Credit: Matt Crockett

Noel Gallagher reveals his favourite singer-songwriter of the 1990s

Mon 23 October 2023 18:11, UK

Former Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher has named Paul Weller as his favourite singer-songwriter of the 1990s.

While Weller had risen to prominence in the late ’70s with The Jam, who split in 1982, he then teamed up with Mick Talbot in The Style Council and didn’t go solo until the ’90s. His eponymous debut album was released in 1992, Weller followed it up with Wild Wood a year later, which is an album close to Gallagher’s heart.

During a new interview with Dermot O’Leary on the BBC Radio 2 programme Alternative Sounds of the ’90s, Gallagher selected Weller as his favourite singer-songwriter from the decade and picked out two tracks from Wild Wood to play during the broadcast.

He told the radio host: “The act I’ve picked for my double A-side is Paul Weller. The first track I’m going to play is the title track from the album Wild Wood, I’d say it’s one of his greatest ever songs, and it’s a song that when it came out, you would rush to the guitar and try to work out what the cords were.”

“It’s a real moment in time song for me, I could listen to that song all day and still hear different things in it. It’s a brilliant, brilliant recording of a great, great song,” Noel added.

Moving on to his second selection, Gallagher continued: “I’m following it up with a track called ‘Sunflower’, which has one of his many great guitar intros to it, and it used to be astonishing live when he played it, still great now when he plays it live. He used to perform it with such passion and energy, that you actually thought he was going to explode some nights, but it’s a great, great guitar anthem.”

In other Noel Gallagher news, he recently accused his brother Liam of attempting to “rewrite history” and claimed the last year of Oasis was a “dreadful” experience.

Speaking on the ABC programme Take 5 With Zan Rowe, Noel said: “That last tour was not happy. Nobody was happy at the time. The other fella is trying to rewrite history that it was all fucking great. It wasn’t all great.”

He added: “It was a fucking dreadful last year of Oasis in 2009 or whatever it was. It was a terrible, terrible time. It had come to an end, you could kind of feel it. It was time to move on.”

Listen to ‘Wild Wood’ and ‘Sunflower’ below.