My Search for the Champagne Supernova

The Britpop urban legend

I’m as excited as the next guy about the Oasis reunion shows, even though I’ll probably see them only if they play in the tri-state area and I’m magically gifted tickets. But I’m not holding my breath, especially since I’ve seen them before. So I’m good.

But the one bit of Oasis lore that does keep me awake at night is the origin of the term “Champagne Supernova,” which I’m sure you know happens to be the name of the sixth single off the band’s smash 1995 album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, and the best song by the Gallaghers to do at karaoke in my humble opinion. You get a roomful of drunk people at any point in the evening singing the chorus and it’s magic.

When asked about the song’s meaning by NME in 1995, Noel Gallagher said “Champagne Supernova” was “probably as psychedelic as I’ll ever get,” and how “The song is a bit of an epic. It's about when you're young and you see people in groups and you think about what they did for you and they did nothing.” He goes on to mention punk rock bands like the Clash and Sex Pistols, as well as the whole Madchester scene the brothers grew up around as having come and gone without making the massive, world-changing impact they’d promised. I love the long answer he gives, especially because it follows his simple explanation for “Morning Glory” as “a cynical song about drugs." “Champagne Supernova” is incredibly cynical, and there is a connection to mind-altering substances since the line “Where were you while we were getting high” was “what we [the band] always say to each other.”

The song has another possible drug connection that I’ve always been fascinated with. The first time I heard about it was some party in Miami in the early-2000s. This was right around when the Strokes had blown up and DJs at Britpop nights started to incorporate the media-defined idea of “garage rock” into the sets. So, more of the Vines and less Count Five, the Seeds, or the Sonics. Miami, also, was trying to get more New York City. The two cities have always had close ties in some of the same ways NYC and L.A. will forever be linked by the people who more or work between the two cities. But the people I was hanging out with in Miami at the time were almost all native to South Florida and had grown up hating where they were from, so they looked north to the city where their parents or grandparents had once lived. One of the regulars who always talked about moving to Manhattan and going to fashion school used to show up to the club and had some arrangement with a bartender where she’d slip him a little baggie of white powder, he’d salt two rims with the stuff, and then pour Champagne into each glass. When I asked somebody what the little ritual was, I was told they drank a Champagne Supernova every Friday to kick things off. It was cocaine around the rim. “That’s where Oasis got the name for the song,” the person who always spoke with a fake British accent, but was actually from Ft. Lauderdale, told me.

Since then, I’ve been obsessed with the little factoid that I’ve never heard anybody from the band say is true. As far as I know, Gallagher has never publically stated what a Champagne Supernova is and has said repeatedly that the lyrics of the song are generally whatever the listener wants them to be about. I was so invested in finding out if the rumor was true or not, that I once got a publication to take me up on my offer to investigate and write about the origin of the Champagne Supernova. The closest I got to an answer was talking to a person living in NYC who used to bartend at a Camden bar at the height of Britpop and claimed they served the Gallaghers, Blur, Jarvis Cocker, and any of the other stars of the era who have likely done a reunion tour by now. His answer was a straightforward no, it wasn’t a thing. “That would be a pretty good waste of coke, wouldn’t it?”

Other Notes

• U.S. Open season is the only part of the summer when I go “Gee, it’s cool that some Europeans are visiting New York City.” So I was down to read David Waldstein at the New York Times took on Via Della Pace, the East Village place Italian players love to eat when they’re in town.

• Speaking of Italian restaurants, Flora Tsapovsky at Architectural Digest on how pasta joints “started with humble rustic decor but have blossomed into maximalist wonderlands in recent years” is also very much my shit.

• There was no lack of tributes to the late, great Gena Rowlands, but Richard Brody’s at The New Yorker hit especially hard. “[O]f all the actresses I’ve ever seen onscreen, [is] the greatest artist.”

• David Coggins paid a nice little tribute to the duct tape-covered couch at the old Jack Spade store, and it made me a little bit whimsical for the #menswear days. That was a good shop.