The Oasis song Noel Gallagher called “teeny-boppy”
No band was bigger in Britain than Oasis in 1996. Less than a decade prior, Noel Gallagher had agreed to join his brother Liam’s band Rain, taking the role of main songwriter and kickstarting the evolution that eventually birthed Oasis. After a strong start with 1994’s Definitely Maybe, Gallagher and the rest of the band went supernova a year later with (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? and never looked back.
For their third studio album, Gallagher finally had the resources to get as far out as he wanted. That meant it was the perfect time to go big on a song that he had written around the earliest days of Oasis. ‘All Around the World’ had been written by Gallagher as early as 1992, but he purposefully held back on recording the track until he had the proper resources to do it justice.
“With Supersonic, I worried I was never going to write another song after that ‘cos I thought, ‘It sounds that good’,” Gallagher told John Harris in 1994, in the interview that eventually became ‘Wibbling Rivalry’. “Two days later I superseded it by about 50 fuckin’ times. The reason we haven’t recorded that song is because there isn’t enough money in Creation Records’ bank balance to pay for the production of that record.”
By 1997, it was finally time to unleash the beast. ‘All Around the World’ is about as expansive and indulgent as Oasis ever got on record – key changes, string sections, harmonicas, massive layers of backing vocals, and a cacophony of guitars are all just the start. At nearly ten minutes long, ‘All Around the World’ is somehow both a marathon and a sprint at the same time, unfurling new layers with each passing second.
“I wrote this one ages ago, before ‘Whatever’. It was twelve minutes long then,” Gallagher told Q Magazine during the release of Be Here Now. “It was a matter of being able to afford to record it. But now we can get away with the 36-piece orchestra. And the longer the better as far as I’m concerned. If it’s good. I can see what people are going to say, but fuck ’em, basically.”
“The lyrics are teeny-poppy,” Gallagher admitted. “But there are three key changes towards the end. Imagine how much better Hey Jude would have been with three key changes towards the end. I like the ambition of it, all that time ago. What was all that about when we didn’t even have our first single out? Gin and tonics, eh?”
Check out ‘All Around the World’ down below.
