10 Perfect Rock And Roll Protest Songs

From the minute that Oasis reached the charts with Supersonic, Noel Gallagher was building an entire career of writing songs about nothing. Even though the individual tracks on Definitely Maybe sounded huge at the time, tracks like Shakermaker and Digsy's Dinner aren't exactly the most complex things in the world, sounding like they got their lyric sheet randomly generated from different words that Noel thought would work. Every now and again though, you get a song like Cigarettes and Alcohol with a pretty scathing statement behind it.

It's no secret that these guys lived the rock star lifestyle to the fullest extent, and this feels like it should be just a celebration of the excess they were working with 24/7. When you look at some of the lyrics of the verses though, Noel seems to be disaffected by the idea of work in general, saying that it's not even worth it to find a job when you're never going to do anything with the money anyway. You might as well just try to use cigarettes and alcohol as a means to drown your troubles away, finding some sort of escape from all the dullness of everyday life.

There are even a few too many references that somehow snuck past the censors at the time as well, like advocating cocaine use in the chorus by saying how fun it would be to do the white line. It may sound like rock and roll hubris rearing its head for four minutes, but if you just go back to your day job at the end of everything, you're leaving the heart of rock and roll behind.