagher is known to wear his influences on his sleeve a lot of the time, some are a bit more easy to spot than others, from ripping off Stevie Wonder for Step Out to pretty much any of their back catalog pulling from the Beatles. Sometimes the steal is so blatant that people even forget the insane drug references that happen in the proper song.

From the moment that you hear Cigarettes and Alcohol, you can tell that it's a blatant rip off of T Rex's Bang a Gong, down to the bluesy guitar hook and the different bends on the guitar. When you look at the lyric sheet though, Noel held absolutely nothing back about the state of England at the time, saying how there was nothing worth working for and only needing cigarettes and alcohol to get you by. Those words could have been spoken by a punk on the street, but there's also a fairly obvious cocaine reference in there as well, saying that most of us might as well do the white line while we still can.

Noel was even a bit cagey to release it as a single at first, until it absolutely took over the charts and turned Definitely Maybe into one of the most successful debut albums in rock history. The world belonged to the Gallaghers now, and the rest of Radio 1 ended up singing along to a song that talked about the pleasures that sit on that thin white line.