FEATURE:
Oasis’ (What's the Story) Morning Glory? at Thirty
Inside the U.K. Singles
__________
ONE of the biggest albums…
of the 1990s turns thirty on 2nd October. There will be a lot of attention around Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? The second album from the band, they are currently on tour. Having played many dates in around the world, they are heading back to the U.K. for some London dates. Reunited and playing on a global stage, no doubt their 1995 album is getting a lot of love for new and decades-old fans alike. For this second anniversary feature, I am focusing on the U.K. singles. In total, four singles were released in the U.K. They were released elsewhere too, but these are ones U.K. audiences could buy. Two more were released, though they were not U.K. releases. Morning Glory was a U.S./Australia single, whilst Champagne Supernova was released in Australia. The latter would have been a huge hit here! I think Morning Glory should have been released in the U.K. instead of Roll with It. Going up against Blur’s Country House in the summer of 1995, I think it would have won the race to the top of the U.K. chart. That said, Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back in Anger were huge. I am going to tackle the single chronologically. In each case, bringing in some background and reviews for each song. Giving my rating on each of them. From the lead-off single, Some Might Say, to the final U.K. release, Don’t Look Back in Anger, this was a wild ride for a band that achieved world domination! Let’s get down to these distinct and amazing singles. Ones that live to this day and still sound new and thrilling…
Some Might Say (8/10)
U.K. release date: 24th April, 1995
The Backstory:
“Noel has never been shy about his influences, or the fact that he would happily “repurpose” songs he loved in his own work. The Beatles, Bowie and Pink Floyd were obvious touchstones in Oasis songs but the inspiration behind Some Might Say is one of Noel’s more curious lifts, taking its cue from a song by long-forgotten US rockers Grant Lee Buffalo.
“They were an American indie band who had this tune called Fuzzy,” Noel explained in an interview to mark …Morning Glory’s 25th anniversary a few years ago. “You can see it’s a big influence on Some Might Say. I’ll obsess about a song for years and I’ll rip it off 12 times and get 12 different tunes out of it.”
“Everything I do is a nod to something or other,” he continued. “I’m not a genius, I’m a fan of music. Paul McCartney is a genius and Morrissey and Bob Dylan. I’m not, I’m just fans of theirs. I’ve got a good knack of putting shit together but I’m not a snob about where it comes from – I’ll tell you. Nothing is original, there’s only 12 notes anyway.”
The similarities are clear as soon as Fuzzy begins, not so much in anything about the songs themselves – one is a delicate acoustic number and the other is a chugging rocker but both are rooted in a swinging, bluesy riff.
Some Might Say, as Noel explained to Fran Healy in an interview for the Travis frontman’s radio show a few years ago, was written almost a year its release. “When I wrote it, I was living opposite a studio in Chiswick called Eden Studios,” he recalled. “Across the road, they had a house where if you were working at Eden Studios, you could rent one of the rooms. But I wasn’t working there and for some reason I was living there, on the top floor, above Mike Oldfield’s ex-wife, not that that has anything to do with anything. I wrote it over a couple of days in the top flat. I’d just moved to London and was sampling the nightlife of London and I remember coming home at all hours of the morning and writing, which is why the lyrics are quite nonsensical… dogs itching in the kitchen and all that, I was quite hammered when I wrote it. Everybody would read different things into the lyrics and I’d just agree with all of them, going, ‘Yeah, that’s what it is!’.”
Returning from a bout of touring a few months later, Noel was determined to get a demo on tape, not a regular occurrence at the time, he said. “I was so excited about it I wanted to do a demo. At that point, I wasn’t big on doing demos. It was the only demo I did for Morning Glory.”
He contacted Owen Morris, the producer who had rescued Definitely Maybe when sessions weren’t going to plan and who was away working with The Verve on what would become their second record A Northern Soul. “He said, ‘I’m in Wales with The Verve but I think they’re having the weekend off, so why don’t you come down for the weekend?’,” Noel remembered. “I jumped on the train and went to Loco Studios and the demo is actually recorded with all of The Verve’s equipment, it’s me playing the drums and the bass and all that but it’s Nick McCabe’s rig and Simon Jones’ bass.”
It proved to be a journey worth taking – on the way back Noel’s train broke down in the Severn Tunnel and whilst sitting there, he wrote the classic Oasis B-side Acquiesce. “It turned out to be one of the best weekends ever,” he beamed.
The band recorded a new take of Some Might Say for the single release but Noel says he prefers the demo version. “It was a tiny bit slower and a bit more 70s,” he explained. “The way we did it with Oasis was a bit more Britpop. The demo was a bit dirtier and sleazier. The demo was slow and a bit more boozy.”
Released in April 1995, Some Might Say went to Number One and also marked the end of Oasis Mk 1 – original drummer Tony McCarroll plays on the track but by the time it was top of the charts, he had been replaced by Alan White behind the kit.
“It’s a funny song in the Oasis catalogue cos we gave up playing it pretty quickly because Liam struggled with it,” Noel reflected. “It’s probably my favourite Oasis song, I think the chorus is brilliant. I’ve always got fond memories of it” – LOUDER
A Critical Review:
“Who out there’s one of the lucky people going to the Oasis reunion gigs in the summer? If you are and reading this, I hope you have a good time. I could say I was jealous, but I feel all right knowing that the Gallagher brothers are way past their ’20s and probably won’t be as great live as they were 30 years ago. But it’s nice knowing that Noel and Liam seem to be getting along now, or so it seems. I guess everyone will have to wait and see until that big tour starts in July. It’ll be a spectacle, I’m sure. I like a bunch of Oasis songs. Most of them happen to be singles. I got the Stop the Clocks compilation a long time ago, which is an ideal package if you want to start getting into the band. For any artist, the singles are picked ’cause they’re considered to be the best songs. But that’s something that truly applies to Oasis. ‘Some Might Say’ was the first single from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, released in April 1995 – six months in advance of the album. Oasis were already a name in the UK ’cause of Definitely Maybe, and people liked ‘Some Might Say’ so much that it shot straight to number 1 in the charts after its first week.
It’s up there as one of my favourite Oasis songs too. Just like its music video shows, the chugging guitar introduction feels like a rocket ship launching and when the band enters you’re just taken into the stratosphere and never come down from that point on. The song sees Noel Gallagher on some kind of quasi-philosophical line of thinking. “Some might say they don’t believe in heaven/Go and tell it to the man who lives in hell.” “Some might say that we should never ponder on our thoughts today ’cause they hold sway over time.” Some good, good lines. The main line to focus on is the one that precedes the chorus, “Some might say we will find a brighter day.” We all hope for that, don’t we? And then there’s lines about standing at a station in need of education and sinks full of fishes and dirty dishes. The chorus is a bunch of nonsense, but alongside the music, it sounds out of this world.
And like the songs that were listed on Definitely Maybe, ‘Some Might Say’ is designed to be played loud. Guitars levels are boosted to the max, tracks and tracks of overdubs are existing on there. Noel Gallagher’s said before that he doesn’t like the sound of …Morning Glory, but at least to me, this song is where the way it’s loudly mixed works massively to its advantage. Liam Gallagher sings the track very, very well, and I thoroughly enjoy the back and forth between he and Noel during the song’s final moments amidst the feedback and uplifting chord progression. Those guitars that go on and on for the gradual fade-out outro, I could listen to for at least two more minutes, and the story goes that the band kept on playing that outro for a long while after the album’s fade because they were enjoying it so much and didn’t want to stop. I read that somewhere, I’m sure. Or watched Noel say that in a video, I wish I could find it. He does consider it to be one of the band’s finest moments, I have the evidence for that. And as a listener, I wouldn’t argue” – The Music in My Ears
Roll with It (7/10)
U.K. release date: 14th August, 1995
The Backstory:
“Coming out in the autumn of 1995, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? was the soundtrack to a pair of different life-changing events. The first one was my job at a company in San Francisco called Art & Science, an agency that built websites for other companies.
In late 1994, I’d discovered the World Wide Web, so in early 1995 I taught myself HTML, built my own personal web page (which still exists!), and that summer, responding to an ad on Usenet, got myself a temporary gig with Art & Science building the first website for The American Association of Neurological Surgeons.
It was supposed to be a three month gig, but the day after I got it, I walked into the weird, small, libertarian ad agency I’d been working for — the job that allowed me to move from Fresno in the first place — and quit, because I had every confidence in the world that if I worked my ass off, it would become a permanent gig. And that’s what ended up happening, and while I was at Art & Science, I worked on early websites for Joe Boxer and SoCal Gas before I left for the greener pastures of Organic Online.
And throughout that fall I tortured my co-workers with repeated playings of (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? which was both a bit popular and a bit rock ‘n’ roll for the cool younger kids I was working with. But I didn’t care, cos I loved it so much.
You gotta roll with it
You gotta take your time
You gotta say what you say
Don’t let anybody get in your way
‘Cause it’s all too much for me to take
The other major thing that happened was that Rox & I decided to move in together, so the days of flying back-and-forth just to be with each other ended and the days of just being with each other began. And she loved this album as much if not more than I did, so it was a soundtrack to the weekends of apartment hunting in Oakland even more than Definitely Maybe had been the soundtrack of driving around L.A.
Don’t ever stand aside
Don’t ever be denied
You wanna be who you’d be
If you’re coming with me
“Roll With It” has more hooks that a wharf full of bait shops, kicking off with a big echoing guitar, and even bigger before Liam Gallagher slams in, sneer and confidence fully intact leading off with the chorus. Or if it’s not the chorus, it would be the chorus of a lesser song. Given Noel Gallagher’s penchant for writing songs with a shitton of repetition, it’s nearly impossible to know for sure exactly what the chorus is. So it could be this.
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
I think I’m gonna take me away and hide
I’m thinking of things that I just can’t abide
Or maybe it’s this, with Noel’s backing vocals echoing around Liam’s lead.
I know the roads down which your life will drive
(Drive life will drive life will drive)
I find the key that lets you slip inside
(Slip inside slip inside)
Kiss the girl, she’s not behind the door
(Behind the door, behind the door)
But you know I think I recognize your face
But I’ve never seen you before
There’s a really nice drum part here were Alan White double times at the end of the verse (or chorus or bridge). Yeah. It’s a bridge, because it sets up a repeat of the chorus, only this time Noel is doing a totally boss falsetto harmony, and then it goes directly into the guitar solo.
You gotta roll with it
You gotta take your time
You gotta say what you say
Don’t let anybody get in your way
‘Cause it’s all too much for me to take
And’s its a great guitar solo, too, taking its fucking time, because Oasis never cared how long their songs were, especially the catchy ones, and so Noel plays long arcing lines against the echo chamber he’s created, though, if listen carefully, you can hear a cowbell buried in the plethora of percussion they layered on.
There’s a bit more static and noise and echo on (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? than there was on Definitely Maybe, like they were trying to get rockier while at the same time writing poppier tunes. And “Roll With It” pulls off that trick with aplomb, gliding into the coda with squealing guitars and one last Noel / Liam counterpoint vocal.
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay)
Noel’s final vocals fade into the ether as the guitars rise up and take “Roll With It” to its ending, a whole entire universe in a little under four minutes. Say whatever you want about their public personae as complete and utter yobs, they sure as shit knew how to craft a great pop song.
And while “Roll With It” was totally ignored here in the United States, where it was clear that nobody gave a rats ass about Britpop, it was their fifth straight top ten single in the U.K. making it all the way to #2, and they were just getting going” – Medialoper
Critical Reviews:
“The AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine described 'Roll with It' as "an assured stadium rocker that unabashedly steals the crown from Status Quo". David Stubbs from Melody Maker wrote, "This isn't the mounting cascade of manna and adrenalin that was 'Some Might Say' or 'Acquiesce'. It's subdued by comparison, a light shower after that musical thunderstorm, something for us to kick through the puddles to until their next mighty moment of precipitous pop. Rolling along, marking time, fair enough." A reviewer from Music & Media said, "When was it that dance fans predicted the end of rock? By going two steps back to the '60s Oasis takes it six steps forward. So roll over you sceptics, "my my, hey hey, rock 'n' roll is to stay."" Mark Sutherland from NME wrote, "Have no fear, you will la-la-la-like it. It is, after all, a pretty good record." Andrew Harrison from Select named it "Oasis' weakest single, but still far from the Quo travesty of legend, even if the song might conjure visions of flying wetlook perms." Leesa Daniels from Smash Hits gave it two out of five and named it "the weakest track" of the album, "and Liam sounds like he's got a sore throat” - Wikipedia
Wonderwall (10/10)
U.K. release date: 30th October, 1995
The Backstory:
“Liam Gallagher is rarely at a loss for words, snide or otherwise. But during a recent interview with Rolling Stone, the singer was left momentarily speechless after being informed that “Wonderwall,” the monster 1995 ballad he sang with his old band, Oasis, is on its way to approaching 1 billion streams on Spotify.
“That’s pretty big, man,” Gallagher says, finally, as if it took a few seconds for the enormity of that figure to sink in. Then the old Liam, the one who loves to bash his songwriting brother, Noel, returns. “You know who that is — that’s Noel, probably. He sat there for an hour and a half, constantly on that finger, click click, click. That’s why he’s always pointing at people.”
Jokes (and typical Gallagher-brother shtick) aside, “Wonderwall” has become the song that will not die — a Nineties hit that has transcended its era and become a new standard. Released 25 years ago next month on Oasis’ second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, “Wonderwall” regularly streams about 500,000 times a week (or 750,000, if audio and video streams are combined), according to Alpha Data, the data-analytics provider that powers the Rolling Stone Charts. Last year, Rolling Stone’s Tim Ingham estimated that “Wonderwall” was generating about $2,650 in recorded-music royalties on Spotify every 24 hours, or $1 million a year. In recent years, as Ingham notes, it’s been one of the few songs from the previous century to appear in the Spotify Top 200, a chart dominated by new pop, hip-hop, and Latin tracks.
“Wonderwall” stood out the moment it was released, not simply because it didn’t adhere to the hopped-up new-British-Invasion blare Oasis had become known for. A declaration of love and support for someone who was struggling, it didn’t swagger the way the band’s previous songs had; it was openhearted and earnest, with a melody and busker-simple arrangement that made both Oasis and Liam sound vulnerable. From the start, the song felt timeless — a feeling born out by the fact that it’s been covered roughly 100 times. One Direction harmonized to it on a beach; Ryan Adams and Cat Power each turned it into skeletal mood pieces; Paul Anka recast it as big-band lounge tune; LeAnn Rimes made it a pop-country ballad; and pianist Brad Mehldau transformed it into jazz. “Something about ‘Wonderwall’ has always moved me,” says Rimes. “In the Nineties, I was enveloped in full-blown teenage angst, and it was the perfect soundtrack for it” – Rolling Stone
A Critical Review:
“Despite Robson & Jerome denying it the UK top spot, this song went on to become Oasis’s best-selling single in the UK, and it’s not hard to find reasons. Liam’s instantly recognisable vocal tone, of course, must rank high on the list, balancing super-focused midrange, cutting nasality, and (on higher-register lines such as “I don’t believe that anybody” at 0:33) a hint of tastefully grainy break-up.
However, I really rate the drums here too. The choice of brushes is a great production move, as this instinctively feels like it better matches the arrangement’s prominent acoustic guitar and solo cello. Delaying the drummer’s second-verse entry by three beats is also inspired, not only because it’s so unexpected, but because it prevents the drums obscuring the cello’s first entry and also adds stress to Liam’s vocal rhythms on “street that the” — wisely resisting the temptation to plant a snare under the word “backbeat”, which I don’t think would have been nearly as attention-grabbing. And that fill after the first chorus is also a classic!
The harmonies are impressive as well, because of the way Noel manages to puzzle out a satisfying progression using five different chords ( A, B7sus4, D9, Esus4, and F#m7) which all share two notes ( A and E). This means that those notes can be sustained as upper pedal tones pretty much throughout — no wonder U2’s guitarist Edge has apparently said he wishes he’d written ‘Wonderwall’, because those pedal tones would have been ideally suited to his trademark long-tail echo effects.
What mystifies me a little with this song, though, are the disparities between the original album and the version on the band’s Stop The Clocks (2006) and Time Flies (2010) greatest hits collections. Now I can understand why the drum fill after the first chorus appears to have been drastically EQ’d, because the kit was clearly mixed to leave plenty of room for the harmonic and melodic parts, which means it does sound rather thin in isolation at that moment. But why has the entire mix apparently been polarity-inverted for the compilation? I accept that some people feel this makes a sonic difference, but if the improvement were so cut and dried, then it’s curious that the very same mastering engineer didn’t repeat the polarity-inversion move for his 2014 album remaster.
Then there’s the fact that the left and right channels appear to have been swapped for the compilation. Compare the positioning of the clean guitar counterpoint under “all the lights that lead us there are blinding” (1:11), for instance, or the electric guitar’s sustain at the end of chorus one. But what’s weirder is that this doesn’t remain consistent, since the verse sections don’t seem to have been channel-swapped — the opening acoustic guitar is noticeably brighter and pickier on the left side in both cases, for instance. What could possibly have been gained by doing this? It makes no sense to me at all. Yet if it’s a simple goof, then isn’t it actually the kind of thing you’d expect a top-flight mastering house to be quality-controlling for, especially with their highest-profile artists?” – The Mix Review
Don’t Look Back in Anger (9.5/10)
U.K. release date: 19th February, 1996
The Backstory:
“Saturday, April 22, 1995, Sheffield Arena: a momentous Oasis date for two reasons. Sadly for Tony McCarroll, it was his last ever gig drumming for the band. But when one thing ends another begins, and it was in Noel Gallagher’s acoustic set that night that he played ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ for the first time, sandwiched between ‘take Me Away’ and ‘Talk Tonight. “I only wrote this on Tuesday,” he told the crowd, before sort-of dedicating it to The La’s frontman Lee Mavers: “You’ve not heard this one before, mate.” The original inspiration for the song came from Noel Gallagher visiting Paul Weller at The Manor studios in Oxford to play on the track ‘I Walk On Gilded Splinters’. While there, Weller played his song ‘Wings Of Speed’, and that was that.
Things were less simple in the recording studio. It began when Noel played both ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ to Liam, and asked him which one he wanted to sing. Liam chose ‘Wonderwall’, which was committed to tape without a hitch. When the time came to do ‘…Anger’, Liam wasn’t needed so went to the pub. Friendly man that he is, he proceeded to invite around 30 pissed Monmouth locals back to the studio from local boozers The Old Nag’s Head and The Bull. Noel turned up a few hours to find, according to Alan McGee, “half of fucking Monmouth” in his room, and “complete strangers playing with £30,000 worth of guitars”. He adds: “one of them asks him for the number of a cab and Noel kicks them out. A punch-up ensues, and Noel chases Liam out with a cricket bat.”
As Owen Morris tells it: “The next morning, Noel had left. The band was over. The album dead. No one knew if he was coming back. We were all gutted.”
A couple weeks later Noel did come back, and the band got back to business. But the question remains: do any versions of Liam singing ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ exist? Opinions differ. When quizzed by David Huggins of the Oasis Recording Info website, Rockfields Studios engineer Nick Brine said in an email: “My understanding is that Liam did record a vocal on the album version, but I think it was just one run-through for a bit of fun really.” Owen Morris refutes this claim: “Liam absolutely did not sing ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ at any point. Nick Brine’s memory is incorrect”.
But, intriguingly, Noel Gallagher said this to MOJO in 1997: “When I gave [Liam] ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ he’s singing ‘But don’t back in anger, not today’. I’m saying, It’s ‘don’t look back in anger’. ‘He’s saying, ‘Well, that’s not what’s fuckin’ written ‘ere, Chief.’” Whether anything was recorded, and whether it will ever be released, Noel only knows” – NME
A Critical Review:
“Their title-belt rhetoric, Liam’s snarl, and the brick-wall loudness of Oasis’ radio sound made it easy not to notice how thoughtful Noel Gallagher’s lyrics could be. They weren’t especially clever lyrics, or meaningful, or even coherent, but “Whatever” and “Some Might Say” and “Roll With It” and “Wonderwall” and this one all have a reflective streak – bits and bobs of beermat philosophy giving the lie to the idea that Oasis were only a gang of sneering blusterers. Of course, this is more evidence that Oasis weren’t ever really a Britpop band – that scene had an art-pop appreciation for smart, satirical or formally dense lyrics, and even the unworked songs are very knowing about it (“Woo-hoo!”, indeed)
Noel seemed to prefer offhand sincerity, collages of lines that sound good sung, their emotional payoffs poking through puns, rhymes and boilerplate. According to both brothers, the “So, Sally can wait…” line that rouses “Don’t Look Back In Anger” from its slumberous verses was a happy collaborative accident, Liam pouncing on a phrase Noel had pulled from the air and ordering him to keep it. But the whole song feels like a similar patchwork, really good lines – “Please don’t put your life in the hands / Of a rock and roll band” side by side with fumbling about slipping inside the eye of your mind. The magpie phrase-lifting of the title sets the tone for the whole thing.
It might seem perverse to focus on “Don’t Look Back In Anger”’s lyrics, which are a tiny part of why it got to Number One and why it’s one of the band’s milestone tracks. But the rest of it leaves me almost completely cold, even when I can see what it’s up to. The opening piano, a lift from “Imagine”, is one of the group’s least subtle bits of behavioural priming – this is going to be a Big Song, Noel shooting for the Hall of Fame with a pained, ponderous rock ballad. I rarely like that kind of thing, and no surprise, I don’t really like this. It’s a treacly, high-gravity listen – guitars and drums and strings all jostling for space, dragging each other down. And while Liam’s singing wouldn’t have fitted this song’s rueful tone, Noel’s delivery veers between heartfelt and maudlin – particularly when he lets the song fizzle out at the end. Comparisons to “Wonderwall” – with Liam in total, electrifying command of a much tighter arrangement – are inevitable, and don’t flatter this song.
But something I do appreciate about it is that, in the context of rock tear-jerkers and lighter-wavers, the scrappy lyrics are an asset. There’s a sort of story here* – bye, Sal! – but no message or particular claim of wisdom, nothing you’re expected to agree with. Instead, the song flails about in a sump of self-justification and sentimentality, and is all the better for it. I have been drunk, and I have put big, sentimental rock music on when drunk, and felt the beery swell of nameless emotion just out of reach of my befuddled mind, and while I’d never use this track for it, I can recognise that use in it. That just-out-of-reachness – that catalyst for messy, dredged-up, inchoate feels – is the one way “Don’t Look Back In Anger” does stand comparison with “Wonderwall”.
*Though one particular coherent reading did jump out at me – what if that opening steal isn’t just a signal of the type of song this is going to be, but is an explicit admission: this song is Lennon fanfic, and Lennon is its “you”. It’s a fantasy where Noel gets to be John’s buddy – a Mary Stu. “Take me to the place that you go…” – and there’s Noel hanging out in Strawberry Fields, being there at the bed-in, helping him out – saving him, maybe – with some down-to-Earth Gallagher wisdom, vibing off his presence as “Sally” is left behind – no wonder Liam didn’t get to sing this – and kissed off with a snide cultural reference because that’s the kind of thing John Lennon does for Noel, his best friend forever. And there, walking on by, we shall leave them.
Score: 4” – Popular-numer1s