The 10 best Noel Gallagher solo songs
Following the famous Paris altercation in 2009, which caused Oasis to split up before their headline set at the Rock En Seine festival, Noel Gallagher didn’t waste much time before getting into the recording studio. Free from the shackles of his former group and the never-ending circle of conflict which followed the band everywhere they went, he set sail with his High Flying Birds.
While the cultural impact of the High Flying Birds pales in comparison with Oasis, and Gallagher is well-aware that people pay to see him want to hear hits such as ‘Live Forever’, Noel has continuously moved forward with his sound. Despite the constant speculation surrounding an Oasis reunion, Noel is a person who prefers to look forward rather than stay in the past.
With every album, Gallagher has attempted to switch things up and adapt by adding new elements to his sound. Noel’s debut release was Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds in 2011, which topped the charts in the United Kingdom and established him as an artist in his own right. There was intrigue surrounding the release, but Gallagher met expectations with ease.
Four years later, Gallagher continued to fly with the release of Chasing Yesterday, which provided Noel with another chart-topping LP. With his next album, Gallagher shook things up once again by delivering a 1970s-style record in the form of Who Built The Moon? which was unlike anything he’d made before. After a six-year wait, he finally followed up the album with 2023’s Council Skies.
Noel Gallagher’s 10 best solo songs:
10. ‘It’s A Beautiful World’
With Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’ third album, Who Built The Moon?, the former Oasis musician steered the group further into psychedelic territory. Experimentation was a vital part of the recording process, and it led to mixed results.
While fans who wanted to hear another version of Definitely Maybe were largely unimpressed by his evolution, ‘It’s A Beautiful World’ showed Noel was right to change up his sound. The cosmic track implemented these new elements into Gallagher’s sonic wheelhouse and paid dividends to the singer-songwriter as he attempted to stop himself from being pigeon-holed. The addition of spoken word in French from his scissor player Le Volume Courbe further proved his Oasis days were firmly in the past.
9. ‘Lock All The Doors’
As much as Noel has moved on from the days of simplistic rock ‘n’ roll tunes, ‘Lock All The Doors’ is a no-holds-barred throwback which deserves to be played at full volume with the windows down. The driving anthem isn’t one of Gallagher’s most creative attempts at songwriting, but the combination of a rollicking chorus and meaty riffs will never totally go out of fashion.
Gallagher started work on the track before Oasis were even signed to Creation Records, which explains the back-to-basics essence of ‘Lock All The Doors’. While he later used part of the song in a collaboration with The Chemical Brothers, it wasn’t until 2015’s Chasing Yesterday that Gallagher finally found a home for his creation. “I always meant to finish it off,” he said of the song during a Facebook Q&A before adding: “One afternoon I was coming out of the Tesco Metro in Maida Vale, where I live, and I don’t know what it was, but it just hit me, coming round the corner, just by Boots, it came to me in a flash of inspiration.”
8. ‘Flying On The Ground’
Somewhat mind-bogglingly, Noel has nearly been a solo artist for as long as he was a member of Oasis. While their split feels like it only happened yesterday, in 2021, Gallagher released the compilation album Back The Way We Came: Vol. 1, celebrating a decade of the High Flying Birds and his post-Oasis career. In addition to chronicling their career to date, Gallagher also released ‘We’re On Our Way Now’, one of his best solo efforts to date.
The melancholic track finds Noel making reference to his former life with Oasis and singing, “Good luck in the afterlife, I hear the morning sun doesn’t cast no shadow, You chose to drift away, But look at you now.” ‘We’re On Our Way Now’ is a stingingly poignant song about loss, regret and being robbed of the opportunity to tell someone how you feel before they sadly meet their demise.
7. ‘The Death Of You And Me’
When Gallagher first announced himself as a solo artist, he immediately entered a purple patch and left his brother for dead in terms of creative output. The High Flying Birds’ debut album remains their finest piece of work to date, and ‘The Death Of You And Me’ encapsulates the songwriting prowess of Gallagher when he’s firing on all cylinders.
Musically, Gallagher moved into a new direction from Oasis by interpolating a splice of Americana into his work, with Noel telling MOJO: “When the brass kicks in you’re in New Orleans”. On the track, Gallagher deals with the stresses of life, which makes him contemplate packing up everything he owns and leaving his problems behind, which everybody can relate to on some level. Again, it’s Noel successfully mining the universal within the personal inside his lyrics.
6. ‘Easy Now’
For all the time spent going through a separation from Oasis, many fans have wondered if the Noel of old would ever return to making music of a similar ilk ever again. Although there have been some strong singles to come off Council Skies, ‘Easy Now’ was reminiscent of the old days and showed Noel’s ability to write an Oasis-esque song has never left him.
Sporting a complex chord progression like he used to write during the days of The Masterplan, Noel seems to be channelling his Britpop roots here, singing about days gone by before the fame and success. The whirlwind of superstardom might take a lot out of a person, but Noel is content with having worked his way up to the top of the music world.
5. ‘The Dying Of The Light’
As far back as the Oasis days, Noel had a reputation for being the master of the ballads. No matter what kind of chord sequence was behind it, Noel could paint a picture with his words and a melody that had the potential to melt listeners’ souls if they weren’t careful. While Gallagher might have shied away from certain love songs, ‘The Dying of the Light’ hits on something more intimate than what the early Beatles days sang about.
Baring a similar chord sequence to ‘Falling Down’ from the Oasis canon, he sings about his relationship with someone he’s spent his entire life with, finally seeing how the other half lives but feeling more alone than ever. Regardless of what comes next, Noel prefers to dance with this old flame, knowing that they can’t turn back time but can only savour the moment they’re in. The light of youth will always burn out, but moments like this keep it burning for just a little bit longer.
4. ‘The Ballad Of The Mighty I’
Although Noel hit the ground running on his first solo album, there was always a question of what would happen after the initial impact. While the debut included some future classics, at the time, it remained to be seen whether any of the newer songs written outside of Oasis would be in the same league as his old band. Instead of calling back to the old days of Britpop, Noel thought it better to rewrite the book on his legacy.
Using different electronics during this era of his career, ‘The Ballad of The Mighty I’ has as much arrogance in its step as Liam would dare make, as Noel promises to find this person who’s done him wrong as his voice echoes in the background. The real magic behind this song comes from the guest star, with Johnny Marr of The Smiths laying down some of the best guitar tracks of his career on the back half of the song. Standing at over six minutes, this feels like the older version of the epic songs he wrote, like ‘Champagne Supernova’.
3. ‘AKA… What A Life!’
Noel Gallagher would never profess to be a musical snob. He’s always boasted the greatest hits packages of all his favourite acts, and his interest in music outside of the conventional rock canon made him a musical Swiss army knife in the 1990s. Whereas Noel’s music with The Chemical Brothers had a psychedelic vibe to it, ‘AKA… What a Life!’ was proof he could make that sound on his own.
As if the baroque stylings of his debut album weren’t big enough a departure, ‘What a Life’ feels like something that should be blaring out of a sweaty dance club, with Noel keeping the instrumentation as tight as possible while painting graphic imagery about taking tigers for a ride across a desert landscape. Oasis may have confined Noel to rock ‘n’ roll most of the time, but ‘AKA…What a Life!’ imagines what he would have been like working in an act like Primal Scream.
2. ‘If I Had A Gun’
Of the two Gallagher brothers, Noel was always better at delivering love songs. Although Liam’s take on ‘Wonderwall’ is untouchable for what it is, Noel’s way of having an intimate relationship with the listener on songs like ‘Talk Tonight’ elevates him ahead of his sibling. As he moved on to a life outside Oasis’s shadow, Noel wrote a wonderful ode to his wife on ‘If I Had a Gun’.
Originally demoed during the final days of Oasis, the lyrics have a few holdovers from the band’s final era, continuing with the biblical imagery by proclaiming that his love was “the older God I will ever need”. For all of the great tunes that he’s written about self-belief, Noel’s conviction here is more in line with the vulnerable side of what his hero John Lennon might write. Gallagher might have gifted the world many different melodies, but this may as well be a gift to wedding DJs everywhere.
1. ‘Dead In The Water’
Some of the greatest songs of all time tend to have more than a few cracks in the foundation. For all of the great moments made with the help of studio touch-ups, there’s something about hearing an entire symphony of rock music live onstage, with every member bouncing off each other. While Noel may not have had the full band when playing this live session on Irish radio station Rté 2fm, this new song ‘Dead in the Water’ captured bundles of magic from the moment they hit record.
Much more emotional than ever before, Noel is singing about how far he will go to satisfy his lover, from the days when they never had any money to embarking on his slow journey to get back in his lover’s good graces. While ballads are Noel’s wheelhouse, even he thought this was above his usual standard, thinking he should never record it another version because of the strength of his first take. Noel might have been a hopeless romantic in another life, but hearing him telling the tale of a wounded man holding onto his love will all he has feels like it should be performed by someone decades older.
