How Noel Gallagher’s 13 favourite albums define the appeal and spirit of Oasis
If you want to sell an idea, you say it with confidence and you say it often.
Noel Gallagher certainly subscribed to that school of thought when he routinely bragged that Oasis were the best band in the world as they broke through in the 1990s.
It clearly seems to have worked. But this success doesn’t just stem from people being lured into supporting an idea thanks to repetition and swagger. People liked the idea to begin with. They liked the knowable certainty of Oasis.
In a complex age of culture in flux, the Manc band’s classic bid to be the biggest in the world was refreshing. It was concrete. You can hang your bucket hat on it.
Equally concrete were people’s expectations leading into the recent reunion shows. From the moment that tickets were announced, what would happen at the concerts seemed foregone: big tunes, big crowds, and a big day out. The only surprise possible was that a rehearsal bust-up would postpone the shows before they had even begun.
No such surprise arose. In fact, Noel Gallagher has never really looked to surprise an audience. He has always simply sought to give them what they want. This is, after all, what the man himself admires in music. He likes Ronseal rock ‘n’ roll that walks the walk and talks the talk. He is a fiend for a big hit, and that is proven by his startlingly unsurprising favourite albums of all time list.
Back in 2011, he listed the following all-time favourites in an interview with The Quietus (they were fairly predictable):
- Sex Pistols – Nevermind The Bollocks
- Pink Floyd – The Wall
- The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead
- Various Artists – The Hacienda Classics
- The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses
- The La’s – The La’s
- The Amorphous Androgynous – A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Vol. 1
- The Soundtrack of Our Lives – Behind The Music
- U2 – Joshua Tree
- The Beatles – Revolver
- The Kinks – The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
- The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed
- The Who – The Best of The Who
Excluding the compilations, each and every single one of those records is a recognised classic.
Without knowing what you’re looking at, you could confuse the list for the greatest albums ever to hail from the UK and Ireland. There’s perhaps a slight hint of obscurity in the shape of The Amorphous Androgynous, but by and large, it is an assortment of songbooks that have seeped into society by virtue of their wild success.
Noel Gallagher’s mission with Oasis was to do just that – to write transcendent hits. At the time, ironically, not many bands were keen on this brave pursuit.
Nirvana were looking to be anti-heroes, not heroes. Pulp were more inclined to poke fun at the platitudes of pop rather than reprise them. And Blur were presenting the come hither of ambiguity, balancing Britpop with behaviourism. But bold, old Oasis were in it for the main chance. They knew what people wanted, and they wanted to give it to them. They wanted to write a classic like the many classics before them. The 2.7 million people who bought Definitely Maybe certainly thought they did just that.
At its best, Noel Gallagher’s songwriting has remained bold and unambiguous ever since. It is built on big riffs, classic rock ‘n’ roll attitude, and easy accessibility for an audience who wants to cheer on a figurative five-nil thumping for a change. The sound of a rollicking Oasis song is that of a victory in the Saturday 3pm kick-off after a week-long slog at work.
There are some folks who might be mistaken into thinking that this is somehow easy, commonplace, or cliché. In truth, perhaps that point does hold a few millimetres of water. Oasis certainly didn’t reinvent the wheel. But the hole in the bucket of this argument is that it implies writing a record like Nevermind The Bollocks is easy, as though Oasis were copying a formula as followable as an omelette recipe.
The best musician I personally know once said that Noel Gallagher is surely one of the greatest British guitarists in history. This is not a widely held opinion in critical circles, so I asked him to expand. His response was, “It’s pretty hard to write a riff that 150,000 people can yell back at you. I know, I’ve tried it, as have 99% of people who play a guitar.”
Even if you’re the biggest naysayer in the world, it’s hard to hit back at that. If subtlety is a heralded art form, then its inverse should be celebrated, too. Noel Gallagher’s favourite albums list is resplendent with such a lack of subtlety and idiosyncrasy that it has startled us ever since we ran a story on it back in 2020. But in time, it has become clear how these choices have come to define him.
They’re a relatively obvious selection of albums, but if you were to put that to him, he’d no doubt quip, ‘I like them because they’re the best, and that’s why everybody fucking else likes them too.’ Oasis’ own fans offer a similar retort, and that’s no accident; it’s a product of the music that inspired Noel Gallagher in the first place.
