Have Oasis’ Albums Stood the Test of Time? Explore Their 7 Iconic Releases

Definitely Maybe (released August 29, 1994)

The debut album from the English rock firebrands, the Gallagher brothers, is an unmatched manifesto by the band. Brash and irreverent, it showcases the perfect synergy between Noel’s songwriting and Liam’s flamboyant, arrogant delivery.

On April 11, 1994, Supersonic, the Oasis single celebrating gin and tonic, was released – just three days after the discovery of Kurt Cobain’s body. A strange coincidence. The English band entered rock history as swiftly as the bullet from Cobain’s Remington rifle that ended the Nirvana frontman’s life. “He couldn’t handle the rock star life,” Liam Gallagher would say, unburdened by existential questions.

Definitely Maybe, the band’s first album featuring the self-fulfilling Rock’n’Roll Star, came out at the end of August as the British answer to the grunge explosion from the United States a few years earlier. Rock history is marked by these transatlantic prideful leaps—recalling Bob Dylan’s response to the Beatles invasion with his electrified Bringing It All Back Home in 1965, proclaiming, “Rock’n’roll is American, and I’m bringing it back home.”

Signed a year earlier based on a performance in good old Glasgow by the sharp-eyed Alan McGee, founder of the independent label Creation Records (Primal Scream, The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine), Oasis burst onto the scene like the unruly kids they were at a royal dinner, while existing forces (Suede, Blur, Pulp) were already navigating the calm British market: “The music industry had laid the groundwork for Britpop, and Blur was about to become the main guest. Then we came along with Oasis, and nobody forgave us,” Noel boasted, somewhat swaggeringly.

The following year, Oasis would win the chart battle against Blur in a media- and record label-fueled “war.” The Gallagher brothers hailed from Manchester, a working-class city in the North, and were not known for their manners, unlike the very middle class Blur. According to Liam, whose public statements often disparaged the city, Manchester, a jewel of British independent music since the Stone Roses’ 1989 breakthrough, was just a rat hole. The group inspired the younger Gallagher in almost everything, from his dress sense to his attitude—no fancy boots or leather, but Adidas shoes and very working-class Umbro sweatshirts for stage wear. And then there’s the northern swagger, which could make stand-up comedians look like mere jesters.

But back to the main point: Definitely Maybe is quite simply a great rock album. Not modern in the slightest—recall that at the same time, the duo Autechre was performing miracles with its machines in the post-pot smoking vibe genre, and the trip-hop revolution was underway in Bristol—but Definitely Maybe had enough in its arsenal with its collection of unstoppable songs (with Live Forever leading the charge) to restore some color to British pride—something certain people would deeply regret as the Union Jack was flaunted everywhere.

This potpourri of sixties influences and punk swagger is an unparalleled milestone and earned Liam the label of being the illegitimate son of John Lennon and Johnny Rotten. But what would Liam be without Noel? This is the crux of their debut discography. It’s now cliché, but as good as Noel’s songs are (he’s the songwriter), they likely would never have left the garage if Liam hadn’t embodied them so well. That’s the band’s real strength. And its misfortune, too. F.M.

(What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (released October 2, 1995)

Following the tidal wave of Definitely Maybe, the Gallagher brothers hit it big again with a second album featuring a global hit, Wonderwall.

The issue of the second album in rock history continues endlessly. While some never recovered from their brilliant debut (cf. The La’s, Lee Mavers’ band, “the most talented guy of our generation,” according to Noel), the Gallagher brothers faced a triple challenge after the enormous success of Definitely Maybe: artistic, critical, and public. After climbing the steps to glory at Supersonic speed, could Liam and Noel Gallagher manage to convert their trial amidst the Britpop feud against Blur, who had just released their new album, The Great Escape, a month earlier in the autumn of 1995?

“The first album was the record of a guy who wanted to become a rock’n’roll star. The new one is the work of a guy who has actually become a rock’n’roll star and talks about what has changed in his life, in his heart, in his head,” the elder Gallagher explained at the time. By not changing their initial formula—instant melodies, catchy choruses, and sharp riffs for hit after hit—Oasis boldly doubled down to become the most popular band of its generation. Definitely Maybe.

Released as an advance scout six months earlier, Some Might Say (easily recognizable by its Small Faces-inspired riff) was the first Oasis single to top the British charts, before the steamroller Roll with It went head-to-head with Blur’s Country House during the sleepy month of August. But it was obviously the ballad Wonderwall (a huge anthem), titled in reference to Wonderwall Music (1968) by George Harrison, that swept everything in its path on the radio, with Liam Gallagher’s opening words now etched in collective memory: “Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you.”

Another highlight of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is Noel Gallagher’s first vocal outing, the exclusive songwriter, on Don’t Look Back in Anger, an immediate classic and the best track on the album (just like the immense Live Forever on Definitely Maybe). “I had decided to sing one of my two favorite songs myself, either that one or Wonderwall. I told Liam that if he wanted, I would sing Wonderwall a bit more acoustically, but he refused. So I kept Don’t Look Back in Anger, and now he’s giving me the cold shoulder.” In the ballad department, the superb Cast No Shadow is irresistibly insidious, while She’s Electric, performed by a vocally flexible Liam Gallagher, is reminiscent of The La’s.

After such a Morning Glory, what better than a Champagne Supernova to crown this second LP as a triumph foretold? “Music is the best antidote I’ve found to combat boredom,” Noel Gallagher claimed, having signed the two best albums of Oasis’ discography within a year, the name on everyone’s lips in 1995. F.V.

Be Here Now (released August 21, 1997)

With its unreasonable length, guitar overdose, and unapologetic grandeur, this third album shows Oasis in all its excess.

Upon its release in the summer of 1997, Be Here Now shattered all records. In Europe, it immediately topped the charts. In Britain, it sold 424,000 copies in 24 hours (a record for speed) and became the biggest success of the year with 1.47 million records sold—a figure multiplied by six ten years later. Puffing out their chests more than ever, Oasis stood before a crowd that was already theirs. But who still enjoys listening to this album in its entirety? Because with more than two decades of hindsight, far from the Britpop frenzy, this third album by the Gallagher brothers is weighed down by more than one flaw.

Many tracks could have been condensed for a greater impact. Overproduced and much too long (1 hour 11 minutes and singles lasting 6, 7 minutes), it layers guitars to the point of indigestion, which diminishes the potential anthems instead of achieving the initial goal: to create a “colossal” album, according to Noel. In the documentary Live Forever (2003), the band’s sole songwriter would admit his failure in terms, as always, scathing, describing the album as “the sound of five guys in the studio, on coke, who couldn’t give a damn.”

Then at the peak of their fame, Oasis spared no expense: recording part of the album at Abbey Road, submerging a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow in the swimming pool of a manor for the cover photo (this is not AI), or recruiting guests like Johnny Depp on slide guitar (Fade In-Out) and Richard Ashcroft as a luxury backing vocalist (All Around the World, the third single barely reaching 9 minutes).

It all starts wonderfully with D’You Know What I Mean?, the first single brimming with swagger, captivating throughout its 7 minutes. With its simple yet catchy chords, this introduction remains unmatched on the rest of the record. The phrase is one of Liam’s linguistic ticks, as anyone who has ever interviewed him can attest, a rhetorical question he uses to underscore his statements and seek approval from his interlocutor.

“I met my maker, I made him cry,” he proudly declares before the chorus, a poignant revenge when you know the brothers’ childhood struggles with an abusive father. It’s just the beginning of an electric epic that will eventually wear thin, but several songs still stand out: notably the ballad Stand by Me with its cascading strings, or the catchy Magic Pie with Noel taking the microphone.

Years later, some critics saw Be Here Now as the swan song of Britpop. It must be admitted that the movement was running out of steam at that time. Blur had just released an album clearly oriented towards the slacker rock of their buddies Pavement. Pulp, other giants of the genre, were preparing a venomous gem, the future This Is Hardcore that would be released the following year. Despite its flaws, the third Oasis album remains a snapshot of its time. Be here now, as the title suggests. N.L.

Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (released February 28, 2000)

Recorded in a time of crisis and transition, this fourth album is not—completely—to be dismissed.

“We should never have recorded Standing on the Shoulder of Giants,” Noel Gallagher confessed to American rock critic Chuck Klosterman in 2011. Disliked by its main composer, who remembered it as automatic writing without any creative fuel, Oasis’ fourth album does not deserve such scorn. A quarter-century later, it’s even worth rediscovering this sometimes quite convincing attempt at psychedelic transformation conceived during a crisis. At the time, the Manchester band had indeed seen two founding members—the guitarist Bonehead and the bassist Guigsy—leave, and it was necessary to think about the future, go on tour, etc.

While Liam contributed to the songwriting for the first time with a song—the cute ballad Little James dedicated to Patsy Kensit’s first son, his partner at the time—Noel was everywhere else. Sometimes, he indeed lacked spark—the feisty but somewhat laborious I Can See a Liar and Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is. Under the influence of Indian music as if George Harrison had joined the band, Who Feels Love? also runs out of steam. But the rest has its merits, such as the combative Fuckin’ in the Bushes that opens the show, a feisty and cinematic instrumental where guitar choruses accompany voices lifted from a documentary on the 1970 Isle of Wight festival.

The electric neo-hippie anthem, Go Let It Out, follows the usual Beatlesian lineage but offers a remixed version with, as its rhythmic backbone, a drum sample borrowed from bluesman Johnny Jenkins. Gas Panic! manages to integrate trip-hop vibes without causing an uproar. Over 6 minutes long, Roll It Over even closes the march with flair. Nothing shameful, then, about giving this album a chance, neither a complete success nor a failure. V.B.

Heathen Chemistry (released July 1, 2002)

Marred by an overblown production, this fifth album comes across as a flat concentrate of the Oasis sound, now devoid of sparks.

If Standing on the Shoulder of Giants perhaps most clearly marks the end of Oasismania, Heathen Chemistry is unquestionably the album that makes the Gallagher brothers something other than lads grumbling with their hands behind their backs—better not to expose themselves too much—against the old world, alongside the Labour Party. There’s no more insolence, arrogance, or even style on this conservative album where melodies refuse the pop obviousness and sometimes get lost in a barrage of grandiloquent arrangements, placed there as a smokescreen to mask a glaring lack of strong ideas.

While its predecessor had the excuse of following a trilogy rich in conquering anthems, Heathen Chemistry is the work of a band that doesn’t know what to do with all that electricity. Alan White is at the end of his tether. Gem Archer and Andy Bell are discreet and fail to convince when they have the opportunity—the former on Hung in a Bad Place, the latter on A Quick Peep. As for Liam and Noel, they have undoubtedly lost the verve that was their strength until the late 1990s.

It’s better not to trust the numbers. Despite its five singles climbing to the top three of the UK charts, the truth is that listening to these eleven tracks is boring—despite the presence of Johnny Marr on three occasions, they too often lack emotion. Except, of course, for She Is Love, like a track from an unknown best of The La’s, and the indispensable Stop Crying Your Heart Out, an undeniable climax full of dramatic strings from an album struggling to leave a mark on its era. M.D.

Don’t Believe the Truth (released May 30, 2005)

Thanks to a collaborative effort far from revolutionary, this sixth album allowed Oasis to regain some of its former glory.

The making of Don’t Believe the Truth was laborious. After English sessions under the direction of Death in Vegas, nothing solid enough emerged to give birth to what would become a worthy record alongside American musician Dave Sardy, known for leading the rock band Barkmarket and having worked with System of a Down, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Soulwax. Versatility was precisely what was needed to bring coherence to the whole. After the unsettling Standing on the Shoulder of Giants and the somewhat unexciting Heathen Chemistry, Oasis got its act together.

The effort was collective: if the elder Gallagher, increasingly distant from the band, wrote less than usual (only five songs), Liam wrote three, with Andy Bell and Gem Archer sharing the remaining three—a special mention to the latter for the effective A Bell Will Ring. As for new stimuli, a newcomer in the form of Ringo Starr’s son, Zak Starkey. Certainly, the great instant classics of the early days are far from being matched.

If the friendly The Importance of Being Idle wouldn’t have displeased the Kinks (and where Noel finally decides to truly embody his singing), Mucky Fingers evokes Waiting for My Man by the Velvet Underground a bit too much to be likable. But it holds up, not without a certain humility—at the Gallagher scale, but still—and a magnificent concluding ballad, shared at the mic by the feuding brothers: Let There Be Love. “But if it makes you happy/Keep clapping/And remember that I’ll be by your side”: we agree. S.R.

Dig Out Your Soul (released October 6, 2008)

In Oasis’ ultimate studio album, the Gallagher brothers spare no gimmick and delve into their obsessions.

By the third track, Waiting for the Rapture, our ears perk up. This almost military rhythm has been copied and pasted from Five to One by The Doors. Except instead of Jim Morrison calling for revolution, we have Noel Gallagher

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