The greatest album of all time, according to Noel Gallagher
There is no objective answer to the greatest album of all time; it’s a purely subjective topic about which every music fan holds a strong opinion. It’s a matter that will continue to be debated until the end of time, and in the eyes of Noel Gallagher, there’s one record at the top of the pile.
While many look for musical prowess when judging albums, Gallagher doesn’t fall into that camp. Instead, he’s more interested in the album’s achievements from a cultural perspective rather than how well an artist can play their instrument. For Gallagher, it’s about how these songs connected with an audience above all else, which is the same ingredient that made Oasis a defining band of the 1990s in Britain.
Although countless albums have mastered the art of perfection, Gallagher prefers to seek imperfection with his record collection. That’s why he holds the Sex Pistols in such high regard despite their sound being rough around the edges and containing many flaws.
While The Beatles had a more significant cultural impact than the Sex Pistols, they did so with a much more extensive back catalogue. They pushed the needle with every release, whether this was Rubber Soul, The White Album or Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club. Therefore, by Gallagher’s metric, they fall short of producing one record that outweighed the importance of Never Mind The Bollocks.
All these decades later, the Sex Pistols are still performing their 1977 album, albeit without frontman Johnny Rotten, further proving how it remains beloved today. It’s more than just an album; it’s a cultural artefact that shaped Britain and soundtracked the youth of an entire generation.
When the Sex Pistols arrived, they were a breath of fresh air that represented the anger of disenfranchised young people across the United Kingdom. While their time in the limelight was only fleeting before it crumbled to pieces, they captured the zeitgeist and made the punk movement take off.
While Oasis created more albums than the Sex Pistols, Gallagher doesn’t believe any one record they made compares with Never Mind The Bollocks. Speaking to Q Magazine in 2019, Gallagher said, “The most influential record of all time is Never Mind The Bollocks. People who are still working now in the music business did their shit because of that record,” he said.
“It’s the absolute left turn. There is no argument. It cannot be bettered. It’s scientifically factual,” he added.
Gallagher has spoken in favourable terms about Never Mind The Bollocks on multiple occasions. Despite being too young to have been in attendance to see the Six Pistols at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976 alongside the likes of Morrissey, Peter Hook, Ian Curtis and Tony Wilson, Gallagher was still strongly impacted by their work.
“I was ten when it came out, so I was just a little bit too young,” he once remembered to BBC Radio 2’s Johnnie Walker. “But one of the older kids on our estate had a copy of it, and it was known that somebody had an album with swearing on it. I remember hearing ‘Bodies’ with a heroic amount of bad language in that song and thinking, ‘Wow!'”.
For Gallagher, the element that places the Sex Pistols on a pedestal is the short-lived nature of their tenure, explaining, “For that band to have only been going for two and a half years and to change music. Not many bands get to change the way that people dress, talk, and feel in a culture. If push comes to shove, it’s probably the greatest album of all time. If it wasn’t for that, you wouldn’t have Definitely Maybe. No way.”
As Gallagher said, a direct lineage links Definitely Maybe to the Sex Pistols. Famously, Peter Hook was inspired to pick up a guitar and form Joy Division after the Lesser Free Trade Hall show. They evolved into New Order following the death of Curtis, who inspired The Stone Roses, which led to the creation of Oasis.
While the Sex Pistols can’t be compared to the likes of Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles in terms of longevity or strength of their back catalogues, they made an album that has successfully stood the test of time and continues to inspire today. Furthermore, their impact transcended music, changing how people acted and dressed.
