#mlfl

Amazing question, anon, and thank you letting me ramble on about world-building that will not make it into a chapter but which I have thought deeply about. Liam knows, but it's one of those things that he wouldn't need to be told to know. Literally all it would take to find out is to stand side stage with Noel during a Paul Weller gig, which he did once and promptly walked out after that song. (Pause to note the main difference in MLFL with YLAMDD is that Noel and Weller are publicly, if lowkey, dating. Weller's separated and in the midst of getting a divorce, and she's not cheating on anyone technically, so there's no need to sneak around. And it does generate some positive PR at the start. Real world Liam/Patsy parallels without the overt exhibitionism, hello.) Naturally, Liam hates it. He thinks the song is overrated and the lyrics reinforce his mental picture of Weller as someone fundamentally selfish and self-centred. Liam writes Songbird as a response to You Do Something To Me. If you compare the lyrics in that light, you'll see where Liam's coming from. The Weller lyrics focus on the speaker's experience of unrequited love and what it does to him, whereas the lyrics of Songbird are about giving something back to someone you love (gonna write a song so she can see / give her all the love she gives to me). (Of course the contexts are different and Weller is perfectly capable of writing songs for others. The man wrote Wild Wood and As You Lean Into The Light, amongst many others. But Liam's not going to be fair or rational about this.) Noel unironically thinks Songbird is a better song. Personally, I agree—and I don't even like Songbird that much! (*gunshot*) I think we can say what we like about better musicianship, complex arrangements, and higher quality production, but there's something about the pure-hearted emotion channelled through sweet vulnerability in Liam's songwriting that makes everything else irrelevant. (Morrissey might be one of the greatest lyricists of his generation, but if he had written the lines 'soul love, come into my world, it's all for you, everything I do', I firmly believe Johnny Marr would have immediately reformed The Smiths.)

She knows it’s a mistake the morning after. She’d wonder how she let herself get into these situations with him, but she already knows. It’s just the way it is: Insistent, passionate, overwhelming. It’s hard not to get swept up by him.

*Playlist entirely in service of getting everyone to listen to the selected tracks by Beady Eye off the BE album.

@libreliebres-blog knows me so well because, although I am on semi-hiatus from writing, I did ideate in my waking hours a short fic set in the universe of My Least Favourite Life about Goldie and Noelle having a brief but intense fling circa 1994/early 1995 (which I will probably write as a separate part at some point) as part of Noelle's escalating denial of 'no, I don't need to date my brother, I will just date brother substitutes' (before she moves on to date Weller and he moves on to date Björk). Emotionally repressed and in denial Noelle, my beloved.

‘Tell him to file the fuckin’ papers.’  ‘I can’t tell him to do anything.’ ‘He listens to you.’  Paolo looks at her incredulously. She amends—‘More than most.’