Oasis

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Essential Albums

  • (What's The Story) Morning Glory? [Deluxe Remastered Edition]
    (What's The Story) Morning Glory? [Deluxe Remastered Edition]
    (What's The Story) Morning Glory? [Deluxe Remastered Edition]

    Noel Gallagher had a novel way of overcoming Difficult Second Album Syndrome when it came to making (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?—he had it written already. When the Oasis guitarist and chief songwriter began telling journalists around the release of debut Definitely Maybe in 1994 that he’d already penned the songs for its follow-up, a few must have imagined it was idle boasting from a new artist experiencing their first flush of success. Not in this case. But even Noel, underneath all the bragging, couldn’t have had any idea just how profoundly these songs would connect. Definitely Maybe had established Oasis as the most exciting British guitar band of the decade. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? made the Manchester quintet massive on a global scale. Definitely Maybe was an astounding introduction but its strength lay in its fury, rock ’n’ roll as a means to wriggle out of humdrum life and make a break for something better. Here, the anger had subsided. These were supersized anthems made for mass sing-alongs and communal euphoria. The songs may have been burning a hole in Noel’s back pocket but everything else about …Morning Glory was of the moment. Recording, mainly done at Rockfield Studios in Wales, was quick—done like they were in a hurry, in a handful of weeks across May and June 1995. And they were in a hurry—there was a world out there to conquer. Band members were only handed a demo of the songs they were about to record days before and backing tracks were nailed in a matter of takes. Everything aligned in perfect alchemy, the sheer promise of these choruses making the band play better, new drummer Alan White bringing a more rhythmic dynamism to the group and Liam Gallagher responding to his elder brother upping the ante by delivering the vocal performance of a lifetime. No one else could conjure that mix of yearning and swagger that makes “Wonderwall” so powerful. It’s a good job, then, that he chose correctly: Noel had said he wanted to sing one of the record’s surefire big hitters. It was either that or “Don’t Look Back In Anger” and he made his younger sibling pick. The barbed aggression might have been toned down in the music but it was still an ever-present elsewhere. Sessions were halted for two weeks when a giant brawl between the Gallaghers concluded with Noel being driven home to London by White. But that tension is what made Oasis tick, especially at the point in their career when there were still things to prove. It was released in October 1995 and it soon became clear it was more than just your regular successful second album from an excellent rock band. This was a landmark in British culture. It’s hard to remember now what it was like to first listen to …Morning Glory as a mortal collection of songs. Most of the tracks here have become bigger than that, music that has seeped into the consciousness, culture-shaping songs that just are. How could it be allowed for so many classics to be sat next to each other on the same album? As well as “Wonderwall” and “Don’t Look Back In Anger”, there’s the melancholy uplift of “Cast No Shadow”, the cosmic opus of “Champagne Supernova”, the thrilling crackle of the title track. Shifting well over 20 million copies, it went on to become one of the best-selling records of all time. It’s about more than just Oasis, too, an album full of hope and longing released in time to soundtrack a period when everything felt like it was on the up in the UK. Emerging from recession, the country entered economic prosperity, experienced a change of government and—through the achievements of the likes of Alexander McQueen, Lennox Lewis, Kate Moss, Danny Boyle, Tracey Emin, the Spice Girls, and Oasis and all of their Britpop peers—suddenly felt like one of the world’s cultural centres. Here, in 50 minutes, is the story of a decade. There was no stopping Oasis at that point. That was something that could only be done by the band themselves and …Morning Glory was when they could still harness the chaos and turn it into something magical. It’s the sound of a once-in-a-generation band operating at their dazzling best.

  • Definitely Maybe
    Definitely Maybe
    Definitely Maybe

    Oasis never did anything the easy way. Across a career stretching just short of two decades, the Manchester quintet was constantly teetering on the edge; chaos and calamity a crucial ingredient to what made them tick. It was no different with the creation of their debut Definitely Maybe but, for once, their problems had nothing to do with the turbulent relationship between Liam and Noel Gallagher. Despite possessing a collection of songs everyone within earshot could recognise as generational, here the formative Oasis suffered from the humdrum issue faced by many a new band lacking in studio experience: how to replicate their thrilling live alchemy on tape. Not that you’d ever know it from listening. Definitely Maybe seemed to arrive as a fully-formed modern classic, its swagger so effortless, its brilliance so unrelenting that it felt like it could have been knocked out in an afternoon. “Yes,” it seemed to say, “this album is here to change the game, what of it?” But behind the record lay a series of false starts that could have derailed Oasis long before the fateful final punch-up backstage in Paris in 2009. Oasis had already established themselves as a ferocious live proposition when they entered Monnow Valley Studio in Wales in January 1994 with the aim of knocking their debut out the park. Sensing correctly that the key lay in capturing the inexorable rush of their live performance, Noel had enlisted experienced soundman David Batchelor as producer, but the decision had backfired. Batchelor’s process of getting band members to lay down their parts separately had removed the abrasive edge from their sound, leaving the songs sounding inexplicably feeble when they should’ve been leaving you in a daze. In a sign of confidence at what should have been, the band’s label Creation sanctioned a new round of recording, binning off the original sessions at a cost of £50,000. This time, they had to make it work. At Sawmills Studio in Cornwall, the band’s live sound engineer Mark Coyle was tasked with getting the best out of them. Coyle treated it like an intimate gig, positioning the group in close proximity in one room to nail down the basic tracks, with Noel adding swathes of guitar overdubs afterwards. The resultant recordings were spiky and bristling—but not quite there yet. The big breakthrough came with the involvement of Owen Morris, who’d engineered on records by New Order, Billy Bragg and Electronic. His daring mixes added an imposing dynamism to Oasis’ songs and he brought Liam back in to re-record some of his vocals, coaxing performances out of the singer that would establish him as the most intoxicating rock ’n’ roll voice of his generation. After all the hurdles, Oasis had got there. One of the most vital rock ’n’ roll records of all time was complete. From the barbed riffs of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” to the chiming, widescreen sing-along “Live Forever”, the T. Rex-y glam-punk of “Cigarettes & Alcohol” and the epic longing of “Slide Away”, Definitely Maybe was an album that blended ’60s yearning with a Sex Pistols sneer, pairing fervent anthems about escape and breaking out of mundanity with songs that sounded like you’d crash-landed right in the middle of a fevered, frantic night out. You didn’t want to go home. Released in August 1994, it reshaped the UK’s musical landscape, helping to usher in an era when indie rock dominated mainstream culture and Britpop ruled supreme. At the time, it became Britain’s fastest-selling debut album in history, and made Oasis superstars. Noel and Liam would never have an argument in private again. This is where it all began, an album that still sounds as unbridled and exhilarating as it did on first listen. It took a few attempts, but they cracked it in the end.

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About Oasis

Some groups spend years chasing stardom, and others seem to just instantly will it into existence. The latter was certainly the case with Manchester’s Oasis, who named the first song on their first album “Rock ’n’ Roll Star” as if their fate were preordained. Arriving in the midst of the peak alt-rock era, Oasis’ 1994 debut, Definitely Maybe, was a bird-flipping retort to the navel-gazing angst of grunge, rolling the melodicism of The Beatles, the swagger of T. Rex, the sneer of the Sex Pistols and the strobe-lit grooves of The Stone Roses into alternately sleazy (“Cigarettes & Alcohol”) and celebratory (“Live Forever”) pint-raising anthems. And it wasn’t just the group’s sound that harkened back to the glory days of British rock—in the simmering tension between the guitarist who wrote all the tunes (Noel Gallagher) and the singer who brought them to life (his braggadocious brother Liam), Oasis came pre-packaged with a sibling-rivalry soap opera to rival that of The Kinks. Definitely Maybe’s No. 1 debut on the UK charts turned Oasis into the ubiquitous bad boys of Britpop, an image they gleefully indulged through their tabloid-baiting pissing matches with London’s Blur, the art-school antithesis of the Gallaghers’ working-class laddism. But with 1995’s follow-up, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Oasis shed the Union Jack trappings to become the only English band of the era to match their domestic success in the US, thanks to karaoke-ready sing-alongs like “Wonderwall” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger”. With more than 20 million copies sold worldwide, Morning Glory effectively turned Oasis into an institution, one that would continue to sell out arenas for years to come (even after 1997’s infamously over-the-top Be Here Now signalled the end of Britpop’s pop-cultural dominance). The Gallaghers’ ever-fraught relationship would sink Oasis in 2009, but the enduring, cross-generational appeal of their most popular songs—with “Wonderwall” ranking among the most-streamed tracks of the ’90s—ensures a legacy that will live forever. In 2024, the Gallaghers announced a 2025 worldwide reunion tour, claiming reconciliation on social media: “The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over.”

ORIGIN
Manchester, England
FORMED
1991
GENRE
Rock

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