While Oasis will start in July its world tour of reformation, the emblematic group of Britpop also celebrates this year the thirty years of the release of its second album entitled “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?”.
With the announcement in August 2024 of a world tour of Oasis beginner on July 4, 2025 in Cardiff, in Wales, the enemy brothers of English rock and Noel Gallagher had ended fifteen years of scramble to reform Oasis. This year, the emblematic group of Britpop will also celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the release, on October 2, 1995, of its second album called “(What’s the story) Morning Glory?”
A year after “Definitifly Maybe”, the twelve new titles of the Manchester formation are further renamed its fame and offer it its greatest commercial success. With hits like “Wonderwall”, “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, “Some Might Say” and “Champagne Supernova”, Oasis becomes an undisputed King of the Britpop while relegating his Blur rival. Rewarded with a Brit Award for the best British album in 1996, “(What’s the story) Morning Glory?” Allows Oasis to reach its peak of popularity.
This second studio album of Oasis begins arrogant with a “hello” in reference to the refrain of the title of the English singer of Glam rock Gary Glitter who says “Hello! Hello! I’m back Again”. A greeting that British supporters also sing in football matches and which was also taken up by the Swiss group The Young Gods under the title “Did you miss me?” in 1987.
Sociological look
To this insolent opening song which corresponds well to the morgue of Liam and Noel Gallagher however succeed three more intense pieces of stadium rock. “Roll with it”, the haunting and melodic “Wonderwall” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger” under the high influence of John Lennon, lend themselves to be taken up in choir by tens of thousands of fans in concert.
Despite a consumed art of the recycling of Beatles, Kinks, The Jam or The Rolling Stones, Oasis succeeds in transcending its influences and offering rock to authentic tones posing an often funny and relevant sociological look at England of the time. A Great Britain then still in full transition between the conservative English policy of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and that more globalist of Labor Tony Blair in the 1990s.
Proud hymns
Coming from the poor and disinherited English working class from Manchester, the fraternal tandem and the hard core of Oasis composed of Liam and Noel Gallagher reaches with “(What’s the story) Morning Glory?” To sign some proud and optimistic hymns. While offering, in addition to the rounds of twists and despite the escapades that punctuated the studio recording, more tender and lyrical songs like poignant “Cast no Shadow” dotted with strings. A song that Christmas dedicates to his friend and singer of The Verve Richard Ashcroft that he nicknamed “Captain Rock”.
With his epilogue of guitar jousts between Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller on “Champagne Supernova”, “(What’s the story) Morning Glory?” will assert itself as one of the heights of rock in the 1990s in addition to constituting the epicenter of Britpop. Aesthetically more varied and refined than the first album of Oasis, with a sound resembling a live recording with the very frontal voice and its evocations of a transitional era, this repertoire will have little equal in England despite the publications that same year 1995 of the very successful albums of Pulp (“Different Class”), Supergrass (“I Should Coco”) and Radiohead (“The Bend”)
Olivier Horner
