"Oasis came along with this total F-ck You attitude and swagger and said, "We're the best band on the planet and you're not." I mean you might be offended by it but how could you not admire somebody who comes along and says that?" - Lars Ulrich (Metallica)
"Oasis was definitely like a f-cking Ferrari; great to look at, great to drive and it'd f-cking spin out of control every now and again when it’d go too fast." - Liam Gallagher (2016)
Where to even being with this band, the band that saved my life and made me the happiest, most confident and optimistic I've ever been in my entire life, as cliche as it is to say.
Flash back to late Spring/early Summer 2017, a month after I had graduated college; I was depressed, I hated myself, in the midst of tumultuous girl drama and didn't want to live. As dark as that is to say, its true. Coming off a two month long bender of cheap college beer and Jack Daniel’s, I was in complete denial of what the next chapter in my life was. I was listening to the dark music from Alkaline Trio, Matt Skiba & The Sekrets and Guns N' Roses songs about depression, mental illness and isolation, it was only fitting and I could relate to it. I’d sleep until 3:00 in the afternoon and only leave my bed to eat dinner, then go right back to bed and lay awake until sunrise, trapped with my thoughts and misery. Fed up with this and looking for a change, I realized I would have to do something different in order to get myself out of the cycle I had been trapped in.
Looking for new music, I had stumbled upon an hour and fifteen long video of this band Oasis; I thought to myself, "Oasis? Did they just play "Wonderwall," for an hour and fifteen straight?" I clicked on the video and saw 60,000 people crammed into a soccer stadium to see the Manchester band play the last of a 3 night homestead at the home of their beloved football team, Manchester City F.C. The band came out and the place erupted; as Noel approached the mic, he exclaimed, "before we go any further, all you gotta do is if anyone falls down, pick em' up because its gonna get f-cking nuts."
Drummer Zak Starkey (Ringo's son) counts off...1....2....1..2..3..4.. They kicked it off with the opening track Turn Up the Sun. 60,000 people are jumping and yelling, beer is flying everywhere and it lasted a total of 36 seconds before the band had to stop playing. The crowd had gone so berserk in those 36 seconds that they literally broke the barrier to the stage. After the barrier was fixed, the show resumed Noel said to the crowd, "Alright we're gonna go, lets see if we make it to the end." 1....2....1..2..3..4.. The band resumes and gives it a second go... wait for the drop....the band erupts. Never had I ever heard such a full-sounding band, never had I seen such a crowd act in the way they did, it was everything I had been searching for my entire life. After the first song I thought, there was no way they had more tunes to match the energy and explosiveness from what I just heard, and sure enough, they did. Chills... chills I'll remember for the rest of my life, chills I still get almost two years after I'd seen it for the first time. From that moment, I was sold, Oasis became my band.
After feeling a surge of excitement, inspiration and a reason to wake up in the morning, all I could think about was how excited I was to learn more about the band and discover their music to fully immerse myself in. Some of the first few tracks that became instant favorites were “Supersonic,” “Don't Look Back In Anger,” “The Masterplan,” and of course, my favorite song of all time, “Live Forever.” At the time Noel had written the anthem, it was in the height of the Grunge era and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana had penned a song entitled, "I Hate Myself and I Want to Die," Noel then said:
"Well, I'm not f-cking having that as much as I f-cking like him and all that sh-t, I'm not having that. Kids don't need to be hearing that nonsense. Seems to me that here was a guy who had everything and was miserable about it. We had fuck-all, and I still thought that getting up in the morning was the greatest thing ever because you didn't know where you'd end up at night. We didn't have a pot to piss in, but it was f-cking great, man.”
Rewind back to August 1994, it's four months after Kurt Cobain had died and Grunge was essentially dead. Society needed something to give them a kick in the ass, something new, and that thing was Oasis. Oasis dropped their debut album, Definitely Maybe in August 1994 and became an overnight sensation. They were rude, they were arrogant, they were better than everyone and they were what the world needed. Definitely Maybe then reached number 1 on the charts in the U.K. and in October 1995 the band released their follow-up, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? To this date, Morning Glory has sold 22 million copies and is the third highest selling studio album in the U.K. The Gallagher brothers had shot to stardom, the band started selling out arenas and and stadiums and in August 1996, just two years after they had released their debut album, the biggest band in the world headlined and played and sold out Knebworth, a legendary open field in England where they played to 250,000 people over the span of two days...yeah, they were THAT big.
I'm a never-ending encyclopedia about this band, so for our sake, I'm going to stop rambling and just provide a list of their best tunes that aren't Wonderwall.
Now, you're ready to fly.
1. Live Forever
2. Champagne Supernova
3. Don't Look Back in Anger
4. Some Might Say
5. Acquiesce
6. Slide Away
7. Rock 'n' Roll Star
8. Roll With It
9. Supersonic
10. Let There Be Love
11. Cigarettes & Alcohol
12. The Masterplan
13. Morning Glory
14. Whatever
15. Be Here Now
16. Underneath The Sky
17. Go Let it Out
18. Half The World Away
19. Gas Panic
20. D'You Know What I Mean?
21. Stay Young
22. Shock of the Lightning
23. She's Electric
24. Round Are Way
25. **Let's All Make Believe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj-xOkHtHRg)
26. Going Nowhere
27. Talk Tonight
28. Little By Little
29. Don't Go Away
30. Lyla
31. Up in the Sky
32. Where Did it All Go Wrong?
33. The Importance of Being Idle
34. All Around The World
35. It's Gettin‘ Better (Man!!!)
36. Listen Up
37. My Big Mouth
38. Columbia
39. The Fame
40. Who Feels Love?
41. Fade Away
42. Rockin' Chair
43. Turn Up The Sun
44. Mucky Fingers
45. Songbird
46. Falling Down
47. Roll it Over
48. I'm Outta Time
49. Hello
50. The Turning
51. Bring it on Down
** Denotes song not available on Spotify
Just wanted to say I loved this list and article and really connected with it! I found Oasis at a similar time in my life, mid-20s feeling like my world was really depressing and bleak. Oasis is the perfect band to save you from that feeling. Not to go back to Wonderwall, but Noel’s quote about the song explains their appeal so well: “It’s about an imaginary friend who’s gonna come and save you from yourself”.