A frontman so influential he affected not just music, fashion and hair styling but an entire way of walking down the street, Liam Gallagher’s star quality continues to be inextinguishable. As he prepares to release his third solo album, C’mon You Know, he will answer your questions – post them in the comments below.
As music writer Steven Hyden stated last week, ranking Liam high up in a list of the all-time great lead singers: “He hits all the marks: incredible showman, incredible charisma, widespread influence, and (this isn’t remarked upon enough) he has a fantastic rock’n’roll voice.” Indeed, Liam could charm the birds out of the trees – or amusingly slag them off if they refused – and commands entire stadiums with little more than an upward-tilting chin and a tambourine. But his voice is also a marvel, a high-frequency engine tuned to songs about love, youth and the sheer vibrating brilliance of existence.
He put it to era-defining use with Oasis, then with the lower-key Beady Eye, but has gradually wound back up to full knees-out swagger with his solo material. Going against the grain of the rest of the charts, he recently broke the Top 20 to score his biggest solo hit to date with C’mon You Know’s lead single, Everything’s Electric, thanks to its bright, confident, classic melody. This summer he will consciously evoke peaks of Oasis’s popularity, even outdoing them: two concerts at Knebworth mirror the pair the band played in 1996, while a gig at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium scales up the much-cherished one Oasis played at Maine Road the same year.
Those Knebworth shows were immortalised in a recent excellent documentary, whose production company was a joint venture between Liam and his brother Noel. Was this a sign that the pair’s enmity since Oasis – which has manifested in a series of frankly very funny insults back and forth – was thawing? Fans still hold out hope. Whatever happens, we currently have Liam in ambitious and charismatic form, still one of the very best rock stars there is.
Ahead of C’mon You Know coming out on 27 May, please ask Liam anything about his life and career – post your questions in the comment section below by Monday 9 May, and his answers will be published on the day of the album’s release.
