100 Best Albums
- 2 OCT 1995
- 12 Songs
- (What's The Story) Morning Glory? [Deluxe Remastered Edition] · 1981
- (What's The Story) Morning Glory? [Deluxe Remastered Edition] · 1995
- Definitely Maybe (Deluxe Edition Remastered) · 1994
- Definitely Maybe (Deluxe Edition Remastered) · 1994
- (What's The Story) Morning Glory? [Deluxe Remastered Edition] · 1995
- Heathen Chemistry · 2002
- (What's The Story) Morning Glory? [Deluxe Remastered Edition] · 1995
- Definitely Maybe · 1994
- Definitely Maybe · 1994
- (What's The Story) Morning Glory? [Deluxe Remastered Edition] · 1995
Essential Albums
- 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.
Albums
- 2022
- 2020
- 2014
- 2014
Artist Playlists
- Their iridescent anthems place them among Britpop's all-time greats.
- The Gallagher brothers' bratty Britpop in all its forms.
- The Gallagher-approved British school of rock.
- Britpop for the 21st century, pumped full of hooks and a whole lot of swagger.
- Lean back and relax with some of their mellowest cuts.
- Grab the mic and sing along with some of their biggest hits.
Live Albums
Compilations
Appears On
- Xilent Rapper Africa
More To Hear
- Britpop reaches new heights and smashes sales records.
- Sad songs that sound happy to mark Oasis' split in 2009.
- A celebration of albums from Oasis, Radiohead and The La's.
- What’s the Story?
- Celebrating the music of Oasis, Radiohead and The La's.
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.
- ORIGIN
- Manchester, England
- FORMED
- 1991
- GENRE
- Rock