Few bands have ever meant as much to as many people as Oasis. From the council estates of Burnage, Manchester, to the biggest stages on the planet, Liam and Noel Gallagher spent nearly a decade soundtracking an entire generation's lives. Then they were gone: a backstage argument in Paris in 2009 felt, at the time, like a door slamming shut forever.
But doors can reopen. With Oasis having now completed the Live 25 tour, and with the potential announcement of more dates for 2027, it feels like the perfect moment to reflect on the songs that made them legends. What follows is my personal top ten. It’s entirely subjective, occasionally contentious, and probably missing at least three songs you’d include.
That’s the beauty of Oasis: everyone has their own relationship with the music. As you read through my picks, I encourage you to think about your own. What are the songs that define Oasis for you? Feel free to share your top ten or your favourite Oasis moments in the comments below. Let’s hear your stories and keep the conversation going together. These are mine.
An early 2000s gem, 'Little by Little,' was released in September 2002 with 'She Is Love.' It came from Oasis's fifth album, 'Heathen Chemistry.' This acoustic ballad reached Number Two on the UK Singles Chart. It is the only Oasis double A-side single ever released. The song was written during the previous album's sessions, but was held back after founding members Paul Arthurs and Paul McGuigan left and Creation Records collapsed.
There is also a fascinating backstory to the vocals. The song was meant for Liam, but he could not sing it because of vocal strain. Noel stepped in and recorded the vocals himself. The result is one of his finest Oasis performances. Lyrically, it's one of Noel's most reflective pieces. It is a meditation on growing up and the cost of rock-and-roll life. The song's creation aligns with Noel's turbulent personal life in 2001, including his divorce from Meg Mathews. This gives it raw emotional authenticity beneath its philosophical surface. Lines like “we the people fight for our existence / we don't claim to understand” carry a quiet wisdom. This sits at odds with the band's usual swagger. That contrast is what makes the song so affecting.
NME noted in 2024 that the song “makes more sense the older you get.” That feels right. It is a track that rewards patience. The more life you bring to it, the more it gives back. Noel Gallagher has performed it in his solo shows and the it made a welcome return to the setlist for the Live 25 tour.
Notably, the opening track, 'Fuckin' in the Bushes' from ‘Standing on the Shoulder of Giants', is not considered part of the official setlist. It is played from a speaker as the band enters. 'Little by Little' is the sole song from their 2000-2008 discography in the Live '25 Tour. Every other song comes from the first three albums: 'Definitely Maybe', '(What's the Story) Morning Glory?', 'Be Here Now' and the b-side compliation 'The Masterplan'.
The song has become a stadium anthem, far from its acoustic roots. Its transition feels natural. The chorus’s simple hook has turned into a nationwide chant. Hearing thousands sing it unites the crowd, the kind of live moment that reminds you why you go to gigs. It belongs on this list.
'Rock n Roll Star' closed the Live 25 tour main set. In 1994, it opened 'Definitely Maybe', a statement of intent. No gentle introduction. A wall of guitar and Liam's voice set the tone for what followed. Oasis showed their ambitions from the start with their debut.
The decision to open the album with this song was not accidental. In 1994, declaring that you wanted to be a rock-and-roll star was almost countercultural in itself. The biggest names in rock at the time, in particular Kurt Cobain, were all publicly tortured by their own fame.
Oasis had absolutely no interest in that. 'Rock n Roll Star' was a direct rejection of that attitude: loud, unashamed, and completely certain of itself. It was the sound of a band from Burnage saying, without a flicker of doubt, that they were going to be the biggest band in the world.
Even after 31 years, the song feels like Liam's manifesto. From the first riff, it sets a rebellious tone. The distortion brings raw energy, as if the amp's maxed out. Liam sings with conviction and swagger. 'Tonight I'm a rock n roll star' is more than a line; it defines him.
Noel himself has spoken about the moment he first played the song to the rest of the band in the rehearsal room. He told Q magazine: "The words and the sentiment to that song, that's what it's all about. I remember bringing it down to the lads in the rehearsal studio and rehearsing it until the first time we played it live. There was a hush after it, and it wasn't the hush of people going, "What was that all about?" It was a silent awe. No one had ever said it in a song before." That hush, in a small rehearsal room in Manchester, was the first sign of what was coming.
Noel said 'Rock n Roll Star' is one of only three songs where he truly wanted to say something: "I’ve summed up everything I wanted to say in 'Rock n Roll Star', 'Live Forever', and 'Cigarettes & Alcohol'. After that, I repeat myself differently." The entire Oasis philosophy distilled into three songs, this was the first.
During Live 25, as the crowd echoed the words, Liam replied: "Yes, you fucking are." In that moment, we were all Rock n Roll Stars. I stood among many who were not born when Oasis broke out and who were just children when the band broke up and yet during that moment, we were united in song with arms raised, we felt part of something bigger.
This is classic Oasis: jangling guitars, a strong beat, and Liam's attitude. The lyrics are direct and powerful, about dreams, identity, and the lure of rock and roll. The opening lines, “I live my life in the city, there's no easy way out”, aren't just lyrics; they're a biography. They're Burnage, the dole queue, the bedsit, the rehearsal room. They're every kid who ever looked at the life laid out for them and decided it wasn't enough.
Noel told Reddit that 'Rock n Roll Star' is his greatest achievement because it sums up youth, being in a band, and the dreams of a Manchester kid. High praise from the writer of 'Live Forever', 'Slide Away', and 'Champagne Supernova'. The fact that he singles out this song speaks to its meaning, not just to Oasis, but to anyone who’s ever believed in something more.
I was lucky to catch the Oasis Live 25 tour in Manchester. Third on the setlist was 'Morning Glory', a fan favourite and one of the most high-energy tracks in the entire Oasis catalogue. It's easy to see why it appeared so early in the set; it is the kind of song that immediately raises the stakes. Noel once said, "When Liam sings that first line, you know you're at a gig. You know things are gonna kick off after that."
And he is right. 'Morning Glory' appeared third in the setlist at every Live 25 show, consistently, from Cardiff to São Paulo. That positioning was deliberate: after the opening one-two of 'Hello' and 'Acquiesce', it was the song that told the crowd the night was now fully underway. The moment that the helicopter sound effect crackled through the speakers and the riff hit, 80,000 people became one thing.
The song has a fascinating background. Noel Gallagher admits it is a cynical song about drugs. The line "all your dreams are made, when you're chained to the mirror and the razor blade" leaves little ambiguity. It is one of the few songs on the album that nods directly to the Beatles, echoing the spirit of 'Tomorrow Never Knows' with its relentless energy. Critics have noted that the opening guitar riff is strikingly similar to R.E.M.'s 'The One I Love', giving the song an immediate, primal familiarity, whether intentional or not.
The song is loud and brash from start to finish, opening with a helicopter sound effect and referencing the Beatles and cocaine in equal measure. It is a rollercoaster: Oasis at their absolute best. Music critic Alexis Petridis, writing for The Guardian, placed it at number four in a ranking of the band’s greatest songs, praising it as a “ferocious rocker” that feels “potent, feral and aggressive”, enhanced by Liam’s “particularly sneery vocal”.
That description is exactly right. ‘Morning Glory’ has never been a gentle song; it is a song that demands something from you. And it has stayed in the setlist from release to the final night of the Live 25 tour. Few Oasis tracks can claim that.
'Bring It On Down' was intended as the band's first single, but issues with drummer Tony McCarroll led to shelving it. The trouble came specifically from McCarroll's seeming inability to get the drum track right; the band were eventually forced to bring in a session drummer to try and record the song properly. As Noel recalled in the 'Definitely Maybe' documentary: “I'd been telling, or asking, Tony for two years, 'It goes like this.' Then, of course, when this drummer comes down, and he's playing it, and Tony's stood there, it must have been awful for him. Then the session musician couldn't get it either.” In a remarkable twist, that failure seemed to spur McCarroll on: he jumped back on the kit and finally nailed it. Noel joked that at that point, he knew the drummer would be staying in the band, at least for now.
They never presented the track to Creation Records' Alan McGee. In hindsight, the move changed their direction entirely. Instead, during a soundcheck at Pink Museum Studios in Liverpool, McCarroll and Bonehead were running through a drum and bass pattern when Noel walked in and told them to keep playing. In the time it took to play the song, 'Supersonic' was written. That became one of British music's defining debut singles. Without the botched 'Bring It On Down' session, 'Supersonic' might never have existed, and Oasis may have arrived with a very different identity.
The band eventually recorded 'Bring It On Down', and it remains their most overtly punk-influenced track. It channels the energy of the Sex Pistols and the Stooges through a band that had grown up idolising them. The track is raw, aggressive, and barely contained; the rough production is not a flaw, it is the point. It was never meant to be polished. There is also something fitting about the fact that the song which caused so much chaos in the studio ended up sounding like chaos itself. One writer described the fire on 'Bring It On Down' as “the sound of a boxer fighting for his life”; that description is hard to argue with. McCarroll, for all the trouble he caused in getting there, plays with a ferocity on this track that no session drummer could have replicated.
The lyrics are dark and menacing: 'You're the uninvited guest, who stays to the end.' They capture the frustration Noel and his peers felt: 'You're the outcast, you're the underclass. But you don't care, because you’re living fast.'
It is an underrated song that has been given a new lease of life in recent years. Liam included it on his 2024 'Definitely Maybe' 30th anniversary tour, and it featured in the Live 25 setlist too, sitting at number five in the running order each night. For many fans, hearing it live for the first time was a revelation: a song that had always felt like a deep cut suddenly sounded enormous in a stadium setting. It is worth noting too that the original Monnow Valley recording of 'Bring It On Down', the version that started all the trouble, was finally released on the 30th anniversary deluxe edition of 'Definitely Maybe' in 2024, giving fans the chance to hear exactly where the story began.
Another song from the debut album 'Definitely Maybe' is arguably its most electrifying moment. The riff is shamelessly lifted from T. Rex's 'Get It On', something Noel has always acknowledged. It is a beefy, swaggering affair. It became a live staple for both Oasis and Liam Gallagher's solo shows. Musically, it hits like a freight train. Lyrically, Noel goes political again. He captures the frustration and restlessness of a generation with nowhere to go. "Is it worth the aggravation to find yourself a job when there's nothing worth working for?"
At the time of writing, Noel Gallagher was one of the so-called "Thatcher’s Children." This title was given to those who had grown up under the policies and leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who took office in 1979 and left in 1990. For those in the North of England, the consequences were profound and long-lasting. The deindustrialisation of cities like Manchester gutted entire communities. Factories closed. Mine's shut. The jobs that had given working-class families structure, dignity, and identity simply disappeared. Unemployment in some northern towns reached staggering levels. For a generation of young men growing up in places like Burnage, there was often nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Noel lived this reality. Much of the late 1980s, he was unemployed in a bedsit, writing songs. His father worked as a labourer when possible. The dole queue was not abstract; it was a weekly ritual for fathers, sons, brothers, and friends. Noel recalled: "everyone was there with their dad."
Noel has said, 'I don't think there's anything more soul-destroying than you, your brother, your dad, and your two best mates, and their dads, all signing on at the unemployment office. "At the time, it was just life. I’d left school and gone on the dole. But what message does that send? My dad’s got no future?"
It's a devastating observation, made all the more powerful by its matter-of-fact tone. This wasn't self-pity. It was simply the reality of an entire generation. And it is precisely that reality that bleeds into 'Cigarettes & Alcohol'. The song doesn't romanticise poverty; it captures the restless, defiant energy of people who refused to accept that this was all there was. When Noel later said, "When I was growing up in poverty and unemployment, music took me out of that," you understand exactly what 'Cigarettes & Alcohol' is. It’s not just a rock song; it is an escape hatch.
It's worth noting that Noel himself eventually clarified his complicated feelings about the Thatcher era. While he was unflinching in his criticism of the damage done to working-class communities, he also acknowledged that adversity produced something.
It produced a generation of artists, designers, and musicians with something real to say. Great art, he suggested, was made in spite of Thatcher, not because of her.
Despite being rooted in Noel Gallagher’s own circumstances, 'Cigarettes & Alcohol' remains timeless, speaking to new generations. The song captures recurring themes in youth culture: disillusionment with societal structures, resistance to conformity, and the pursuit of self-determination. Its direct lyrics and raw energy match the tradition of British rock anthems that challenge the status quo. It is still relevant because generational frustration and ambition are cyclical.
Released in 1996 as a B-side to 'Don't Look Back in Anger', 'The Masterplan' was never meant to be a centrepiece. It was a bonus, an extra, the kind of track that gets filed away and forgotten. Instead, it became one of the most beloved songs in the entire Oasis catalogue, and for many fans, including Noel himself at various points, it is the best thing he ever wrote. That a song of this quality was considered surplus to requirements on '(What's the Story) Morning Glory?' tells you everything you need to know about just how absurdly well-stocked Oasis were at their peak.
Lyrically, the song operates on a different frequency to most of what Oasis were doing at the time. Where 'Definitely Maybe' is all swagger and ambition, “Tonight I'm a rock n roll star,” 'The Masterplan' is quieter and more philosophical. The central message arrives not as a rallying cry but as a gentle, almost reluctant piece of wisdom: “All we know is that we don't know how it's gonna be, please brother, let it be.” It is a song about surrendering the need for certainty, about accepting that life won't always make sense, and finding peace in that. Lines like “I'm not saying right is wrong, it's up to us to make the best of all the things that come our way” carry a maturity that sits in striking contrast to the chest-beating ambition elsewhere in the catalogue. It arrives at that place without a single moment of self-pity.
This is also one of the first Oasis songs I connected with on a personal level. Hearing it late at night as a teenager, I felt seen, as if my quiet questions and stubborn hopes were finally spoken aloud by someone who understood. There is something in the image of "four and twenty million doors on life's endless corridor" that captures a very specific feeling: the sense of standing at the start of your life, overwhelmed by possibility and paralysed by it in equal measure. And then the chorus arrives like a hand on your shoulder: "Dance if you wanna dance, please brother, take a chance." It doesn't tell you what to do. It just tells you that you can.
This is also one of the first Oasis songs I connected with on a personal level. Hearing it late at night as a teenager, I felt seen, as if my quiet questions and stubborn hopes were finally spoken aloud by someone who understood. There is something in the image of "four and twenty million doors on life's endless corridor" that captures a very specific feeling: the sense of standing at the start of your life, overwhelmed by possibility and paralysed by it in equal measure. And then the chorus arrives like a hand on your shoulder: "Dance if you wanna dance, please brother, take a chance." It doesn't tell you what to do. It just tells you that you can.
The arrangement is worth dwelling on. Built around an acoustic guitar, a gently rolling melody, and a string section that swells without ever overwhelming, it has a warmth that the louder Oasis records rarely allowed. Noel's vocals are unhurried and sincere, and the song never strains for effect. It simply unfolds, quietly confident in its own beauty. That restraint is part of what makes it so affecting. In a catalogue full of songs that announce themselves at full volume, 'The Masterplan' is the one that waits for you to come to it.
And time has vindicated it. 'The Masterplan' has grown from cult favourite to setlist staple, even opening the encore on the band's Live 25 tour. During the years of the split, Noel kept the song alive in his own solo sets, as if he knew it was too good to leave in a vault. At the first show of the Oasis Live 25 tour in Cardiff, he dedicated it with the words: "This song is for all the people in their twenties who have never seen us before and kept this going for 20 years." In a room full of people who had waited sixteen years for that moment, it landed like a promise fulfilled.
It is far more than a B-side. It is proof that Noel Gallagher, even when writing songs the label didn't think were good enough for the album, was operating at a level most songwriters never reach. 'The Masterplan' deserved its own spotlight. In the end, it found one.
A year ago, 'Champagne Supernova' felt distant. But witnessing Liam and Noel play it together on the 'Live 25' tour hit me with an unexpected force, suddenly, the song felt like an old friend reborn and electric, surging with new meaning in real time.
The track's origins are pure Noel Gallagher. The title struck him, a sudden spark, while he watched a champagne documentary, a flash that twisted off the Pixies' 'Bossanova.' Some call the lyrics nonsense. Noel admits he was 'out of it' writing parts, but that's where the song's raw ache lives. "Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball" springs from a childhood memory: Bracket the Butler inching across a room in 'Camberwick Green.' These surreal, intimate images, paired with the open wound of "How many special people change?", give the song a pulse that aches and soars. Sometimes, 'caught beneath a landslide' crushes and suffocates. With 50,000 around you, it's pure, dizzying freedom.
The live version is a Gallagher-only triumph. But the studio recording on '(What's the Story) Morning Glory?' owes much to Paul Weller. Weller provided the swirling psychedelic lead guitar and those slightly "drunken" backing vocals. Their solos blend, creating a Britpop psychedelia template unmatched since.
Ending the 'Live 25' shows with a firework finale, the song hit with the force of an epitaph for the 90s and a promise for the future. As fireworks thundered over Heaton Park, 'Champagne Supernova' rose up; for a moment, it overwhelmed everything. The sky exploded in colour as Liam's voice crashed through the final chorus, and people around me wept, not from sadness, but from something rawer. Relief. Unspoken gratitude. The piercing sense of something lost, suddenly returned.
Seeing Liam and Noel share the stage for this song was poignant. After fifteen years apart, they stood together as they closed their greatest album. For that moment, music was bigger than their feud.
After 30 years, 'Champagne Supernova' still has "A Day in the Life" magnitude, a song that feels like it always existed, arriving fully formed. As the final notes rang out over Manchester, it was clear: we weren't just watching a band finish a set. We were witnessing something few believed would happen again.
'Talk Tonight' is one of my favourites, a raw moment of vulnerability in Oasis’s catalogue. Born from a real crisis when the band, and Noel, were on the brink, the song radiates warmth and intimacy found nowhere else in their music. Where 'Definitely Maybe' shouts bravado, this song strips back everything: just acoustic guitar and confession. It's Noel, exposed, his defences dropped.
Released on 24 April 1995 as a B-side to 'Some Might Say' and later appearing on 'The Masterplan,' few Oasis songs feature Noel singing solo, which is key here. Liam commands; Noel confesses.
Noel wrote it after a walkout from the band following a disastrous show at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles in September 1994. Half the band was on crystal meth; Liam threw a tambourine at Noel, who stormed off. He fled to San Francisco to Melissa Lim, a woman he’d briefly met. She fed him, walked with him, shopped for records, and talked him out of quitting. Lim recalled: "San Francisco is where bands come to die, but I wasn’t letting that happen. I told him, ‘You can’t leave; you’re on the verge of something big.’" The lyrics map their time: her love of Snapple Strawberry Lemonade became "all your dreams are made of strawberry lemonade"; park walks became "you take me walking to where you played when you were young"; Noel’s isolation became "a thousand million miles from home."
In the 2016 documentary 'Supersonic', Noel said he couldn’t picture her face or recall her name, a surprising admission about the woman who may have saved the band. Lim responded: "Keith Richards can remember his milkman at eight. I don’t know what’s up with Noel, but that’s fine. I was part of something that touched many. That’s good enough."
One detail adds to the story. Lim greeted Noel on the phone with "What's the story, morning glory?" When he pulled away, she said, "It's OK, I won't look back in anger. We're just friends." A year later, Oasis released '(What's the Story) Morning Glory?' and 'Don't Look Back in Anger'. Coincidence or tribute, it's a remarkable British music footnote.
Thirty years later, Melissa returned to witness Live 25 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, her heart echoing with the weight of those decades. Posting on Instagram, she wrote: "30 years and worth the wait." Standing there, the woman who saved Oasis finally saw the music she had helped preserve, a powerful full-circle moment carved into rock and roll history.
A single song can redefine music, and 'Live Forever' is one such song. Noel began writing it in 1991, while working at a builder's merchant in Manchester. After his foot was crushed by a pipe in an accident, he was given a less-strenuous job in the storeroom, which gave him more time to write. The melody came from listening to the Rolling Stones' 'Exile on Main Street', specifically the vocal hook from 'Shine a Light', thethe bit that goes “May the good Lord shine a light on you.”that goes “May it the good Lord shine a light on you.” No”, and ieworked it into “Maybe I don't really want to know”, and it was that kernel of a melody, written in a storeroom in Manchester, that would eventually change everything.
When Noel first played itand in early 1993, the reactthe reaction was immediate. Bonehead refused to believe it was his: “You’ve not just fucking written that. There’s no way that’s your song.” It was the song that convinced Alan McGee to sign Oasis to Creation Records, with McGee later recalling: “It was probably the single greatest moment I’ve ever experienced with them.” It was also the song that convinced the existing members of Oasis to accept Noel as their songwriter in the first place. Without ‘Live Forever’, the band as we know it may never have existed.rds, with McGee later recalling: “It was probably the single greatest moment I’ve ever experienced with them.” It was also the song that convinced the existing members of Oasis to accept Noel as their songwriter in the first place. Without ‘Live Forever’, the band as we know it may never have existed.
The Cobain connection is central to understanding what the song was and why it mattered. Noel has explained: "It was written in the middle of grunge and all that, and I remember Nirvana had a tune called 'I Hate Myself and Want to Die', and I was like, 'Well, I'm not fucking having that. Kids don't need to be hearing that nonsense.'" He was always quick to add that he admired Cobain deeply, and the song was never intended as a direct attack. But the contrast was deliberate. As Noel put it: "Seems to me that here was a guy who had everything, and was miserable about it. And we had fuck-all, and I still thought that getting up in the morning was the greatest fucking thing ever, 'cause you didn't know where you'd end up at night."
Released as the third single from 'Definitely Maybe' in August 1994, just months before Cobain's death, it delivers a powerful message: a song for the underdog, built on self-belief. "Maybe I just wanna fly, wanna live and don't wanna die." The song rejects the mediocre andy, and the song wapotentialnded as a direct attack. But the contrast was deliberate. As Noel put it: "Seems to me that here was a guy who had ev The song is also widely interpreted as an ode to the brothers' mother, Peggy Gallagher, and the line "You and I are gonna live forever" takes on a very different weight when heard in that context.erything, and was miserable about it. And we had fuck-all, and I still thought that getting up in the morning was the greatest fucking thing ever, 'cause you didn't know where you'd end up at night."
It iis uplifting and lasting. Liam's voice lifts Noel's lyric to somewhere they couldn't reach alone. Every Oasis fan has a 'Live Forever' story. In 2006, Q magazine named it the greatest song of all time in a reader pollery Oasis fan has a 'Live Forever' story. In 2006, Q magazine named it the greatest song of all time in a reader poll. The song feels immortal after thirty years, e writtenarning generational acclaim. Live Forever' consistently ranks among the best Oasis songs and the greatest songs ever written. But it's not my number one.
I couldn't leave this song out. It's impossible to discuss Oasis without 'Don't Look Back in Anger.' For many in the UK, it's among the first Oasis songs we heard. Alongside 'Wonderwall', the chorus is ingrained in youth culture. This song is furniture. Beyond being a pop classic, it holds deep meaning for Manchester.
The song owes much to John Lennon. Noel wrote it in Paris in April 1995, after the band performed at a strip club. Their set done, Noel returned to his hotel and wrote it. The opening piano riff is straight from Lennon's 'Imagine', which Noel admits: “The opening piano riff's 'Imagine'. Half put in to wind people up, half to show how songs like this happen, they're inspired by songs like 'Imagine.'” He also borrowed “the brains I had went to my head” from a Lennon demo tape. The line “So I start a revolution from my bed” nods to Lennon's 1969 bed-ins.
It was also the first Oasis single to feature Noel on lead vocals rather than Liam. That happened because Noel played both 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and 'Wonderwall' for Liam and told him to pick one. Liam chose 'Wonderwall', which was exactly what Noel had hoped for. The recording of 'Don't Look Back in Anger' nearly didn't happen at all. While Noel was laying down the track, Liam went to the pub and returned with around thirty drunk locals from Monmouth, who proceeded to play with the studio's guitars. Noel arrived to find them there, a row erupted, and he chased Liam out of the studio. He left the next morning. The album was, briefly, dead. Three weeks later, Noel came back, and they finished it.
Noel has said he doesn't feel he wrote the song at all: “I don't ever sit there and think that I wrote that. I think it came from somewhere else. I think it was a song that was there somewhere, and if I hadn't written it, Bono would have written it.” That is perhaps the most honest thing anyone has ever said about a song this inevitable.
The song's origins are soaked in John Lennon. Noel wrote it in Paris in April 1995, returning to his hotel room on a rainy night after the band had played a strip club. Their set finished, the strippers came on, and Noel went back to his room and wrote it. The opening piano riff is lifted directly from Lennon's 'Imagine', something Noel has never denied: “I mean, the opening piano riff's 'Imagine'. Fifty per cent of it's put in there to wind people up, and the other 50% is saying, 'Look, this is how songs like Don't Look Back in Anger come about, because they're inspired by songs like Imagine.'” He also borrowed the line “the brains I had went to my head” from a tape of Lennon recording his memoirs, which had apparently been stolen from the Dakota Hotel. “I thought, 'Thank you, I'll take that,'” Noel said. The line “So I start a revolution from my bed” is a nod to Lennon's famous 1969 bed-ins for peace.
It was also the first Oasis single to feature Noel on lead vocals rather than Liam. That happened because Noel played both 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and 'Wonderwall' for Liam and told him to pick one. Liam chose 'Wonderwall', which was exactly what Noel had hoped for. The recording of 'Don't Look Back in Anger' nearly didn't happen at all. While Noel was laying down the track, Liam went to the pub and returned with around thirty drunk locals from Monmouth, who proceeded to play with the studio's guitars. Noel arrived to find them there, a row erupted, and he chased Liam out of the studio. He left the next morning. The album was, briefly, dead. Three weeks later, Noel came back, and they finished it.
Noel has said he doesn't feel he wrote the song at all: “I don't ever sit there and think that I wrote that. I think it came from somewhere else. I think it was a song that was there somewhere, and if I hadn't written it, Bono would have written it.” That is perhaps the most honest thing anyone has ever said about a song this inevitable.
Following the Manchester Arena attack in May 2017, the song became an anthem of defiance, unity, and resilience. Three days after the attack, mourners gathered in St Ann's Square to pay their respects. After a minute of silence, Lydia Bernsmeier-Rullow began the opening verse of 'Don't Look Back in Anger'. The crowd joined in. The song re-entered the UK charts at number 25. Noel, watching from home, was left speechless: “For the first time in my life I was fucking speechless.” He later told Radio X: “That song is more important than I'll ever be.”
They were singing because they needed something that made sense. They needed something familiar, powerful, and healing. When politicians and the powers that be could not provide help and support, Manchester rallied around a song.
In Britain, 'Don't Look Back in Anger' has become part of the national furniture. One of those songs woven so deeply into the cultural fabric that it feels like it's always been there. It echoes through football stadiums, fills pub gardens after last orders, and sits permanently on the playlist of every busker, wedding DJ, and indie disco. It's been sung in joy and grief, at parties and vigils, in defiance and remembrance. It's passed down from siblings, learned by osmosis, blasted from radios and shouted from terraces. NME ranked it number one in their list of the fifty most explosive choruses ever written. The Official Charts Company voted it the fourth most popular single of the last sixty years in the UK.
And no matter where you're from, whether you grew up with Britpop or discovered the song decades later, when that chorus hits, you're part of something bigger. At some performances on the Live 25 tour, Noel barely got through the first line before the crowd took over entirely, singing every word back to him without pause. That, more than any chart position or critical ranking, is the measure of what this song has become. It's more than a song now. It's a unifier, an unofficial British hymn.
'Slide Away' stands as the definitive Oasis song, and its legend is inseparable from a remarkable passing of the torch in Manchester music history. It was written on a 1960 Gibson Les Paul that Johnny Marr, the architect of The Smiths' sound and arguably the greatest rhythm guitarist Britain has ever produced, had sent to Noel as a gift. At the time, Oasis were relatively unknown and broke; Marr, noticing that Noel had only one guitar and was struggling to stay in tune during gigs, gave him the instrument out of pure generosity, one Manchester musician recognising the spark in another.
The guitar had an incredible lineage; it was previously owned by Pete Townshend and used by Marr to write the Smiths classic 'Panic'. Noel says the song just "came out of the guitar" in about twenty minutes. What he has spoken about less freely is what, or who, inspired it. At the time, Noel had been in a relationship with Louise Jones for six years. He has described her as his soulmate, and the two split in June 1994, just as Oasis were on the verge of breaking through. "I don't think I'll ever get over it," he said at the time. The song was reportedly written after a pub argument with Bonehead, when Noel stormed home, picked up the Les Paul, and the whole thing poured out in one sitting. That emotional rawness is audible in every note.
Remarkably, after Noel smashed that guitar over a stage invader’s head in Newcastle, Marr gave him another one, a black 1978 Les Paul Custom used on 'The Queen is Dead'. Every time you hear those shimmering, roaring riffs, you’re hearing the literal soul of Manchester rock being handed from one generation to the next.
Musically, the track is a masterclass in tension and release. It features what many consider to be Liam Gallagher's finest vocal performance. Noel himself, on the 'Stop the Clocks' DVD, stated that it contains the best singing Liam has ever done on record. There is a rasp and a desperate hunger in his voice, especially when he hits the line: "I don't know, I don't care, all I know is you can take me there." It is the sound of a man who isn't just singing lyrics, but pleading for a way out.
Even the recording process was meticulous. Producer Dave Batchelor stood in front of drummer Tony McCarroll during the session and pointed at each of his two crash cymbals in turn, ensuring McCarroll alternated them across the stereo image. That detail, barely noticeable on a first listen, gives the track its particular sense of space and openness. Noel has described the extended outro as "sonic waftage", which is a typically offhand way of describing something genuinely transcendent. The song builds and builds, and then it simply refuses to stop, as if it knows that ending would mean returning to the world outside.
The song was considered for release as a fifth single from 'Definitely Maybe', but Noel refused. His reasoning was characteristically blunt: "You can't have five singles off a debut album." It wasn't about commerce. It was about instinct, and that instinct was right.
Seeing them perform it together in 2025, standing just yards apart, felt like the ultimate reconciliation. It captures every phase of a relationship: the giddy anticipation of "we talk of growing old," the melting devotion of "let me be the one who shines with you," and the reckless abandon of youth. Notably, a live version recorded at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff on 4 July 2025 was released as an official single, meaning ‘Slide Away’ entered the UK Singles Chart for the first time, debuting at number 31. Thirty-one years after it was written in a storeroom, it finally got the chart recognition it was always owed.
It transcends the Britpop era entirely; it could have been written fifty years ago or yesterday, and it would still hit with the same emotional force. It is the ultimate declaration of desire, devotion, and rock and roll energy. For many fans, 'Live Forever' is the song that marks Noel Gallagher as a genius, but 'Slide Away' proves he is a poet.
The critics have consistently agreed. NME ranked it the greatest Oasis song ever written. Paste ranked it number one in their own list. The Guardian placed it at number two, with their critic describing how Liam's vocal captures a “pent-up frustration” that erupts into “irresistible, longing euphoria.” Rolling Stone placed it eleventh in their top 40 Oasis tracks. NME's original review of 'Definitely Maybe', written by Keith Cameron on its release in 1994, described 'Slide Away' as “a completely heart-rending love song” that showed the band possessing “both the sweetness and tenderness to complement their well-proven hooligan qualities.” That line, written before Oasis were even famous, turned out to be one of the most accurate things anyone ever wrote about them.
On the Live 25 tour, The New York Times singled it out in their review, describing it as “a baleful 'Slide Away'”, as if the weight of everything the song carried, the heartbreak, the history, the sixteen-year gap, had made it heavier and more devastating than ever. That, perhaps, is the most remarkable thing about it: thirty years on, it has only grown.
There you have it: my top ten Oasis songs. It is a list that has shifted and evolved over the years, shaped by gigs, by memories, by the songs that found me at exactly the right moment. A few years ago, it would have looked very different. A few years from now, it might change again. That is the thing about Oasis: the music does not stand still, even when the songs do. Each listen brings something new, depending on where you are in life and what you are carrying with you when you press play.
What the Live 25 tour reminded me, more than anything, is that this music was never just nostalgia. It was always alive. There is a tendency to treat Oasis as a period piece, a band that belonged to a specific moment in the 1990s and has been preserved in amber ever since. But standing in Manchester watching two brothers who hadn't shared a stage in sixteen years tear through songs written in bedsits and rehearsal rooms in the early 1990s, that argument fell apart completely. The songs were not relics. They were as urgent and immediate as the day they were written.
I'll never forget the roar that erupted the moment the opening chords of 'Don't Look Back in Anger' rang out. Arms thrown over shoulders, people singing until their voices cracked, strangers sharing smiles and tears. There is something Oasis do that very few bands manage: they make you feel like the songs were written specifically for you, even when you know they weren't. That is the mark of a truly great songwriter. Noel Gallagher, for all his contradictions and bluster, wrote songs that contain multitudes. Songs that mean one thing at sixteen and something entirely different at twenty-six. Songs that can soundtrack a night out, a heartbreak, a reconciliation, or a vigil.
Liam, for his part, gave those songs a voice that no one else on earth could have given them. The sneer, the swagger, the strange, aching vulnerability underneath it all. The two of them, together, were something that only happens once.
I imagine many of you will have very different lists. There are songs I left off that I'll probably regret: 'Supersonic', 'Some Might Say', 'Half the World Away', 'Acquiesce', 'Cast No Shadow', 'The Importance of Being Idle', 'D'You Know What I Mean', 'Lyla', 'The Hindu Times', 'Falling Down'. Each of them deserves its own essay. 'D'You Know What I Mean' alone, with its two-minute wall of noise intro and Liam at his most imperious, could anchor a list of its own. 'Lyla' is one of the most underrated singles in the catalogue, a song that arrived during the 'Don't Believe the Truth' era and reminded everyone what Oasis were capable of when they stopped fighting each other long enough to write. 'The Hindu Times' is pure adrenaline from start to finish, the sound of a band rediscovering their hunger. And 'Falling Down', the last single released before the split, is one of the most quietly devastating things Noel ever wrote, a song that sounds, in retrospect, like a goodbye. The Oasis catalogue is deep enough that two people can love the band completely and share almost no overlap in their favourites, and that is a rare thing.
Feel free to share your own top ten in the comments below. Which Oasis song means the most to you, and why? I'd love to hear your personal stories and what memories or moments those songs bring to mind.
For me, it always comes back to 'Slide Away'. A song written on a borrowed guitar, about a relationship that was already ending, by a man who had no idea that within a year he would be one of the most famous musicians on the planet. There is something in that, in the fact that Oasis's greatest song was written before they were Oasis in any meaningful sense, before the Knebworth shows and the Brit Awards and the magazine covers and the feuds. It was written when they were still just a band from Manchester with something to prove. And it sounds like it.