Nirvana

Nirvana was an American grunge band composed finally of Kurt Cobain (lead vocals, guitar), Krist Novoselic (bass) and Dave Grohl (drums, backing vocals). They were pioneers of the grunge genre.

Impact on Oasis
Oasis, as well as the Britpop movement in general, are said to have been a backlash against the pessimistic tone of Nirvana and the grunge scene.

Live Forever
In particular, Live Forever was written as a response to Nirvana and their frontman Kurt Cobain. The song's lyrics highlight an optimistic outlook on life. Although Noel Gallagher did not write the as a direct counter to Nirvana or their music, he has explained: "At the time . . . it was written in the middle of grunge and all that, and I remember Nirvana had a tune called 'I Hate Myself and Want to Die', and I was like . . . 'Well, I'm not fucking having that.' As much as I fucking like him [Cobain] and all that shit, I'm not having that. I can't have people like that coming over here, on smack, fucking saying that they hate themselves and they wanna die. That's fucking rubbish. Kids don't need to be hearing that nonsense.

Seems to me that here was a guy who had everything, and was miserable about it. And we had fuck-all, and I still thought that getting up in the morning was the greatest fuckin' thing ever, 'cause you didn't know where you'd end up at night. And we didn't have a pot to piss in, but it was fucking great, man."