Everyone and their mom know Oasis’s 1995 smash hit Wonderwall. For many, Wonderwall is representative of a whole generation of nineties British rock, known as Britpop. And yet, Wonderwall is only a part of Oasis’s award-winning, four-time-platinum album, (What’s The Story?) Morning Glory. Widely recognized as one of the defining albums of the nineties, What’s The Story (as it will be referred to for the rest of this paper) has gone on to become an important part of the British musical canon and has influenced the new generation of British rock. Oasis and What’s The Story were able to reach their level of success through two main factors: the accessibility and openendedness of What’s The Story’s lyrical themes and Oasis’s reflection and representation of working-class British culture.
Description
But Oasis weren’t born superstars. The band was formed by Liam Gallagher, Paul (Bonehead) Arthurs, Paul McGuigan, and Tony McCarroll in 1991, with Liam’s brother, Noel Gallagher joining later. Oasis’s first album, Definitely Maybe, was well received and instantly marked them as one of the leading bands of the early to mid-nineties Britpop movement. The Britpop movement (sometimes used interchangeably with the phrase “cool Britania”) was defined by a new era of British music and art that celebrated its “Britishness”. Stan Hawkins (2010) describes Britpop’s influences in his article Unsettling Differences: Music and Laddism in Britpop:
“It was as if Britpop held up a mirror to all that was quintessentially British, its musical influences impossible to conceal: the Mod movement (the Who, the Kinks, the Small Faces), 1970s glam (David Bowie, T.Rex, Roxy Music), punk and the New Wave (the jam, the Buzzcocks, Wire, Madness, Squeeze, Elvis Costello), the Stone Roses, the Smiths, and, of course, the Beatles. At any rate Britpop’s crafty blend of style and coolness harked back to the late 1960s, reconstructing a national style of bonds and boundaries.” (Hawkins, 2010, p. 145)
This movement focused not only on the revamping of British arts and culture but also served as an alternative for the darker, heavier, American grunge movement going on. Compared to the gritty-sounding, nihilistic, grunge, Britpop was melodic and focused on themes of the British working-class lifestyle. As one of few Britpop bands that actually came from the background they wrote about, Oasis was poised to find success. But Oasis was coming into a genre that already had been developing for the past five or so years. Bands like Suede, Blur, Pulp, the La’s, and even Inspiral Carpets (a band Noel was a roadie for) already had established fanbases and soundscapes.
So when 1994’s Definitely Maybe topped the charts and found popular and critical success, Oasis found themselves toe to toe with bands like Blur, culminating in “The Battle of Britpop” where both bands released singles on the same day (Oasis with Roll With It and Blur with Country House), competing to see who would take number one on the British charts. And while Blur won that specific battle, What’s The Story firmly placed Oasis as the leaders of Britpop and members of British rock history.
The album opens up with Hello, a rambunctious and celebratory track where Liam literally sings out “Hello, hello” and “It’s good to be back, it’s good to be back” (Oasis, 1995). According to Noel, the song calls back to Definitely Maybe’s themes of Oasis’s dreams to become rock stars, “If Definitely Maybe was about dreaming about being in a band, this one is actually about being in a band,” (Buskin, 2012). This thematic movement from dreams to real life suits reality and prepares the listener for the rest of the album.
The next song, Roll With It, encourages the listener to get over themselves and essentially, roll with it. This song thematically harkens back to a common Oasis message, do not complain, just do what you have to do. This thematic cliche reminds the listener of Oasis’s blue-collar background and is undeniably relatable for skilled and unskilled workers, students, youth, and really just about anyone. The song itself is simple but catchy, and while it does not stand out musically amongst other tracks on the album, it is undeniably easy to and enjoyable to listen to.
Next on the album are the beloved Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back In Anger. Considered some of the best works of the decade, both songs are quasi-ballads that build into complex pop-rock symphonies. And while the songs are lyrically very vague, they can be loosely connected to the idea of some sort of problematic situation and love, whatever that love be. In a 2002 interview with the BBC Noel said, “[Wonderwall]’s a song about an imaginary friend who’s gonna come and save you from yourself,” (BBC News, 2002). The thematic vagueness of both songs combined with vulnerable and relatable lyrics like “There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how (Wonderwall),” (Oasis, 1995) and “Please don’t put your life in the hand / Of a rock ‘n’ roll band / Who’ll throw it all away (Don’t Look Back),” (Oasis, 1995) make listeners feel connected to Oasis’s lyrics, but can also interpret the songs for themselves.
Skipping some songs, the next standouts are Some Might Say and Cast No Shadow. Some Might Say very simply is a song about Noel’s childhood, but it really focuses on the contrast between disillusionment within the working poor and the desire to have hope that suffering people often feel. Cast No Shadow meanwhile, is about fellow Britpop singer Richard Ashcroft’s (Berman, 2015) burden within his band, yet Noel writes the song so that Ashcroft’s character is an everyman and with lines like “As they took his soul they stole his pride / As he faced the sun he cast no shadow,” (Oasis, 1995), any listener that feels used or bitter cannot help but identify with Ashcroft’s character.
Although She’s Electric is a fun song that tells a silly story about a relationship that dramatizes the nineties working-class characters, the next and last song valuable to this paper is Champagne Supernova. Another well-known Oasis song, Champagne Supernova is a spiraling, symphony-like, seven-minute rock anthem. The appeal of the song lies heavily in its instrumentation, but also in its lack of a real theme. Although inspired by a drug trip, Champagne Supernova is seemingly about nothing, with lines like “Someday you will find me / Caught beneath the landslide / In a champagne supernova in the sky,” (Oasis, 1995) the song sometimes feels like gibberish. But the song also includes lyrics that relate to the ideas of change, death, and the meaning of life with lines like “The world’s still spinning ’round, we don’t know why / Why? Why? Why? Why?” (Oasis, 1995). Through the mix of trippy “nonsense” lyrics and more pensive, meaningful lyrics the song ends up feeling like it might be the deepest out of all the songs on the album and closes What’s The Story perfectly.
Analysis
The magic of What’s The Story is in its universal ideas and lyrical vagueness. The concepts, problems, and themes of love (explored in Wonderwall, She’s Electric), hope (Some Might Say, Champagne Supernova), change (Hello, Champagne Supernova) and pressure (Cast No Shadow, Some Might Say) are all things that every person experiences at some point in their lives. By using themes that are applicable to every person, Oasis was able to make an album that anyone can relate to, and therefore anyone can enjoy.
Similarly, by making music heavily inspired by bands that are already familiar and loved by the British public, Oasis was able to appeal to more people. Many of the songs on What’s The Story are so close to Beatles songs that they almost border on plagiarism. In a 2022 article for Far Out Magazine, Sam Kemp explores Oasis’s and The Beatles’s similarities saying, “While it isn’t a complete rip-off, ‘She’s Electric’ certainly uses the end sequence of that 1967 single as a starting point – following the same chord progressions to the letter,” (Kemp, 2022). He goes on to highlight the visual similarities, “Oasis evoked The Beatles in more than their music…Like The Beatles, Oasis was comprised of four ordinary lads from a northern town, who managed to re-define UK music despite their humble beginnings,” (Kemp, 2022). This familiarity gives listeners the comfort of feeling like they know the band and the songs before they actually do, and led further to the success of What’s The Story.
Lastly, as a genre Britpop highlighted the plights of the lower middle class to poor lifestyle and culture and Oasis is no exception. Songs like Some Might Say are written purely about what it is like to live poor but still try to hope for more. While many Britpop bands lied or exaggerated their relation to working-class life, Oasis truly was from that background and reflected it in their music. In a 2008 interview by Simon Hattenstone, Noel Gallagher explained,
“I wrote that album when I was 21/22, and the people who picked up on that album were 21/22-year-olds. You can only do it once. We went on that tour and we were the same as them. We had no money, the people in the crowd had no money. We’re rock stars now, we don’t live in the same circumstances as any of these kids, so you can’t even begin to write from a position of where they’re coming from. But there’s a point that lasts for about three years where you’re in the same circumstances, you look the same and you dress the same as your audience, and that, my friend – you cannot buy that. I’d give it all up to go back to those three years,” (Hattenstone, 2008).
Interpretation
The mix of relatability, familiarity, and reflection of working-class life is what gave Oasis their popularity. But what does this popularity mean? Oasis’s portrayal of this British working-class hero popularized an idealized and fake image of working-class life that many Brits went on to try and imitate. This idealized and fake version of the population Oasis was trying to highlight as well as the attitudes and images of the Gallaghers brought support to both the popularity of “lad culture” and the New Labour movement.
One of the defining qualities of the Britpop/cool Britannia movement was a renaissance in casual wear being seen as stylish and trendy, with bands like Oasis and Blur often sporting polos, baggy jeans, and sneakers. The popularity of this style was a larger reflection of the emergence of the “lad” culture and the nationwide trendiness of working-class culture. In The Britpop Sound Derek Scott (2010) writes about Blur lead singer Damon Albarn:
“John Harris describes Albarn’s voice on ‘Girls & Boys’ as ‘mewling Cockney’, and comments on his growing tendency to adopt this accent in his everyday speaking voice. His mod style began to disappear and ‘laddishness’ took its place. The ‘lad’, whose worldview was dominated by lager, sex and football, was very much a 1990s phenomenon.” (Scott, 2010. p. 107)
This “lad” image was largely popularized due to Oasis, specifically Liam Gallagher’s reputation as a rambunctious, party-loving, man’s man. While authentic for Oasis, many other bands mimicked this boisterous, cocky, and more than anything else; masculine character in their songs. For bands like Blur, this mimicry was a critique of that type of man’s misogynistic, unintelligent, and loud personality. But between the popularity of Oasis and the “lad”’s new representation in popular media, whether purposeful or accidental, the “lad” was seen as cool and made fashionable by Britpop.
Oasis’s influence was not limited to pop culture though, and in the late nineties extended into political influence through their brazen endorsement of Tony Blair and the New Labour party. In their campaign to redefine the Labour Party, Tony Blair and his allies moved the Labour party away from rebellion and revolt and into a more mainstream, “common man”’s political party. In the article, Labouring the point? The Politics of Britpop in New Britain, Rupa Huq (2010) writes:
“New Labour too had a defined sense of purpose to achieve power and eschew its donkey-jacket radical past in doing so. Tony Blair’s 1994 leadership campaign leaflet declared ‘[w]e must transform Labour from a party of protest to a party of government’,” (Huq, 2010, p. 93)
One of the key ways they did this was by using celebrities and pop culture to spread their message, including Oasis and specifically Noel Gallagher. Through Oasis’s endorsement, New Labour gained the votes of both the “lad” and the appropriators of the “lad” culture. These votes watered down the protest background of the Labour party and subsequently caused Tony Blair to win the Prime Minister-ship.
Evaluation
Although highly anticipated and hyped, no one expected Oasis’s sophomore album to achieve the success that it did. Critics and fans alike were excited to see where Oasis would take their music after Definitely Maybe, but for many critics, What’s The Story fell short. It was only when common people got ahold of the album that it became the classic it is today. For critics, the album was simplistic, repetitive, and lazy. But for the British public, that was its appeal. For the average, working-class British person What’s The Story was an album that reflected and catered to blue-collar life made by people who came from that lifestyle themselves. What’s The Story only became the well-known and well-loved album it is today because of its popularity with the public. In his article, The Britpop Sound, Scott (2010) explains this phenomenon:
“However since many critics still cling to modernist ideals as the last-ditch defense of Enlightenment values, there is a reluctance to offer Oasis aesthetic legitimation in the shape of artistic awards. The decision not to shortlist What’s the Story for the Mercury Prize thus helped to show millions of Oasis admirers how passively they consumed music, how limited was their taste, and how circumscribed were their musical horizons.” (Scott, 2010, p. 120)
But in this instance, appeal to the public was much more beneficial to Oasis than appeal to critics. With swagger-filled “rock and roll” personalities, Oasis’s goal was never to achieve critical success, their goal was to put out songs that they thought were good. And that is what appealed to much of the public, Oasis’s blind confidence and indifference as to how many viewed them. While their portrayal of labor-class British culture was authentic, many who enjoyed What’s The Story misunderstood its optimism about poverty as a romanticization, and this led to the emergence of the “poor as cool” trend that off and on enjoys popularity in society today. Some would say that Oasis’s portrayal of “common people” led to the romanticization of poverty that subsequently brought about the largely misogynistic, homophobic, and culturally ignorant dominance of “lad” culture in the nineties. But these critics are ignoring the importance of authentically representing and catering to the often overlooked lower classes in alternative music. And by pinning the “lad” culture phenomenon on Oasis, critics blame Oasis for creating music that was true to the experiences they faced growing up poor, and its resonation with other working-class Brits.
Engagement
Today What’s The Story is seen as one of the defining albums of British music in the nineties, if not British music as a whole. A popular radio station in Britain, RadioX, hosts a competition yearly to recognize the best British music, and in 2021 Oasis won with Live Forever and in 2022 came in second. These results are voted on by the public, therefore showing that Oasis has retained if not gained popularity today. Furthermore, in their 2015 review, Pitchfork gave the album an 8.9, with Stuart Berman (2015) claiming that “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is Oasis’ absolute pinnacle,” (Berman, 2015). Altogether this proves that today, What’s The Story has reached both critical and popular success.
Oasis has not only become a classic band but has also inspired a new round of musicians. British musicians like the Libertines have talked publicly about their respect and the importance of Oasis. Meanwhile, even American bands like The Killers have cited Oasis as an influence on their sound (Barker, 2020). And these bands inspired by Oasis have gone on to inspire even more bands, leaving Oasis as a part of British music history and a band that has become a key figure in the British musical canon. With the success of What’s The Story Oasis gained massive fame in the mid-nineties that continues into today. The key to this popularity lay in their ability to relate to the common Brit, primarily through Oasis’s mix of working-class representation and themes. This fame gave the band massive cultural and even political influence that brought about the popularity of “lad” culture and contributed to the election of Tony Blair. Before September 1995, Oasis was simply an up-and-coming British rock band, but in 2022 Oasis defines a decade of British music, culture, and art.
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