The one Oasis album Noel Gallagher has issues with: “the songs aren’t there”
Everything about Oasis felt like it came to an end in an instant during the late 1990s. After their mammoth release of Be Here Now, the Gallagher brothers had proven everything they needed to prove as one of the biggest bands in the world until everything came to a screeching halt during their long hiatus. Although Standing on the Shoulder of Giants was intended to be their next big comeback, things didn’t exactly go as planned for Noel Gallagher.
When crafting the album, Noel believed that the next phase of their career needed to happen without their longtime producer Owen Morris, instead hiring Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, who had previously worked with acts like The Spice Girls. While some parts of the album hint towards the Beatles-worshipping of the past few records, it wasn’t enough to sustain their momentum, leading to many fans not caring one way or the other about it.
The loss of Oasis’ traction also came from them losing a key part of their sound, with Bonehead and Guigsy leaving the group halfway through the production after not going along with Noel’s policy of no drinks or drugs in the studio. While the album still holds together as a nice time capsule in the group’s catalogue, Noel has admitted that it didn’t exactly turn out how he had originally planned.
When talking about the album for the compilation Time Flies, Noel mentioned how he wasn’t in love with the finished product, saying, “The sounds on that album, on ‘Go Let It Out’ and ‘Who Feels Love’ are brilliant, but the songs aren’t there. That’s kind of symptomatic of that record. The sounds are great, and the playing is pretty good, but the songs aren’t there. I mean, there are no killer singles on there”.
The album is also home to one of Noel’s least favourite Oasis songs, ‘Sunday Morning Call’, which he called one of the lousiest pieces of songwriting he’s ever done. Apart from the songs he openly dragged through the mud, there are a few more introspective pieces in the mix that hint at something more interesting beneath the surface.
Despite the sounds behind a song like ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong’, Noel seems genuinely upset about the fallout of the group in the late ‘90s, wondering how it all came to such a dramatic stop. Even some B-sides like ‘As Long as They’ve Got Cigarettes In Hell’ and ‘Let’s All Make Believe’ paint a grim picture of what a sorry state of affairs Noel’s mental state was at the time.
It wasn’t a total loss, though, with newcomers Andy Bell and Gem Archer joining the mix and giving the band a new lease on life. Noel would go on to say that Bell and Archer helped the band stay together, continuing, “They brought a sense of drive. It’s all new to them, playing stadiums and all that. It was fun reliving all of that through their eyes. You forget how special that is”. Though the band may have been able to soldier on for a few more years until their split in 2009, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants was just the wrong album for the time.
