Released in October 1995, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? turned Oasis from the most exciting guitar band in Britain into a genuine phenomenon. The sound is enormous and uncomplicated: Noel Gallagher's Lennon-worshipping melodies, rhythm guitars stacked until they shimmer, Liam's sneer pitched somewhere between reverence and contempt. The record captures a very specific moment when British working-class confidence was spilling over into stadium-sized music, and the country was briefly convinced it was the coolest place on earth. Fans who come back to it are chasing that particular combination of romantic grandeur, bruising directness, and an absolute certainty that the song you are listening to is the greatest thing ever recorded. That feeling runs through an era, a city, and a constellation of records and films that reward every corner you turn.
Essential Oasis
The records that define the Gallagher catalogue, from the debut's punk-swagger to the post-peak epics.
The Britpop Map
The records that shared a moment, a geography, and a belief that British guitar music had reclaimed the world.
If the Sound Goes Back Further
The classic rock and soul records Noel Gallagher sampled, borrowed from, and openly worshipped.
Rock Biopics with the Same Ambition
Films about artists who chased greatness so hard the chase became the story.
Films and Series with That 1990s Energy
The same working-class confidence, British-city restlessness, and sense that the world was about to be yours.
Books That Live in the Same Noise
Fiction and memoir soaked in music, ambition, and the specific texture of British life in the 1980s and 1990s.
Definitely Maybe is the better album
Morning Glory is bigger, slicker, and more confidently arranged, but Definitely Maybe sounds like it was recorded by people who genuinely believed nothing could stop them. Rock 'n' Roll Star, Supersonic, and Live Forever have a hunger that the follow-up replaced with polish. The debut is a room full of smoke and borrowed amps; the follow-up is a stadium. Both are worth your time, but Definitely Maybe is the one that still sounds like a shock.
Britpop needed the rivalry
The Blur vs Oasis chart battle of August 1995, Country House against Roll With It, was cynically stage-managed and also completely real. It gave both bands an enemy and gave the public a reason to care about guitar singles in the age of the album. Blur won the chart. Oasis won the war. The records they each made in the aftermath, The Great Escape and Morning Glory, were both shaped by having someone to beat. Music benefits from friction.
Oasis and the Era They Owned
- 1991Oasis form in Manchester from the ashes of The Rain.
- 1993Signed to Creation Records after Alan McGee sees them play a Glasgow club.
- 1994Debut single Supersonic released. Definitely Maybe follows in August, fastest-selling debut in UK chart history at the time. Definitely Maybe
- 1995Morning Glory released in October. Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger become defining anthems of the decade.
- 1996Knebworth concerts: 250,000 people across two nights, the largest concerts in UK history at that point.
- 1997Be Here Now arrives amid tabloid hysteria and becomes the fastest-selling UK album ever. Reviews sour within weeks. Be Here Now
- 2000Standing on the Shoulder of Giants marks a quieter, more psychedelic direction. Standing on the Shoulder of Giants
- 2009Liam and Noel Gallagher split at a Paris festival. Oasis ends without a farewell show.
- 2024Oasis announce a reunion tour for 2025, ending 15 years of public sibling hostility.
We're not arrogant, we just believe we're the best band in the world.Noel Gallagher