‘Headshrinker’: the overlooked Oasis song that needs to be played at the reunion shows
As classic rock legends line up at the reunion office to get their scheduled days and eventual payouts, I don’t think anyone expected to see Oasis at the front of the queue. Still wearing a kagool and walking their shoulders back, the Gallagher brothers stepped in front of the world to provide the announcement many have been waiting over a decade to hear: they’re back.
Selling out 17 shows in around ten hours, the announcement has superseded anything in the past decade and brought a reality some thought they would never see. The brothers’ warring narratives have ultimately been part of the allure and, to some extent, help mythologise their status as one of the all-time greats. But while it has generally been beneficial to the Oasis narrative, in 2024, the excitement for a reunion was perhaps on the brink of fever pitch and irrelevancy.
Perhaps sensing that, the brothers at war became brothers in arms and ended their quarrels, all to the tune of around £50million each. As the brothers wipe their eyes from the eye-watering sums they’re about to earn, fans across the globe waved goodbye to their own money and with it the desperate hope that £150 a ticket might just buy them a chance to see the Gallagher brothers play their favourite song.
There are plenty. Oasis’s reputation is partly built on celebrity, but ultimately, the foundations are cemented firmly in their discography, which is undeniably brilliant. Their first two albums catapulted them into rock and fall infamy, with not a minute on either tracklisting wasted. While the Gallagher brothers dismiss their third effort Be Here Now as a coke-addled mess of, ‘Fade in-Out’ is arguably Liam at his powerful best.
Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants came three years after and opened with what is certainly one of the most underrated tracks, ‘Fuckin’ In The Bushes’, which is ultimately surprising, given it doesn’t feature Oasis’ strongest asset: Liam’s voice. It’s a rousing instrumental track that probably won’t be used as their walk on track, but undoubtedly should. That fourth album also gave way to some stunning vocal performances from Liam on ‘Gas Panic’ and ‘Roll It Over’, with the enigmatic frontman straining at every syllable and sonically pushing back against critics who labelled him apathetic in the band’s later years.
Ultimately, the albums that followed were tired attempts at articulating their edgy songbird character and began to veer into the satirical. We’ve all seen a drunk mod-cutted man singing Oasis songs in the pub, with his hands behind his back, and to be completely frank, the last few Oasis albums started to look and sound exactly like that.
Their debut was outstanding, and their sophomore was completely iconic. But it was a B-side they released on their release campaign for (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? that displays just how prolific they were in the mid-’90s. On the other side of ‘Some Might Say’ was a four-and-a-half-minute chunk of energy that captured Oasis’ energy in a bottle.
‘Headshrinker’ had elements of every great Oasis single bundled into one; the sliding guitar line from ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ was paired with a more energetic version of Liam’s rasp from ‘Champagne Supernova’ to create a final track that would be the ultimate live big hitter. You can imagine it played in the opening three songs of the set when the appetite to mosh is at absolute fever pitch, and you’re at complete ease with the thought of descending into outright chaos. It almost certainly won’t get played, but god I wish it was.
