‘Definitely Maybe was perhaps the most hyperbolic British album since Never Mind the Bollocks…’
The 33+1⁄3 series is a collection of books that examines a selection of classic albums across various musical genres. Think the music equivalent of the BFI Classics series. There are currently 202 books in the collection with nine more due to drop in 2026. Definitely Maybe, the game-changing debut album from Oasis, is the subject of the 95th book in the collection, and it certainly paints a vivid picture of an album that changed British music forever…
Written by Scottish novelist John Niven (who also penned the 28th book in the collection on Music from the Big Pink by The Band), is uniquely placed to examine the cultural impact of Oasis and Britpop in general, having worked in A&R in the ’90s and then having published the seminal Britpop novel Kill Your Friends in 2008 based on his experiences. Anyone who follows him on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) will know that Niven is far from a shrinking violet when it comes to offering an opinion and that is exactly the kind of attitude required to ensure that this enterprise doesn’t become too hagiographical. While he doesn’t play down the importance of this record, he doesn’t succumb to hyperbole either, nor does he sugarcoat his opinion when writing about something he doesn’t like (both Definitely Maybe album track ‘Digsy’s Dinner’ and the entirety of Oasis’ third album Be Here Now come in for a slagging here). Crucially, however, Niven does address the snobbish criticism of Oasis from the London-centric media and the music press and rightly concludes that while some of it is valid, most of it is blatant classicism.
Niven’s examination of Definitely Maybe is analogous to the album itself: angry, assertive and unapologetic. It’s hard to imagine many Oasis fans won’t read this thing and absolutely love it (as I did). Even in its more technical moments, the book has a universality that ensures that everyone will get it, and with that, Niven captures the essence of what made Oasis so special in the first place – universality. A shared feeling.