The Oasis song that Noel Gallagher despises: “I hate it so much”
After Noel Gallagher delivered the lead vocals for the first time with Oasis on ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ back in 1996, it would be four years before he rose to the task again. While his first effort created a classic, his second attempt as lead vocalist on ‘Sunday Morning Call’ returned less favourable results.
The track appeared on the band’s fourth album, Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants, which marked a stark departure from their previous sound and, in the eyes of many, cemented the end of Britpop. Culture had moved on from Definitely Maybe, and Oasis also didn’t want to stay in the same lane forever. Plotting a new route, they recruited producer Mike ‘Spike’ Stent to replace Owen Morris, and he helped move their sound into psychedelic territory.
However, the slow-paced ‘Sunday Morning Call’ strayed away from the album’s theme and felt like an attempt to replicate the band’s earlier hits but without the same lovable charm. Speaking about the song at the time, Noel told Uncut: “Sunday Morning Call’ and ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong?’ – they’re the most factually correct on the record because they’re about certain real people who I know, but who, obviously, remain nameless”.
Gallagher added: “People who used to always turn up on my fucking doorstep, but at ungodly hours of the morning – and these are proper, well-off, rich, famous people, quite young. And they’d be running you through their drug and booze hell, and they ultimately think that to sort all this out, they just write a cheque made payable to The Priory clinic, and six weeks later, everyone’s going to come up smelling of roses.”
Musically, ‘Sunday Morning Call’ features a stripped-down arrangement, with acoustic guitar and subtle orchestration providing a backdrop for Gallagher’s emotive vocals. The song’s understated instrumentation allows the poignant lyrics to take centre stage, drawing listeners into the emotional landscape of the song and evoking a sense of introspection and introspection.
While it has been long speculated that Kate Moss is the song’s subject, Gallagher has never confirmed this. ‘Sunday Morning Call’ isn’t a track that Noel likes to think about all too often, and if it was up to him, it would be erased from the history of Oasis. Despite Gallagher’s animosity towards the track, it was a chart hit for Oasis and reached number four in the United Kingdom in what is perhaps an obscure reflection of their devoted fanbase more than anything else
When asked by Radio X in 2021 about his least favourite song by the band, Gallagher didn’t need to hesitate before saying ‘Sunday Morning Call’. In his expletive-laden explanation, Noel said: “Because it’s shit. I hate that song. I hate it so much [that] I left it out of the Oasis singles album. That’s how much I fucking hate it. And I wrote it.”
In fact, the whole of Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants is a source of regret for Noel. “We should have never made ‘Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants’. I’d come to the end. At the time, I had no reason or desire to make music. I had no drive. We’d sold all these fucking records, and there just seemed to be no point,” he told Grantland in 2011.
Gallagher added: “I went ahead and did it, even though I had no inspiration and couldn’t find inspiration anywhere. I just wrote songs for the sake of making an album. We needed a reason to go on a tour.”
Listen below to ‘Sunday Morning Call’.
