The worst songs on every Oasis album
It’s safe to say that Oasis did call their shot as one of the biggest bands of the 1990s. Despite talking themselves up like the second coming of The Beatles, the Gallagher brothers did capitalise on that promise throughout most of their ‘90s output, with even their ‘00s work having its share of highlights. That being said, there are still a few songs that should never have been pressed to vinyl.
Regardless of Noel’s quality control or the need to have everyone satisfied, a few songs across Oasis’ catalogue mark the nadir of Britpop, either being self-confident about nothing whatsoever or not standing out in any meaningful way. From the trainwreck that Noel likes to talk about when discussing Be Here Now to their final album, Dig Out Your Soul, every one of the Manchester legends’ records has a few sore spots that can’t be ignored.
However, there’s a difference between a lowlight and something outright terrible. Although something offensively bad at least gives the listener something to marvel at, most of Oasis’ lower ranks don’t give listeners anything to talk about, being more of a dirge than anything that their contemporaries could have hoped to put out.
While Oasis promised to change the world of rock and roll for the better, their few stumbling blocks are where fans would start reconsidering why they were so important in the first place. Oasis fans might normally be ride-or-die for the group, but these tracks might have people consider becoming Blur fans.
The worst songs on every Oasis album:
‘Digsy’s Dinner’ – Definitely Maybe
When the Manchester legends first cut their teeth, there was no such thing as the world ‘filler’. Even though the recording process for Definitely Maybe took an eternity to get right, Noel was always working to refine the tunes to be as perfect as they could possibly be. That’s not to say there wasn’t room for a little whimsy in the mix.
Right before giving way to the all-time classic ‘Slide Away’, ‘Digsy’s Dinner’ kicks off to break the solid-gold streak the album was keeping up. While some of the album’s lesser moments include some of the more hypnotic songs that Noel would ever write, this is the equivalent of the whimsical songs that Paul McCartney would write for The Beatles but with none of the charm.
If someone’s looking for lyrical depth, they aren’t going to find any here, being nothing but two minutes of Liam droning on about coming to his place for tea so they can have lasagna. No matter how much R’Kid tries to put his Johnny Rotten-flair into his vocal delivery, there’s nothing stopping this from being one of the most forgettable Oasis songs in their canon.
‘Roll With It’ – (What’s The Story) Morning Glory
It’s hard to knock points from what might be the greatest Oasis album ever created. With every complete song that Noel wrote for the album, he seemed to be capitalising on every promise that he had made when proclaiming his band to be on par with The Beatles in the ‘60s. Even though it would make sense to throw one of the many interlude tracks onto the bottom, it’s best to go with the one song that even its composer has dragged through the mud.
Then again, it’s hard to be mad at a song like ‘Roll With It’. Throughout its punchy runtime, Liam gives a decent vocal performance while the rest of the band is in full blast behind him with Owen Morris’ famous “brick walling” production style. The devil is in the details, or lack thereof, with most of the track being a mindless piece of fluff that somehow got past Noel’s quality inspection at the time.
What’s more, the song even got a prime place in history thanks to the legendary ‘Battle of Britpop’ between Oasis and Blur, with both of them offering up some of the most lacklustre material they could muster. Even when a great Noel solo could be added, all that’s there are a few halfhearted guitar notes and Bonehead bashing away on chords. It might be a crowd-pleaser, but there’s a good chance that any lasting power of the song ends the minute that ‘Wonderwall’ starts.
‘Magie Pie’ – Be Here Now
If Noel had his way, there’s a good chance that someone could throw a dart at Be Here Now and land on its worst track. Looking back, the band’s idea of going more ambitious on their next record led to an album that felt too flabby for its good. Although the gargantuan ‘All Around the World’ did earn a bit of its reputation, ‘Magic Pie’ is where the album runs out of gas and never fully recovers.
While songs like ‘My Big Mouth’ benefit from the huge wall of sound coming at the listener, ‘Magic Pie’ feels like building a mountain-sized portrait of nothing, as Noel talks about having a magie pie with him. When the listener thinks there might be some hidden meaning, there is none, with Noel claiming that it just came from him flipping through a rhyming dictionary and reading the word ‘magpie’ incorrectly.
For what it’s worth, the song does benefit from a decent solo in the middle, but not even Noel’s guitar licks can bring the song out of the hole it’s buried itself in. There’s the faintest whiff of the Manchester legends trapped in this song screaming to get out, but those rock and rollers all but drowned under the sea of overdubs and distortion.
‘The Swamp Song’ – The Masterplan
Before anyone says anything, The Masterplan does count in the grand scheme of Oasis albums. Hell, if Noel had decided to release this compilation of B-sides instead of Be Here Now, there’s a good chance the band could have remained relevant for a few more years. Despite the enduring power of the title track and ‘Talk Tonight’, ‘The Swamp Song’ is the moment most realise why this is just a compilation.
Being a staple of their live set, ‘The Swamp Song’ was a jam that the band would mess around with at the start of their show as Liam walked onstage. Although it’s gone down in history as the faint sounds heard between radio dial changes on What’s The Story, it’s nothing too special that most rock fans wouldn’t hear in an average bluesy jam.
Even without any words or a melody line in it, Noel still manages to find a way to knick ideas from the past as well, with the central guitar riff having the same groove as the ‘60s hit ‘Spirit in The Sky’, only moved up a string to make it sound slightly different. Whereas most B-sides by Oasis were so good that they could have been brilliant A-sides, ‘The Swamp Song’ is why the flipside of a single is the less interesting part.
‘Little James’ – Standing on the Shoulder of Giants
Noel infamously started to hit a wall when going into the early ‘00s. Having lost Bonehead and Guigsy in the process of making Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, Noel was starting to piece together how to create classics again while also suffering from panic attacks due to his years of drug abuse. While his better judgement may have comprised the band’s fourth studio album, the biggest stumbling block was having Liam contribute a song.
First things first, it’s not like Liam’s heart wasn’t in the right place when crafting this tune. Being an ode to Patsy Kensit’s young son, Liam sounds like the ever-encouraging stepdad on this song, albeit with the same nasally croon that he employs on ‘Rock and Roll Star’. While there’s a time and place for this delivery, it’s certainly not here, as Liam tries to sell the sentiment and comes off like John Lydon trying and failing to sing a lullaby.
That’s not to say that Liam was the lesser of the brothers by any stretch, blossoming into a great songwriter later in life with spellbinding tracks like ‘I’m Outta Time’. When looking at his first stab at writing a complete song, ‘Little James’ just sounds like Liam was trying to run before he could walk.
‘Probably All in the Mind’ – Heathen Chemistry
There’s a good case to be made that Heathen Chemistry is secretly the worst Oasis album. While everyone lines up to dog on Be Here Now for just how compressed it is, the problem with Oasis in the ‘00s tended to shift between ear-piercing tracks and dreadfully boring songs. When they aren’t delivering solid hits on tracks like ‘She is Love’, ‘Probably All in the Mind’ is as by-the-numbers as Oasis would ever get.
Sticking to straight major chords throughout the song, the sound design is pretty much copied and pasted from every other Oasis song from around the ‘00s, with Liam sounding like he’s about to fall asleep in the studio while tracking the thing. Despite adding Andy Bell to the group, no one’s missing much, as he anchors down the groove without moving a muscle past his support role.
Even when Noel and Gem Archer try to make some psychedelic-sounding guitar work in the song’s back half, most of the listeners are already sleeping, wondering when they will play ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ again. Heathen Chemistry does have a fair amount of Oasis classics, but giving this the green light means that this probably should have been an EP rather than an album.
‘A Bell Will Ring’ – Don’t Believe the Truth
Of all the late-period Oasis albums, Don’t Believe The Truth might be the closest they ever came to recapturing their glory years. While nothing would eclipse songs like ‘Live Forever’, ‘Lyla’ and ‘Turn Up the Sun’ showed the world that the band could still make songs that fans would be happy to chant along with in stadiums. As the album draws to a close, only one real sore spot remains in the mix.
After Andy Bell’s sublime trip into psychedelia on ‘Keep the Dream Alive’, ‘A Bell Will Ring’ is another case of the band spinning their wheels, taking the fundamental song and wearing out its one trick over three minutes. While it’s nice to hear an Oasis song in a different tuning, it feels like they were trying to rush this one out of the studio, not exactly fitting in with the same production that the rest of the album has.
Then again, the song’s message is still fairly decent, as Liam chants about taking a break from life before having an epiphany go off in the listener’s head about what the world has to offer. Even though there isn’t any real depth to this cut, as Lennon would say, this is a good excuse to turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.
‘To Be Where There’s Life’ – Dig Out Your Soul
In hindsight, it’s hard to look at Dig Out Your Soul with the slightest tinge of regret. With the breakup imminent following the group’s disastrous tour throughout Europe, the harder edge in most of the songs may as well be Noel’s frustration with repeatedly dealing with the same rock and roll rollercoaster. As Noel’s songs stall out midway through the record on ‘Falling Down’, ‘To Be Where There’s Life’ is the moment the rest of the band’s intuition starts to fail them.
Written by Gem Archer, the song at least has some nice instrumentation, replacing the brash guitars with the sounds of pummelling bass and various Eastern instruments. Though this version of psychedelic rock has always been Oasis’ wheelhouse, the song doesn’t have much of a hook, droning on one chord as Liam rests on the same note for ages trying to move the track along.
The song might not have been close to Oasis’ A-material, but it spoke volumes once everything was put in perspective a few months after the album came out. Seeing how the band were left to carry on without their primary songwriter, ‘To Be Where There’s Life’ at least serves as an apt preview of what Beady Eye would sound like.
