Which song did Oasis play live most?
For a band that has had as many hits as Oasis, it’s usually hard to throw anything new at the audience during any concert. Even on their final tour for Dig Out Your Soul, playing new material meant leaving out some massive fan favourites, and there’s a fairly safe bet that they aren’t going to try to throw any new material at the crowd during their reunion tours unless it’s absolutely called for. Then again, there are some tunes that they are practically obligated to play whenever they get onstage.
Because from the minute that What’s the Story Morning Glory came out, almost half of the album’s tracks became the biggest tunes that they would ever make. While no one is necessarily going to be screaming at them to play a song like ‘Hey Now!’ when they hit the road, it would be a crime for any of them to go through their entire setlist without touching a tune like ‘Wonderwall’ or ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’.
Even Noel tended to have his personal live favourites when reminiscing on the band’s greatest material. When talking about the tracks included on their best-of collection Lock the Box, Noel had discussed trying to play ‘Champagne Supernova’ at every gig that he could, and even when the Gallagher brothers fractured, both of them kept the tune as a core part of their setlist, even making it a spectacle half the time with Noel bringing out Johnny Marr to play the solo and Liam drafting in John Squire during his solo shows at Knebworth.
If we’re talking about songs that have been played more than any other, we have to go back to Definitely Maybe. The whole album is practically ground zero for all things Oasis, and while not every track on the record works as a live cut, tunes like ‘Columbia’ and ‘Supersonic’ were meant to be played in a live setting, especially the former given how much it emulated that hypnotic dance feel of Manchester at the time.
So, what song did Oasis play live most of all?
But dance music was never what Noel envisioned the group to be. They were the next incarnation of the classic rock bands that they loved as kids, and when living up to that rock and roll lifestyle, no other song summed up what they were all about more than ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’.
Yes, the tune does have its lineage in the glory days of artists like T Rex, but the initial magic of the riff hasn’t worn out its welcome with the fans, with it being the most played song of their live career at 646 performances, second to only ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ at 573 performances. Looking back on what the song was about, though, it makes sense for it to be the cornerstone of their career.
The group’s core ethos revolved around rock and roll excess, and listening to Noel’s opening blues notes, every fan who descended upon one of their stadium shows knew that was their cue to start jumping. But the tune works just as well when performing in a sweaty club environment, serving as the kind of track that any garage band can get under their fingers in a few minutes.
And while Liam had taken to playing the song during his solo tours, there was always something magical when both he and Noel locked in when Oasis played the tune. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ may have contained the iconic line, “It’s just rock ‘n’ roll,” but no other Oasis tune epitomises that phrase better than ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’.
