Credit: Far Out / Jill Furmanovsky

How to fix ‘Be Here Now’ by Oasis

Tue 25 July 2023 14:00, UK

Never before has a musical movement flamed out as quickly as Britpop did with the release of Be Here Now by Oasis. Although some great acts may have been active around the same time, the massive weight of the Gallaghers’ egos got the better of them on their third outing, leading to a mess of an album with songs that felt like a hollow shell of what they used to be. For all of the vitriol that has been thrown at the album by critics and band members, there is a way to make the whole thing salvageable.

Because Be Here Now is not a terrible album at its core. Coming from where Oasis had already been, it would have been easy to see this coming. Based on the massive success of a song like ‘Champagne Supernova’, the whole mission statement of this album was to practically make every song sound as blown out as their last masterpiece, where every single instrument is dialled up to the max.

Even with the white noise that bleeds through every song, it’s easy to hear the five lads from Manchester who wanted to conquer the world. Since they hadn’t changed their style all that much, a few minor tweaks are in order to turn Be Here Now into something at least on par with Definitely Maybe or What’s the Story Morning Glory.

First things first, there needs to be a severe cleanup of the runtimes. Across the board, nearly every song tends to go along for a few minutes too long than it probably should, leading to the album feeling rather bloated. Instead of ‘D’You Know What I Mean’ being seven minutes long, it would make more sense to keep the warping intro and close up shop after five minutes. Same with ‘Stand By Me’, which would be a brilliant song were it not for the thousands of times repeating the chorus.

The next order of business would be to take out all of the songs that don’t seem to work in the context of the record. Compared to some of the gloriously nonsensical songs that Noel could write in his prime, tracks like ‘Magic Pie’ veer more towards straight gibberish than anything meaningful.

After taking an axe to some of these songs, Noel could have done something that most Oasis fans were asking for them to do since their prime: put some of their B-sides on the album proper. While the finished version of the album has some outright clunkers among the track-listing, Noel kept up the quality with the flipsides, creating spellbinding songs like ‘Going Nowhere’ around this time.

If taken into consideration with the rest of the songs on the album, this could have also been an opportunity to make one of the most lyrically complex Oasis albums ever made. Though Noel has always been cagey about what his songs are actually about, the revised version of the album could easily tell a story of where the Gallaghers were at the time.

Since they have always lived up to their rock star persona, songs like ‘My Big Mouth’ and ‘I Hope I Think I Know’ are at least decent examples of the Manchester swagger that they were so good at delivering during their prime. Outside of the confidence, though, some of the best songs on the record come from when the band were getting more introspective.

Boasting one of the best ballads of the era, ‘Don’t Go Away’ could be the ‘Wonderwall’ for this era, featuring Liam giving one of his last brilliant vocal performances of his ‘90s prime. Some of the B-sides even give fans a look at the conflicted emotions that Noel was feeling at the time, from his life becoming too tame on ‘Going Nowhere’ to wondering what will eventually come along to replace him on ‘I Got The Fever’.

Then again, no Oasis album was going to end on a down note, and one of the essential parts of the album is actually a song that most people have a problem with. For as drawn out as it feels, ‘All Around the World’ needs to stay exactly where it is, working as a sort of bookend to the album and this era of the group. Since it was the first song that Noel had written for Oasis, bringing it full circle with a grand orchestra spread out over nine minutes is the kind of extravagance that even The Beatles would have been proud of.

Although Oasis were never one for bonus tracks, the inclusion of David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ may be a good way to bid farewell to this version of the group. Whereas Bowie’s version was always quite subdued, hearing Noel belt the song at the top of his lungs may serve as a reminder to the Oasis crowd that they have officially made it to the top of the world.

Even if some of the odds and ends of the album were taken, they could serve as a decent guide to where they would go next. Although a song like ‘Fade In Out’ may be relegated to a B-side in this timeline, the hypothetical fourth album created by this version of the band could have been their heaviest to date, especially looking at the way they started to play the song live.

Would this album be on par with Definitely Maybe? Probably not, but it would certainly hold its own a lot better than what we got. Coming from the same band that brought fans Britpop classics that are still relevant today, the revised version of Be Here Now is the tale of both sides of the band: looking to become rock and roll stars no matter what the cost while also knowing that their time in the spotlight may be fleeting.