The best Oasis songs of all time

Telegraph

5 hours ago

Speculation about Oasis's setlist when they take to the stage in Cardiff on Friday for the first night of their mammoth 41-date reunion tour has reached fever pitch. Bookies are offering odds on which song they'll play first (Hello and Rock 'n' Roll Star top the list), while streaming services are packed with playlists based on fans' ideal setlists. But these are my picks of the 10 essential Oasis tracks that Messrs Liam and Noel Gallagher should play as the 'Live '25' juggernaut starts rolling.
Readers will note that there's nothing here from after 1997. Had this list been 25 songs long then it might have included later hits including The Importance of Being Idle, The Shock of the Lightning, Little by Little and Go Let It Out. The fact that all of Oasis's best songs were released within three years of their 1994 debut album demonstrates the phenomenal creative burst of those early years. The band continued releasing music and touring until 2009 – some 12 years after their peak – with diminishing creative and commercial returns. While some of their latter output was good, it was unable to come close to the dizzying heights of their imperial phase.
In these songs you'll hear the clear influence of Oasis's beloved Beatles, but also – and perhaps more interestingly – strong traces of the Sex Pistols, T. Rex, Burt Bacharach, The Stone Roses and The Smiths. Songwriter Noel is one of the great cultural sponges of our time. It's a heady stew. There is one omission which may cause lively debate (and perhaps some retrospective anger). Let us know what you think in the comments.
10. Rock 'n' Roll Star (1994)
Talk about a statement of intent. The snarling Rock 'n' Roll Star is the first song on Oasis's first album, Definitely Maybe. Early recordings in Wales's Monnow Valley Studio were jettisoned for not accurately reflecting the heavy sound of Oasis playing live. A second set of recordings at Cornwall's Sawmills Studio were felt to lack oomph too, but were rescued by producer Owen Morris, who brilliantly managed to extract Oasis's amped-up, angry wall of sound. The song could have come from the Sex Pistols's Never Mind the Bollocks album. It's that in-yer-face.
The squalling guitars are one thing – with Noel on lead, and rhythm guitarist Bonehead providing the relentless chug that came to define the early Oasis sound – but what really stand out are Liam's vocals. 'I live my life in the city / There's no easy way out,' he sings at the start of the song with the blistering attack of Johnny Rotten.
The song is about believing you're a rock star even when you're not. 'In my mind my dreams are real… Tonight, I'm a rock 'n' roll star.' Astonishingly, the song was written in 1992, the year before Oasis signed to Creation Records. It really was a case of dreaming big. First it was wish fulfilment. Then it became reality – and an unmistakable anthem.
9. Half the World Away (1994)
Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher has never shied away from his love of Burt Bacharach. Indeed, a portrait of the late American easy listening composer appears on the sleeve of the band's debut album Definitely Maybe (it's there on the left, up against the sofa). And nowhere is this affection clearer than on Half the World Away, a song that Gallagher has freely admitted sounds like Bacharach's 1968 track This Guy's in Love with You.
Released as a B-side to Oasis's 1994 Christmas single Whatever (which was held off the number one slot by Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You and East 17's Stay Another Day), the song saw Noel take on lead vocal duties. It's a sad, yearning track about dreaming of escaping a small town that 'don't smell too pretty'. Noel is 'still scratchin' around in the same old hole', while his 'body feels young but my mind is very old'. It's an extraordinarily mature track to have been written by a man in his 20s.
Readers might know Half the World Away as the theme tune to Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash's BBC sitcom The Royle Family, which ran for three series from 1998 to 2000, with specials from 2006 to 2012. The breezy song perfectly captures the comedy show's gentle wistfulness and sense of small town ennui.
8. The Masterplan (1995)
It's another Noel-sung track. Orchestra-laden ballad The Masterplan is one of Oasis's finest offerings because it showcases Gallagher's knack of building a melody like few other songs.
It opens with a descending bassline over a mournfully strummed acoustic guitar before stirring strings add an eerie sense of drama. Noel's softly sung lyrics are the usual surreal pseudo-mystical twaddle ('sail them [your words] home with acquiesce on a ship of hope today') until we reach the song's bridge, when he takes it up a notch. 'Say it loud and sing it proud today,' he sings before the chorus kicks in, replete with celestial horns and an earworm vocal hook.
The song, which was a B-side to Wonderwall, has been a staple of Noel's concerts with his High Flying Birds solo band since 2015. He has said it's one of the best songs he's ever written. Should fans expect this song to appear on the reunion show setlist at the midway point when Liam goes off for a comfort break and Noel does some acoustic numbers? Definitely maybe.
7. Some Might Say (1995)
Oasis's first number one single found the band at their swaggering best. Some Might Say is all the more powerful for being mid-paced rather than unrelentingly uptempo. Its guitar riff might be noticeably similar to T. Rex's Get It On, but the song cemented the band's position as one of the Britpop era's finest bands.
It was the first single from their second album (What's The Story) Morning Glory?, and it marked the arrival of Oasis Mk II in more ways than one. Original drummer Tony McCarroll was sacked just after the song's release; he appeared on Top of the Pops only to be replaced behind the kit by Alan White for another TOTP appearance just a week later.
Some Might Say was released with some incredible other songs. B-sides included Talk Tonight, a Noel-sang acoustic number that nearly made this list, and Acquiesce, a track that did. Oasis's imperial phase had well and truly begun.
6. Champagne Supernova (1995)
The closing track from Oasis's second album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? is a dreamy slice of psychedelia that's likely to appear in the encore of their reunion shows. Yes, its verse contains that scientifically improbable couplet ('slowly walking down the hall / faster than a cannonball') but the song finds Liam delivering one of his most anthemic, singalong choruses.
With a guitar solo courtesy of Paul Weller, the song is epic in almost every way, from the lapping waves of its intro and its echo-laden guitars that bring to mind Fleetwood Mac's Albatross to its languorous drum shuffle, full-on backing vocal wig-out at the five minute mark and its extended fade-out coda.
When former Oasis guitarist Bonehead (who's back in the fold for the reunion tour) first heard the song, he said he 'fell apart'. 'I was a blubbering wreck on the floor,' Bonehead said in a 2004 interview. The song was such an integral part of the band's DNA that Noel famously named his North London party house after it (Supernova Heights). But history shows that Champagne Supernova was Oasis at their widescreen and immoderate best, just before their excess tipped into extravagant self-parody on Morning Glory's bloated follow-up album, Be Here Now.
5. Stay Young (1997)
'Hey, stay young and invincible,' sang Liam on the B-side of the overblown July 1997 single D'You Know What I Mean? If it's a mystery why such a crunchingly upbeat and joyous song didn't make it onto the band's third album Be Here Now, then it's a travesty that the track was apparently passed over for that record in favour of the mirthless, seven minutes-plus dirge of Magic Pie, not Noel's finest decision.
Like many of Oasis's best non-album tracks, Stay Young appeared on 1998's The Masterplan B-sides compilation and off-cuts album (along with three other tracks in this top 10). It's a belter of a song. Set against a howling wall of sound, the track is a powerful invocation of youth in the face of the limiting strictures of The Man, who's always keen to put us down, apportion blame and make us question our hearts and souls.
The song has particular poignancy for this writer as it was released the week that I graduated from university, a time of fond farewells and a period in which empowerment and insecurity collided like never before. 'Come what may, we're unstoppable,' sang Liam in the chorus. Me and my friends all joined in that week, hoping he was right, drinks aloft, woozily embracing on the cusp of new dawns.
4. Wonderwall (1995)
More than Blur's Girls and Boys and more than Pulp's Common People, Oasis's Wonderwall was the indie anthem of the mid-Nineties. If you haven't stood on a chair somewhere and sung this song surrounded by other people doing precisely the same thing, then you're probably not aged between 40 and 55. Wonderwall was the second single from (What's the Story) Morning Glory? and was held off the number one slot in the UK charts by saccharine TV duo Robson & Jerome. But 30 years later, Wonderwall is the second most streamed song from the Nineties on Spotify with 2.38 billion streams (behind Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit with 2.45 billion; Robson & Jerome's I Believe, you'll be glad to know, has just 2.9 million streams).
Likely to have been written about Noel's then-girlfriend Meg Mathews (later his wife, now his last-but-one ex-wife), the ballad is set to a shuffling drumbeat. Liam sings it, having been given a choice between Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger, the Imagine pastiche that Noel sings (and which didn't make this list). The cello sound on Wonderwall is actually a Mellotron, played by Bonehead, while the 'strings' were played by producer Morris on a Kurzweil synth.
Noel debuted the song backstage at Glastonbury in 1995, the year that Oasis headlined, and his performance was broadcast on Channel 4. Wonderwall became such a staple that a retro easy listening cover version by Mike Flowers Pops, released two months after Oasis's version, was thought by many radio listeners to have been the original version.
3. Acquiesce (1995)
I would be staggered if Oasis don't open the Live '25 reunion shows with Acquiesce, an upbeat duet between the Gallaghers about brotherly love. 'Because we need each other / We believe in one another,' Noel sings in the chorus as a counterpoint to Liam's verses. Given the vitriol that has passed between the pair since Oasis split up in 2009, it would be a lovely moment of reconciliation.
These sentiments, and a neat structure that melds a punky bounce with that singalong chorus, elevate Acquiesce above other Oasis bangers. Like three other songs on this list, it was initially released as a B-side (to Some Might Say). It's a mark of how enduring the song is that it has been covered by bands like The Killers and Good Charlotte and featured on various TV shows and films, including 2005's Goal!.
On hearing the song for the first time, Creation Records boss Alan McGee was convinced it should be a single. Noel, being naturally disinclined to do anything he's told by anyone in authority, did precisely the opposite of what his boss wanted. But it appeared on The Masterplan compilation and is unquestionably one of the band's finest moments.
2. Live Forever (1994)
In the reams of literature that have accompanied the Oasis reunion, it has been often pointed out that this song symbolised the key difference between Britpop and Grunge, the US guitar genre that was the world's dominant music trend in the early Nineties. While Grunge kingpins Nirvana released a song in November 1993 called I Hate Myself and Want to Die, Britain's Oasis released a song called Live Forever nine months later. The difference in outlook hardly needs elaborating on.
Live Forever is many people's favourite Oasis song and arguably their signature tune. Apparently inspired by the Rolling Stones' Shine a Light, it's a glimmering gem of a track that Noel says was the first proper song he ever wrote. He penned it when he was recovering from an accident when working for a British Gas subcontractor (a big bolt landed on his foot). Whiling away days in the storeroom and unable to walk, he brought in his guitar. The rest is history.
It became Oasis's first top 10 hit in the UK when it was released in the summer of 1994. I remember being in the car of someone I knew who didn't strike me as a typical Oasis fan. He told me that he 'needed his hit' and put a cassette of Live Forever on, another sign that the band was transcending the narrow confines of the 'northern indie band' label.
1. Slide Away (1994)
The outstanding proof that amid the swagger and the swearing existed a band capable of writing the most exquisite love songs. Slide Away is the majestic penultimate track on Definitely Maybe. A mid-paced number, it combines granite with grace like nothing they've done since. I remember being astounded that a band so ostensibly tough could be so downright sensitive and soppy. And I liked them all the more for it.
Slide Away has it all: intriguingly structured verses that end on a shortened metrical pattern to create mini cliffhangers ('I wonder where you are now'); a killer bridge in which Liam declares his feelings to a sweetheart ('Slide in, baby, together we'll fly') but admits that he's unsure of where he stands; and a two-part chorus that is pure escapist romance. 'Now that you're mine / We'll find a way of chasing the sun… Let me be the one that shines with you / And we can slide away,' Liam sings.
He delivers these lines slightly ahead of the chord changes, suggesting a man in a giddy rush to start chasing the aforementioned sun. 'Let me…', though. There's a begging edge to it. As on Rock 'n' Roll Star, Liam is again the underdog here. But it's sung with utter conviction, with Liam's fantastic voice fraying at the sheer man-on-the-ropes emotion of it.
Noel composed Slide Away on the Gibson Les Paul guitar on which The Smiths' Johnny Marr wrote The Queen is Dead. I recall U2's Bono raving about the song at the time of its release, proof that Oasis had truly crossed over into culture's mainstream. Slide Away might not be Oasis's best-known song, but it's their best. And it has only improved with age.