Home Music Music Lists

The 40 Best Oasis Songs

The Gallagher brothers’ finest moments — from Nineties classics to obscure gems

Oasis best 40 songs

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHEW COOLEY. PHOTOGRAPHS IN ILLUSTRATION BY RUNE HELLESTAD/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES; DAVE HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES; LEX VAN ROSSEN/MAI/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES; MARTYN GOODACRE/GETTY IMAGES

After a contentious 15-year break, brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher are reforming Oasis. The reunion and subsequent 2025 tour announcement drove fans back to the Britpop pioneers’ catalog, with Spotify reporting a 690 percent increase in streams of Oasis music. But pity the casual listeners who only gravitated toward the group’s two biggest albums, 1994’s Definitely, Maybe and 1995’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?. They’re missing out on some true Gallagher brothers gems, from late-period singles to a wealth of B-sides from the band’s heyday — many of which appear on our list of the 40 best Oasis songs. Anyway, here’s “Wonderwall.”

CONTRIBUTORS: , , , , , , , , ,

6

‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ (1994)

Maybe it’s Liam’s mimic of the Johnny Rotten sneer — “suhn-shiiine” — but “Cigarettes and Alcohol” feels in line with some of punk’s most revelatory, if cynical, offerings (on top the riff-lifting from Chuck Berry via T. Rex). But this isn’t exactly the Sex Pistols’ “No Future.” The future is laid out clearly here — it’s just filled with impossible dreams and shitty jobs (if you can get one) so “might as well do the white line.” That makes “Cigarettes & Alcohol” a sort of celebration of cheap, mortality-quickening thrills, a no future of its own, but the song lives fully in the glorious self-destruction of the present. Is this a “healthy” way to live? A “good” way to live?” Probably not. But does it rock? Well, yeah. —J.B.

5

‘Acquiesce’ (1995)

The greatest of the Oasis B-sides? We sure think so. Recorded during the (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? sessions, “Acquiesce” was ultimately left off the 1995 album, appearing instead as the B-side to the U.K. single “Some Might Say.” While it’d later be released on the 1998 compilation The Masterplan, the song’s legacy casts a much longer shadow. To many fans, it’s the ultimate Liam/Noel collab, with Our Kid sneering the verses and his older brother handling the chorus’s message of unity: “Because we need each other/We believe in one another.” They may have often been at the other’s throat, but on “Acquiesce” the brothers are in perfect harmony. —J.H.

4

‘Wonderwall’ (1995)

“What the fuck is this tune?” This was Liam Gallagher’s response to hearing his brother Noel’s new song in May 1995, a heart-wrenching ballad he supposedly wrote for his girlfriend at the time. Three decades later, “Wonderwall” is a rock standard with over two billion streams on Spotify, covered by everyone from Ed Sheeran to Paul Anka. Liam has come around to it, while Noel still has mixed feelings. “You play the opening first three seconds and everybody goes, ‘Right, this is what we’ve fucking come for,’” he told us in 2019. “All the great artists have one of those songs. I’m lucky to have five. And it’s funny, in no fucking way is it my favorite song.” —A.M.

3

‘Supersonic’ (1994)

In an interview with Mojo, Noel Gallagher summed up the attitude Oasis had as they embarked on their career in 1994. “We’re going to take U2 on. That’s where my band are heading. I don’t give a fuck about Felt or Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. I’m aiming for bigger shit than that.” Never has not giving a fuck about Ned’s Atomic Dustbin sounded so world-beatingly awesome as on “Supersonic,” with its John Lennon-meets-Johnny Rotten sneer, avalanche of over-dubbed guitars, and the glorious declamation, “I need to be myself/I can’t be no one else.” Noel Gallagher claims he wrote it in a half hour, spooling out disjointed lines like “I’m feeling supersonic/Give me gin and tonic” and “”I know a girl called Elsa/She’s into Alka-Seltzer” into something that felt touched by the rock gods, who’d soon be welcoming Oasis into their pantheon. —J.D.

2

‘Live Forever’ (1994)

If you’ve never felt this way about a friend, bandmate, lover, or absolute rando cheers-ing your fourth pint of the night, can you really say you’ve lived? “Maybe you’re the same as me/We see things they’ll never see/You and I are gonna live forever” — Noel unlocked the absurd, romantic intensity of so many late-adolescent nights when he wrote those lines. Millions of impressionable youths heard these guys lay claim to a secret wisdom about the world and shouted, “Yes!” Some of them even started bands to express all those same things they saw. None of them wrote a song half as eternal as “Live Forever.” —S.V.L.

1

‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ (1995)

“Wonderwall” has gotten the memes, the karaoke and campfire immortality, but in the Oasis pantheon, one song still stands above them all. “Don’t Look Back in Anger” is the Oasis ideal: A belter of a ballad, best sung with arms flung around others’ shoulders, built from unabashed Beatles worship, but still its own beautiful thing, and sly enough to know, “Please don’t put your life in the hands/Of a rock ‘n’ roll band/Who’ll throw it all away.” And then there’s the other obvious resonance. “Don’t Look Back in Anger” is a song that prizes acceptance and forgiveness, moving forward in life with neither regret, nor grievance. It offers up a way of living that Noel and Liam Gallagher should’ve probably embraced years ago, and maybe they finally have. —J.B.