1. “Rock ’N’ Roll Star” (Definitely Maybe)
This is the obvious choice for kicking off an Oasis selected playlist. The opener of their debut album, it’s the closest Noel Gallagher ever came to formulating a manifesto for the band; bright, bolshy, frenetic hard rock, with lyrics about escaping life on the dole in a city ravaged by Thatcherism, and with a surprising shoegaze twist in the tale.
2. “Live Forever” (Definitely Maybe)
Definitely Maybe might be “the last British punk album”, as Noel put it, but it’s punctuated by moments of telling vulnerability, none more effecting than “Live Forever.” The song’s uplifting insistence on the preciousness of life comes from a place of immense pain; it sounds fragile, desperate, almost imploring, which is why it’s such a believable riposte to the solipsistic miserabilism of grunge.
3. Morning Glory ([What’s the Story] Morning Glory?)
Everyone loves Morning Glory for the pissed-up singalongs, but in fact, the album’s standout moments are its least crowd-pleasing; the confrontational and antagonistic “Hello”, the weary lament of “Cast No Shadow”, and in particular, the rollicking and belligerent title track, a bad-tempered anthem to coming down from cocaine and walking to the sound of your favourite tune.
4. Don’t Look Back in Anger ([What’s the Story] Morning Glory?)
This seems to have become Oasis’ signature song, their primary vehicle for facilitating quasi-religious collective experiences. There’s no denying its greatness; warm, humane, dramatic; it’s got a great guitar solo; and the chorus is designed to get masses of inebriated people howling like a pack of wolves. Just don’t pay too much attention to the nonsensical lyrics.
5. Supersonic (Definitely Maybe)
Oasis’ first single and it’s a strange mixture of fuck-you defiance on the one hand, and oddly melancholic resignation on the other. You need to be yourself, you can be no one else – a liberating but constricting sentiment – and yet, having said that, you can have it all, depending on how much you want it. So which is it? Catholic self-acceptance through a recognition of original sin, or relentless protestant self-improvement?
6. D’You Know What I Mean? (Be Here Now)
Let’s face it, Noel’s lyrics are frequently unapologetically – even obnoxiously – meaningless (“slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball?”) And yet he occasionally nails it, most notably on the opening song of Be Here Now, a grandiose, cocksure, but subtly nihilistic seven-minute mastodon in which he implores us to “get up off the floor and believe in life”, even as he describes meeting his maker and making Him cry.
7. The Importance of Being Idle
The most excruciating aspect of latter-day Oasis is Noel’s abiding fealty to the imagined spirit of life-affirming euphoria that perceivably infused the late 90s, which he is constantly trying to recapture on records like “Hindu Times” and “Go Let It Out.” At no point does it sound authentic, and anyway, it’s based on a misconception of what originally made Oasis great (see the ambivalence at the heart of “Live Forever”, as described above). However, when he accepts the self-doubt and deflation that inevitably accompany ageing, he narrates it brilliantly – especially on the sinister and burned out “Importance of Being Idle.”
8. Gas Panic! (Standing on the Shoulder of Giants)
Exhibit B is “Gas Panic!”, by far the standout track on turn-of-the-century shit tip Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. Apparently this song marks the point when Noel started having panic attacks and quit coke, and it sounds like a first doleful, then demonic séance. Tonight, he’s not a rock’n’roll star; he’s begging for “an hour to sing for his soul” and cowering before the “tongueless ghost of sin” creeping through his curtains. Quite brilliant.
9. Falling Down (Dig Out Your Soul)
Exhibit C is one of the few interesting songs that Oasis managed to conjure during their death throes. Crashing, distressed, even despairing, and evocative of the same blank nihilism that lies at the centre of “D’You Know What I Mean?”, but with less humor and swagger. That said, though Noel may have tried to talk to God to no avail, the time he spent listening to the Doves obviously paid off.
10. The Masterplan (The Masterplan)
You can play this song at my funeral, which will come sooner rather than later if I ever have to listen to Don’t Believe the Truth again. It’s gobsmacking that Noel tossed this sad, stately, cosmically beautiful ballad away as a B-side, but maybe Oasis fans should just accept that fact rather than constantly complaining about it, because after all, even a work of genius like this one is part of a masterplan.