What is the worst song Oasis ever made?
Yeah, sure, Oasis were responsible for some good songs three decades ago. There are whispers they were responsible for a fistful of good songs (whisper it) two decades ago.
Let’s be real, though. Oasis, as a band, is responsible for more bad music than good. Two decent albums released before Timothée Chalamet was born (and one after, if you consider The Masterplan) would count for a whole lot more if they’d had the common decency to split up afterwards.
Instead, we got more. So much more. Definitely Maybe is a great album. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is fine. In the year of our lord 2025, when they’re the biggest band in the country, they make up a grand total of 28.57% of their recorded output. Meaning that 71.43% of what they have released is bollocks. That’s a lot of candidates for the worst song ever inflicted upon this innocent world by a Gallagher or Gallagher adjacent sideman, so let’s work out which one we’ll look back in anger upon most.
Now, you might think that 21st-century Gallagher choons that don’t make you want to drive your head into the wall, aching for the sweet release of death, are vanishingly few, so it would be best to start there. You’re not far off. Ironically enough, the Oasis songs from this cursed century that aren’t deep fried piss are all on what might just be their final album.
Call this the benefit of lowered expectations, but Dig Out Your Soul is a pretty much serviceable album. Gem Archer and Andy Bell’s songs are more skippable than your boss’ leaving drinks, but considering what came before them, they’re a godsend.
Don’t Believe the Truth and Heathen Chemistry are too boring to think twice about, so I won’t. ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ is just ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ as an X-Factor audition song, and ‘Born on a Different Cloud’ is literally just a series of John Lennon quotes strung together like fridge magnet poetry.
Some people would say that’s Oasis’s entire career, but I couldn’t comment. Just like before, Archer, Bell and Gallagher Jr’s efforts are all bad but in a forgettable way, which some would say is the worst thing a piece of art can be. These are people who haven’t heard ‘Little James’.
Is ‘Little James’ the worst song by Oasis?
This is an infamous track off the 2000s Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, and we’re off to the races with this one. The achievement of being the worst Oasis album is actually admirable, until you actually reckon with the Herculean task of actually listening to the thing. ‘Go Let It Out’, ‘Who Feels Love?’ and ‘Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is’ are all trash, but as boring as it sounds, the cherry on top of this asbestos cake is the first song that Liam Gallagher ever wrote.
It comes up every time someone talks about infamously bad Oasis songs, but sometimes things are cliché for a good reason. This nauseating, cloying monstrosity, written about Liam’s then-stepson, James Kensit, probably makes more sense as a power play from his older brother. Telling ‘our kid’ that if he wants songs on the records, he can bloody well write them, and see how much people like them. Turns out they didn’t. Yet, is ‘Little James‘ the worst Oasis song? Let’s think about it a moment.
Sure, the song’s objectively godawful, but what exactly did you expect? It was the first song Liam ever wrote. Would any of our first songs be that much better? Instead, my pick for the worst Oasis song comes straight from the pen of Gallagher Sr. ‘All Around the World’ is the centrepiece track of Be Here Now, and if ‘Little James’ has the most number of bad qualities of all Oasis songs, ‘All Around the World’ has the least good qualities of them all.
What’s the song about? Fucking nothing. Where are the hooks? Fucking nowhere. When will it end? Fucking never. Ten human minutes of tuneless, pounding, migraine-inducing misery all in service of a chorus so asinine you’d forget it halfway through its first appearance, if it weren’t going to be repeated a billion more times. Scale for no reason other than they could, sound and fury signifying nothing but a cocaine-fuelled ego trip, this is rock ‘n’ roll music made because drugs and booze got boring.
Perhaps that’s not even the worst song the band made. That would be the very last track on Be Here Now, something which could only be a cruel joke at the expense of fans who listened to the album the whole way through, expecting something better of their heroes, expecting anything of them. Instead, they didn’t just get ‘All Around the World’, they got its reprise, too. Christ.
