Oasis (and solo) album-by-album thread

I listen to Oasis far more than the Beatles. And I love the Beatles

 

Which eventually became the Chemical Brothers' hit Setting Sun with Noel singing it.

Setting Sun - Wikipedia

 

I'm a gigantic fan of that Beatles' cover. I think it's better than the original Beatles version and it gave me a whole new appreciation of the tune.

What more can be said about WTSMG as an album? It's one of the five greatest Rock albums ever recorded. I say that as someone with a music collection over 10,000 albums, going back to Elvis Presley's earliest work. I have to look askew at anyone questioning its greatness. I think a serious case can be made that it contains three or four of the ten absolute best songs recorded during the 1990s.

I haven't seen it mentioned in the thread yet but every Oasis fan should give a serious look at forum member David Huggins's wonderful site, Recording Oasis. It's a treasure trove of detailed recording information for each album you can't find anywhere else. He interviews Owen Morris, among others.

Oasis Recording Information | How their early albums were mixed and mastered

 

Well done thread starter.
Inspired topic !!!

 

My favourite album of all time. Not a bad track on it and the singles/b sides were outstanding.

 

Love the debut. Shame they never matched it. As a Northern lad - who had listened to solely American rock bands - its release was a watershed moment. Their confidence was infectious.

 

“....better than blur any day”

 

Thanks for the website dude this is really cool stuff!

 

Top 5 songs from the album
1. Don't Look Back in Anger
2. Some Might Say
3. Champagne Supernova
4. Morning Glory
5. Wonder wall

Top 5 B sides
1. The Master plan
2. Aqueous
3. Talk Tonight
4. Rocking Chair
5. Step Out

 

This is one of my favourites as well. I think I remember reading that it was written as a pastiche of Blur?

I like this line a lot:

"She was with her mum who had a face like a nun in pain"

 

That makes sense cause this song sound a LOT like a Blur tune, even including the background sounds and the La, la la's in the chorus.

 

The other thing I've heard - though I'm not sure if it's true - is that Noel actually wrote it for Bonehead and it was going to be his Ringo moment. I think he's one of the drunken voices you can hear at the end.

 

It's my favourite Oasis album and easily in my Top 10 all time albums.

Here in Germany Oasis really broke in the summer of 1996, when "Don't Look Back in Anger" featured in the German TV coverage of the European Football Championship which happened to take place in England that year. It didn't hurt that Germany actually won the cup at Wembley Stadium (very sorry to remind our English friends that we defeated the English team led by the great Paul Gascoigne in the semifinals).

Anyway, the whole country listened to that Oasis song in the summer of 1996 resulting in the album peaking at No. 3 in the album charts and the band having a strong fanbase in Germany to this day.

As much as I love "Don't Look Back in Anger" (and all the other songs on that brilliant album) my favourite lines are from "Morning Glory":

"Another sunny afternoon
Walking to the sound of my favorite tune
Tomorrow never knows what it doesn't know too soon"

Lest I forget: I'm going to see Noel's High Flying Birds in April in Düsseldorf! After having seen four Oasis gigs in 1997, 2003, 2005 and 2008 I'm really looking forward now to my first Noel show!

 

B-Side of Some Might Say - available on the Japanese single only.

 

If we consider that they started in 1994, then I have to agree with this. They are to this day the last truly great band, since no one since, that I have heard, has matched them.
Though I came to the party late, for me they were instant likes.

 

My top 5 favorite songs off of Definitely Maybe would be
1. Cigarettes & Alcohol
2. Live Forever
3. Columbia
4. Rock n Roll Star
5. Supersonic

 

My top 5 favorite songs off of Morning Glory would be
1. Champagne Supernova
2. Don't Look Back in Anger
3. Hey Now!
4. Morning Glory
5. Some Might Say

 

Thinking about all the b-sides that came from the Morning Glory singles, as more time passes, I have less of an answer to the question...how did "Hey Now" ever make it on this record?

 

Have to admit I’ve grown to love this song over years but do agree with you. It really was the weak point along with the Swamp Song clips.

Stevie Wonder claiming royalties for Step Out forced a last minute change to the track listing - it was originally track 8 but was pulled. I have an original 13 track promo cd with it still included. Bit strange they didn’t just replace it with another song.

This would have been my track list for the album....

1. Hello
2. Roll With It
3. Wonderwall
4. Don’t Look Back In Anger
5. Underneath The Sky - replacing: Hey Now
6. Acquiesce - replacing: Untitled (Swamp Song clip)
7. Some Might Say
8. Step Out
9. Cast No Shadow
10. She’s Electric
11. Morning Glory
12. Rockin’ Chair
13. The Masterplan - replacing: Untitled (Swamp Song clip)
14. Champagne Supernova

 

Earls Court 1995 and Main Road 1996 (2nd night) are probably the best live performances from that tour you will see. Better than than Knebworth for me.

I saw them at Loch Lomond in 96 which was amazing but I don’t think they sounded as good by that stage of the tour. Still blew my mind though - I was only 15 at the time.

 

Noel admired the great British Rock tradition of classic artists (The Beatles, The Smiths, etc.) leaving some of their best songs off albums for b-sides and standalone singles. As long as sales were great, the record label didn't seem to mind. I think the practice did make it more difficult on Oasis "breaking" America. By the mid-90s, the American music market was almost exclusively directed at CD albums. CD-singles were a much bigger factor in the UK.

 

Yeah, we had to pay stupid amounts of money for all those imports. And in hindsight, I can't believe we were dumb enough to fall for that ploy. But I wholeheartedly think the US market's quick abandonment of affordable singles directly played into the ascension of file-sharing apps, especially as the mid/late 90's started producing more and more acts with one or two novelty singles and a bunch of album filler (Aqua, Chumbawumba, Sugar Ray, etc).

 

It was the 90's, so every album had to be long, but since I mostly listen to vinyl at home now, the LP of Morning Glory is so awkward.

It really should've been the first five songs on side A, and the last four on side B, cutting the silly Swamp Song excerpts and relegating "Hey Now!" to a b-side. Then, a follow-up LP could've had "The Masterplan," "Rockin' Chair," "Step Out," "Acquiesce," "Round Are Way," "Talk Tonight," etc. I'm sure Noel at the height of his drug intake (and ego) thought he'd be able to write songs like that forever, but I bet he wishes he could have some of them back now.

 

An argument could be made that Some Might Say should have been left off the album... it was the last single with the original drummer, and it was recorded before the album sessions proper. Yes, that would have meant excluding one of the best songs on the album, but it could have been replaced with the Masterplan which is even better.

 

Yeah, but it was a huge single, there was no way Creation was going to let them leave it off the record. And "The Masterplan" may be the best song from the sessions, but it was already a bit heavy with slow/acoustic songs, so "Some Might Say" was definitely needed in the tracklisting.

The album was recorded very quickly, so I doubt much thought was given to this, but I wonder if with more time, they'd have re-recorded it with Alan White to better fit in with the sound of the rest of the album.