Oasis

The band existed before its songwriter joined it. Formed in Manchester in 1991 by Liam Gallagher, Paul Arthurs, Paul McGuigan and Tony McCarroll, it acquired Noel Gallagher a few months later, and he promptly took charge: de facto leader, and sole writer of the first four albums. That arrangement produced both the records and the eventual problem.

What they were good at is the simplest thing in rock and the hardest to fake. Noel wrote melodies that sound like they already existed, built on chord shapes anyone could learn in an afternoon, and Liam sang them with a sneer that made unremarkable lines land like a personal challenge. The lyrics rarely bear inspection. That was never the point: these are songs designed to be shouted by a very large number of people at once, and no British band of the era did it better.

They became the most globally successful group of the Britpop years and one of the most influential British rock bands of any era. The trajectory after the first two albums is the familiar one: enormous ambition, thinning discipline, a third record that mistook volume for size, then a longer, steadier middle period with the writing shared out and the fires banked. The later albums are better than their reputation. Nothing after 1995 has the same weather.