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The 40 Best Oasis Songs

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

Oasis best 40 songs

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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.”

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11

‘Slide Away’ (1994)

For all his bluster and bravado, Noel’s a big softie at heart (“Talk Tonight” has reduced the most alpha of bros to rubble). The penultimate song off Definitely, Maybe recounts Gallagher’s tumultuous relationship with his girlfriend at the time. “I dream of you — we talk of growing old,” Liam sings before adding the devastating rejoinder, “But you said please don’t!” All songs, of course, are open to interpretation. Exhibit A: The Oasis fan who wrote on Reddit, “I’ve got a tramp stamp that says, ‘Slide in, baby / Together we’ll fly.’” Love is love. —J.N.

10

‘Some Might Say’ (1995)

Oasis’ first U.K. Number One single began as a Noel demo, which was slower, harder, and, in his words, “sleazier” than the version that ended up on (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?. The version released to the world added a Britpop gloss that made it a perfect marriage of Stones swagger and Beatle-esque brightness. The lyrics are as hermetically goofy as any Oasis tune, but the soaring chorus, “some might say we will find a brighter day,” touched a nerve in England after 16 long years of Conservative rule. “Oasis were on Top of the Pops, I think ‘Some Might Say’ had just got Number One,” recalled veteran British journalist and historian John Savage in Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Britpop, “And I remember watching them, and I just cried. I thought, ‘Something is really changing here.’” —J.D.

9

‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ (1994)

To most of the world in the summer of 1994, the Gallagher brothers were nobody. By the time the first track on Definitely, Maybe ended, they were rock stars. The opener on Oasis’ debut set all the ground rules for this band: The riffs would be big, the lyrics would be simple enough to remember at the end of the night, and somehow it would all feel like the truth. When Liam sang about living his life for the stars that shine, he struck a chord that has kept on echoing through 30 years of karaoke sessions and road-trip playlists. The key is that word “tonight” — when you turn this one up loud enough, you’re a star too. —S.V.L.

8

‘The Masterplan’ (1995)

“I think it’s the best song I’ve ever written,” Noel Gallagher told NME of this beloved B-side to “Wonderwall.” Sung by Noel and featuring an orchestra, it’s the elder Gallagher’s opus, a swelling ballad about how there’s really no plan to existence after all. “This sums up your journey through life,” he said in the liner notes to the compilation The Masterplan. “All we know is that we don’t know.” Many U.S. fans got their first taste of the song when Noel performed it during a1996 episode of MTV Unplugged — which Liam infamously skipped. —J.H.

7

‘Champagne Supernova’ (1995)

Before Chappell Roan, the only supernova song involving alcoholic beverages was “Champagne Supernova,” the Britpop anthem that closes (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?. Noel Gallagher has described it as “probably as psychedelic as I’ll ever get,” which only confirms to us that he turned on Sgt. Pepper, heard “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” and decided to craft his own masterpiece about the sky. The power ballad features the Jam’s Paul Weller delivering one tearjerker of a solo, alongside trippy lines like, “Slowly walking down the hall/Faster than a cannonball/Where were you while we were getting high?” If you’ve ever pondered what it’s about, so has Noel. “Some of the lyrics were written when I was out of it,” he told NME in 1995. “It means different things when I’m in different moods.” —A.M.

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.