Sittin’ in silence on my own

“Sittin’ Here in Silence (On My Own)” is one of those tiny, easily missed Oasis songs that tells you quite a lot about Noel Gallagher. It was written and sung by Noel and released in November 2005 as a B-side to “Let There Be Love”, the final single from Don’t Believe the Truth. It runs for only about two minutes and is deliberately sparse: Noel’s vocal sits over a restrained arrangement, with Paul Stacey credited on piano and Terry Kirkbride on drums. Noel also produced it. Musically, it is almost the opposite of what people instinctively associate with Oasis. There is no huge chorus, wall of guitars or attempt to fill an arena. It sounds more like somebody has wandered into the studio after everyone else has left and started playing for himself. That feeling is absolutely central to the song. The lyric is exceptionally slight — essentially one thought repeated — but that seems intentional. Noel describes waiting until everyone else has gone and discovering something in being completely alone. Rather than loneliness necessarily being a tragedy, solitude becomes the place where he can understand himself. That makes the title interesting. “On My Own” could sound desperately lonely, but the song itself feels almost peaceful. There is melancholy in it, certainly, but also relief. It fits a recurring strand of Noel's writing particularly well. Songs such as “Talk Tonight,” “Going Nowhere” and later material from his solo career often lose the Oasis bravado completely and reveal somebody much more introspective. AllMusic has specifically singled “Sittin’ Here in Silence” out as one of Noel's particularly intimate ballads, describing it as a melancholy little gem. There's also an amusing connection to something Noel said years later in the Supersonic documentary. He described himself as a cat compared with Liam being a dog: Liam needing people around him, Noel being naturally independent. NME subsequently used “Sittin’ Here in Silence” as almost the perfect musical example of that side of Noel — a song about disappearing from everybody else and being perfectly comfortable there. What I find particularly interesting is where it appears in the Oasis story. By 2005, Noel was enormously famous, had spent more than a decade touring the world, had survived the insanity of the 1990s and was still operating inside this enormous machine called Oasis. Yet one of the pieces he writes during that period reduces everything down to effectively: everybody has gone; now I can sit quietly by myself. That's quite revealing. It was never really promoted as a major Oasis song. When “Let There Be Love” was announced in October 2005, NME simply reported it as the new B-side accompanying the single. It also appeared as a bonus track on some editions of Don’t Believe the Truth, rather than becoming part of the standard album sequence.