Oasis: every album re-reviewed and ranked
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The announcement, on August 27, that Noel and Liam Gallagher have settled their long-running feud and agreed to reunite indie legends Oasis for a massive stadium tour in 2025 caused ripples of excitement across the globe.
The rise, fall and rise again of the Gallagher brothers' band has been well documented. In 1993, the Manchester quintet wowed Creation Records boss Alan McGee with a bottom-of-the-bill performance at King Tuts in Glasgow: just three years later, at the height of the BritPop movement they helped drive, 2.6 million people, approximately five per cent of the UK population at the time, applied for tickets for their brace of concerts at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire.
In between, Noel Gallagher established himself as rock's finest songwriting magpie, his younger brother Liam picked fights with half the planet, and their band generated endless tabloid headlines, picked up countless awards, and delivered one of the best debut albums and some of the most perfect singles of any band in history. Now, 15 years after they broke up following a backstage fight in Paris, they're coming back, and the buzz around the group has never been louder.
Between 1994 and 2008, Oasis released seven studio albums, and one of the finest B-sides collections ever compiled. Here they are, ranked from the worst to the best.
8. Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants (2000)
The lowest point of Oasis’ career by some distance, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants is a bizarre album. It actually starts really well, with the introductory instrumental Fuckin’ in the Bushes (later utilised by Liam Gallagher as his live intro music), and first single Go Let It Out, which features a proper earworm chorus.
There's also Gas Panic! - written about the anxiety Noel Gallagher felt in his darkest hours following cocaine binges - which struck a chord with men of a certain age who were no longer quite as 'mad for it' as they were in 1994, and remains a fan favourite. But the drop in quality beyond this that is quite astonishing.
Two sloppy, Noel-fronted, back-to-back AOR plodders (Where Did It All Go Wrong and Sunday Morning Call) and the pedestrian glam of I Can See a Liar are bad, but nothing the band ever released comes close to the horror of Liam's first songwriting effort, the sappy, saccharine Little James. The inclusion of that terrible song alone cements SOTSOG’s place at the bottom of the pile here.
7. Dig Out Your Soul (2008)
The final Oasis album, released just 10 months before the infamous backstage ding-dong in Paris that led to the band's break-up, is a rather sad way for a once untouchable group to go out.
As with all their albums, Dig Out Your Soul features a couple of decent singles, with Noel's The Shock of the Lightning an obvious highlight, and Liam's I'm Outta Time tee-ing up expectations for his subsequent solo career. But the most damning thing you can say about the album is that the majority of it just passes by unnoticed: for a band who were once a national obsession, this was nowhere near good enough.
6. Heathen Chemistry (2002)
It’s not massive praise to say that Heathen Chemistry marked a clear upgrade from the disastrous Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, and Oasis album number five does have its problems, the most obvious one being that the band should never have been allowed to produce themselves.
But Heathen Chemistry scores high for featuring a set of hugely anthemic singles: Little By Little, Songbird and the genuinely excellent Stop Crying Your Heart Out might be a bit schmaltzy, but they manage to tug at the heartstrings in the intended manner. Chuck in the garage slink of The Hindu Times - Oasis by way of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - the enjoyable Hung In A Bad Place and Better Man, and this is a decent collection which restored faith in the band at the time.
5. Don’t Believe The Truth (2005)
The best album by the non-classic line-up by some distance, Don’t Believe The Truth is the closest that Oasis ever came to putting out a record close to the consistency of their earliest material.
Lead single Lyla, a fantastic strutter of a tune, was a great way to start getting people back onside, but Noel going full Dylan on Mucky Fingers, the punky The Meaning Of Soul and the dreamy pop of Andy Bell's Keep The Dream Alive all back it up brilliantly. Throw in Gem Archer's A Bell Will Ring, and Noel's The Importance Of Being Idle, a song many claim is the band’s final great moment, and this is a set of songs which promised much for Oasis' second act.
4. Be Here Now (1997)
Notorious for its length, its excess and its cost, Be Here Now has become a classic cautionary tale for any band who hit it big to keep their feet on the ground. It’s a fair message, as this is a record that is often laugh out loud hilarious in its OTT nature, but, listening back to it today, it’s actually aged rather well.
D’ya Know What I Mean is a monumentally huge opening statement, the chorus to Stand By Me remains iconic, and the likes of My Big Mouth and I Hope, I Think, I Know are fantastically underrated. Plus, although they’d hate the comparison, Oasis sound like a lager-fuelled Bon Jovi on Fade In-Fade Out, a compliment by the way.
We still have no idea why the mad Mancs made All Around the World nearly ten minutes long - actually, that's a lie, we do, it's blatantly down to over-indulgence with cocaine - but it doesn’t detract from the fact that Be Here Now is much better than you remember.
3. The Masterplan (1998)
Yes, we know, it's not an studio album, and ordinarily B-sides and rarities collections would not be included for consideration on a list such as this. But such was the prolific nature of Noel Gallagher’s songwriting in the early years of Oasis that it feels insane not to include a set of songs as good as this here.
The fact that the likes of Fade Away, Half the World Away, Talk Tonight and the title track are as well-known and beloved as pretty much any song in Oasis’ back catalogue says it all. Plus, The Masterplan opens with the sublime Acquiesce, a song that not only might be the finest of the band's entire career, but one which feels like the perfect encapsulation of Liam and Noel’s individual strengths.
2. (What’s The Story) Morning Glory (1995)
Naming the best two Oasis albums is something of a cliché at this point, but it’s a cliché for a reason, they really are, comfortably, leagues ahead of the rest of the band’s discography.
(What’s The Story) Morning Glory was an absolute smash when it arrived, breaking records for sales and chart positions in the UK, and delivering a set of songs that have crossed over into the lexicon of British culture to the point where you can’t imagine meeting someone who doesn’t know all the words to Wonderwall.
To be fair, pretty much every track here sounds like a single, and deeper cuts such as Hello and Cast No Shadow are just as good as Don’t Look Back In Anger and Some Might Say. But it’s Champagne Supernova that really is the superstar here, a song with a breadth and ambition way beyond anything the band had attempted up until that point. They’d never get as close to it again either. It's a cultural monolith, certainly, but this is a great album first and foremost.
1. Definitely Maybe (1994)
So, what could come above one of the best-selling albums in UK chart history? Only one of the greatest debut albums in history.
The debate between which is the superior of the first two Oasis albums has raged for decades, but in our opinion, this is something of a no brainer. Where … Morning Glory has a couple of songs that were good but not great, the weakest moment on Definitely Maybe is still a minimum 8/10, and the majority of it is 10/10 perfect.
Seriously, can you name another album with an opening trilogy like Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, Shakermaker and Live Forever? That’s a pretty strong shout for the most staggering introduction in the history of rock. And that’s before we get into Supersonic, Slide Away, Cigarettes And Alcohol... There are bands who have had careers lasting multiple decades with greatest hits collections that look puny, irrelevant and full of filler when put next to these songs.
Definitely Maybe is a timeless, ageless classic, comprised solely of huge rock 'n' roll tunes with Godzilla-sized choruses and lyrics that make you feel like you’re the centre of the fucking universe. It turned its creators into the hottest band on the planet and it’s hands down the greatest album Oasis ever recorded.
