2. Oasis | Live Forever

"Live Forever" by Oasis from the album Definitely, Maybe (1994)

It wasn't the first hit of the Britpop era, but this was just the type of world-beating anthem the genre needed to burst onto global shores. "Common People" may be the more quintessentially anglophilic choice for the top spot, but this is the song the real common people fell in and out of love - and in and out of pubs - to. The song is equally adept as a romance, a rousing piss-up sing-song, or just a collectively shouted boot in the arse of the workaday world. We may know we're not actually going to live forever, Oasis couldn't even make it 20 years, but sometimes, if only for 4:38, we can pretend that definitely, maybe, we might.

_Luke O'Neil