(What's the Story) Morning Glory?

In May 1995, in the wake of the critical and commercial success of their 1994 debut album, Definitely Maybe, Oasis began recording Morning Glory at Rockfield Studios in Wales, with Owen Morris and Noel Gallagher producing. By the time they had finished in June 1995, Oasis were on the brink of becoming one of the most popular bands in the UK; the August 1995 "Battle of Britpop", in which Oasis and Blur had a chart battle over their respective singles "Roll with It" and "Country House" would propel them to mainstream awareness. Despite the friction between the Gallagher brothers, Owen Morris reflected in 2010 that: "The sessions were the best, easiest, least fraught, most happily creative time I've ever had in a recording studio. I believe people can feel and hear when music is dishonest and motivated by the wrong reasons. Morning Glory, for all its imperfection and flaws, is dripping with love and happiness." and harmonica for the two untitled tracks known as "The Swamp Song". Noel wrote the last song for the album, "Cast No Shadow", on the train as he returned to the studio. "Some Might Say" proved problematic to record: the backing track was recorded in one take after Noel Gallagher and Morris drunkenly listened to the demo and decided the new version was played too fast, and Noel woke the rest of the band to re-record it. The backing track was faster than intended, with what Morris described as "a really bad speed up during the first three bars of the first chorus", but the take had to be used because those involved were impressed with Liam's vocals, and Morris had to mix the track three times, using delay and other processing to hide the mistakes. The album's title was inspired by Noel's friend Melissa Lim answering the phone with the phrase, which is itself derived from a line in the song "The Telephone Hour" from the film Bye Bye Birdie. The brickwall mastering technique used during the recording of the album has led to some journalists claiming that it was responsible for initiating the loudness war, as its heavy use of compression, first widely used by Morris on Definitely Maybe, was leaps and bounds beyond what any other album up until then had attempted. Music journalist Nick Southall, who has written extensively on the loudness war, commented, "If there's a jump-the-shark moment as far as CD mastering goes then it's probably Oasis." In Britpop and the English Music Tradition, Andy Bennett and Jon Stratton noted that as a result of this technique "the songs were especially loud. [Liam] Gallagher's voice is foregrounded to the point that it appears to grow out of the mixes of the songs, exposing itself to execute a pseudo-live quality." ==Composition==

The music on ''(What's the Story) Morning Glory? has been characterised by commentators as rock, and Oasis as an essential part of Britpop culture. Music critic John Harris commented in his music history Britpop!: Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock'' that much of the music seemed to be "little more inspired than a string of musical hand-me-downs". Among the musical cues Harris noted on the album were Gary Glitter's "Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again", John Lennon's "Imagine" ("Don't Look Back in Anger"), the theme to the 1970s children's programme You and Me and the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends" ("She's Electric"), and the influence of R.E.M.'s "The One I Love" on "Morning Glory". One song, "Step Out", bore such a close resemblance to the song "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" by Stevie Wonder that it was removed from the album shortly before release due to the threat of legal action. Musicologist Allan F. Moore compares "She's Electric" to the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four", writing that both songs can be claimed by an older generation. In Britpop ..., Bennett and Stratton analysed Liam Gallagher's vocal style in significant detail, stressing its importance to the songs of the album; "[Liam's] Mancunian accent blends into a register and timbre that works the gestural contours of the melody and lyrics." Bennett and Stratton went on to conclude that Liam's 'over-personalized' style on songs such as "Wonderwall" resulted in "a beautiful sense of sentimentality that bespeaks the despondency of a generation. This occurs through the narrative structure of the song, vocal production, and the conventions of the singer's cultural context." Music critic Derek B. Scott remarked "a Beatles-influenced vocal harmony that includes falsetto and echoing of words is heard in 'Cast No Shadow'". Noel Gallagher summed up his own perspective on the album's aesthetic in an interview with Rolling Stone in 1995; "Whilst [Definitely Maybe] is about dreaming of being a pop star in a band, ''What's the Story is about actually being a pop star in a band." The album has a notable anthemic theme to its songs, differing from the raw-edged rock of Definitely Maybe''. The use of string arrangements and more varied instrumentation in songs such as "Don't Look Back in Anger" and "Champagne Supernova" was a significant departure from the band's debut. This style had first been implemented by the band on their fifth single, "Whatever", released in December 1994. It was produced in conjunction with the London Symphony Orchestra, resulting in a much more pop-oriented and mellower sound; this would be the template that would come to define many of the songs on ''What's the Story. In the BBC documentary Seven Ages of Rock, former NME chief editor Steve Sutherland noted that "with Morning Glory'', [Noel] began to take seriously the notion of being the voice of a generation". ==Cover==

The cover is a picture of two men passing each other on Berwick Street in London. The two men are London DJ Sean Rowley and album sleeve designer Brian Cannon (back to the camera). The album's producer Owen Morris can be seen in the background, on the left footpath, holding the album's master tape in front of his face. The location was chosen because the street was a popular location for record shops at the time. In the documentary Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis, Noel Gallagher expresses his displeasure with the cover, admitting that he had not paid enough attention to the art design process. Long after the album's release, he recalls asking "Who okayed that [cover]?" Only to be told "Er, you did." ==Promotion==

While "Some Might Say", a number one hit, had been released in April, the single chosen to precede the album's release was "Roll with It", planned for release on 14 August, six weeks before the album was due to hit the shelves. This was an unorthodox method for the time, contrasting the standard industry procedure of releasing the lead single three weeks before its parent album. Blur's management had become worried that this would hinder the chances of the group's forthcoming "Country House" single reaching number one the following week. As a reaction, Food Records pushed the release of "Country House" back a week. The NME hailed this oncoming chart battle as a "British Heavyweight Championship" between the two bands and thus started what became known as "The Battle of Britpop". The event triggered an unprecedented amount of exposure for both bands in national newspapers and on television news bulletins, supposedly symbolising the battle between the middle class of the south and the working class of the north. In the midst of the battle a Guardian newspaper headline proclaimed "Working Class Heroes Lead Art School Trendies". "Country House" outsold "Roll with It" by 54,000 and topped the singles chart for a fortnight. Overall singles sales that week were up by 41 per cent. In 2005, John Harris reflected on the importance of the event in popularising Britpop; "(as) Blur's "Country House" raced Oasis' "Roll with It" to the top of the charts, just about every voice in the media felt compelled to express an opinion on the freshly inaugurated age of Britpop." the quote caused a storm of controversy, with Noel having to write a letter of apology; he later confessed that "my whole world came crashing down in on me then". However, in an interview with The Guardian in 2005, Blur's guitarist Graham Coxon said that he bore no malice towards Oasis. "At least they were outright about it. They weren't pretending to like us and then slagging us off, which is what we'd been used to. In that way, I quite appreciated them." ==Release==

''(What's the Story) Morning Glory? was released on 2 October 1995. The album sold quickly; the Daily Express'' reported the day after release that central London HMV stores were selling copies of the album at a rate of two per minute. At the end of the first week of sales, the album had sold a record-breaking 345,000 copies, making it (at the time) the second-fastest-selling album in British history, behind Michael Jackson's Bad. After initially entering the UK charts at number one, it hovered around the top three for the rest of the year before initiating a six-week stay at the top in mid January, followed by a further three weeks at number one in March. In total, the album did not leave the top three for seven months. After the fourth single from the album, "Wonderwall", hit the top ten in several countries, including stays at number one in Australia and New Zealand and achieving a peak of number eight in the United States, the album began to enjoy prolonged international success. Eventually the album had a five-week run at the top of the Australian albums chart and an eight-week run at the top of the New Zealand albums chart before topping charts in Canada, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland. The album was also making significant waves in the US market, thanks in part to the success of the "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova" singles on American modern rock radio. Both songs reached number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart and stayed there for ten and five weeks respectively. By early 1996, ''What's the Story'' was selling 200,000 copies a week, eventually peaking at number four and being certified four times platinum by the end of the year for shipments of over four million units. "Wonderwall" also topped the Australian and New Zealand singles charts. ==Tour==

The band embarked on what would become a 103 show world tour in support of the album over a period of several months in 1995 and 1996. The tour started on 22 June 1995 with a pre-Glastonbury festival warm-up gig at the 1,400 capacity Bath Pavilion, which featured the debut of new drummer Alan White and several new songs off the album, and ended on 4 December 1996 at the 11,800 capacity Mayo Civic Centre in Rochester, Minnesota, USA, and included concerts at Earls Court in November 1995 and Cardiff International Arena in March 1996. The tour had many disruptions and cancellations due to Noel twice walking out of the group, and Liam pulling out of a US leg. As the band began to reach the peak of their popularity, several large open-air concerts were organised in the UK during 1996, including two gigs at Manchester City football stadium Maine Road, two nights at Loch Lomond in Scotland, and two nights at Knebworth House in front of a record 125,000 people each night; an event that would come to be acknowledged as the height of the Britpop phenomenon, with one journalist commenting; "(Knebworth) could be seen as the last great Britpop performance; nothing after would match its scale." At the time, the concerts were the biggest gigs ever held for a single band on UK soil, and to date remain the largest demand ever for a British concert; with reportedly over 2.5 million applications for tickets. The Earl's Court and Maine Road gigs were filmed and later released as the Oasis VHS/DVD ...There and Then. ==Critical reception==

''(What's the Story) Morning Glory?'' was released to lukewarm reviews from the mainstream music press. Contemporary reviewers expressed disappointment at the album's perceived inferiority to Definitely Maybe, taking aim at the "banal lyrics" and the unoriginal nature of the compositions. David Cavanagh of Q magazine said of the lyrics: "They scan; they fill a hole; end of story. They [say] nothing much about anything." The poll's curator Robert Christgau initially assessed it as "phony Beatlemania"; he later gave it a two-star honourable mention, indicating a "likable effort that consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well enjoy", and quipped "give them credit for wanting it all—and (yet another Beatles connection!) playing guitars". Select ranked the album at number two on its end-of-year list of the 50 best albums of 1995. In his book Britpop!, John Harris concluded that the initial negative reviews of the time missed the album's universal strengths. "Those who fussed about the music's more artful aspects were missing the point. The fact that [Noel's] songs contained so many musical echoes seemed to couch the album in an air of homely reassurance." Harris believed that the "ordinary" nature of some of the album's songs "turned out to be part of its deeply populist appeal". Battle of Britpop The album's release alongside Blur's The Great Escape came at the height of the so-called "Battle of Britpop". Despite some genuine enmity between the two bands, this was a primarily media-constructed pitting of the more classic rock-focused, working-class northern band Oasis against the middle-class, musically more eclectic Blur. Released around the same time as ''(What's the Story?) Morning Glory, The Great Escape'' was initially widely praised by critics, far more so than Oasis' effort. However, as Oasis gained popularity and acclaim, critical consensus around The Great Escape was revised, with Q magazine even apologising for its original review. BBC Music writer James McMahon recalled how the "critical euphoria" surrounding the album lasted "about as long as it took publishers to realise Oasis would probably shift more magazines for them". Additionally, the critical lauding awarded by numerous critics to Oasis out of a desire to grow sales of their own publications, rather than genuinely reviewing the album for its strengths and weaknesses alone, is recognised as a leading factor in the alleged "over-hype" of Morning Glory's follow up Be Here Now. ==Legacy==

''(What's the Story) Morning Glory? is considered an important record of the Britpop era and one of the best albums of the nineties, and it appears in several lists as one of the greatest albums of all time. Rob Sheffield, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), called the album "a triumph, full of bluster and bravado but also moments of surprising tenderness", adding that it "capped a true golden age for Britpop". Rolling Stone ranked the album at 378 on its 2012 list of "the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and at 157 on its 2020 list. Spin'' included it at 79 in their list of "The 300 Best Albums of 1985–2014". The album's enduring popularity within the UK was reflected when it won the British Album of 30 Years award at the 2010 Brit Awards. The award was voted by the public to decide the greatest Album of the Year winner in the history of the Brit Awards. The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. It was voted number 21 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. The Encyclopedia of Popular Music stated that "it was undeniably a gigantic album". On the other hand, some have considered ''What's the Story to be overrated. FasterLouder'' writer Max Easton argued that its "lasting place in '90s folklore is less about the quality of the album, and more about the celebrity status and faux imagery attached to it". Easton saw all 12 tracks as "variations on only a couple of good ideas". Musicradar felt the initial lukewarm reviews of the album were accurate, adding that "its place on countless 'best ever' lists is wholly unjustified. Even Noel Gallagher admits that Definitely Maybe is a superior record". Gallagher has noted ''What's the Story as an overrated work, expressing a level of dissatisfaction with its production values, and stating that "some of the songs are not as great as people think they are"; he outright dismissed "Roll with It" as a "shit" song. Ultimate Guitar readers named What's the Story'' as one of the 20 most overrated albums in history. ''What's the Story'' nevertheless went on to become the best-selling album of the decade in the UK, with its sixteen platinum certifications from the British Phonographic Industry. It was also certified four times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The sixteen platinum certifications in the UK were the highest ever awarded to a single record until Adele's 21, released in 2011. The success of the album resulted in Oasis becoming one of the biggest bands in the world, with substantial and considerable press coverage in the mainstream music press and frequent comparisons to the Beatles in the media. ''What's the Story propelled Oasis from being a crossover indie act to a worldwide rock phenomenon after the momentum gained by the critically acclaimed Definitely Maybe''. It has been pinpointed by music critics as a significant record in the timeline of British indie music, demonstrating just how far into the mainstream independent music had ventured. In 2005, John Harris noted the significance of the album and "Wonderwall" in particular to Britpop's legacy. "When (Oasis) released Wonderwall, the rules of British music were decisively changed. From hereon in, the lighter-than-air ballad became obligatory, and the leather-trousers era of rock'n'roll was over." The success of the album in Britain resulted in Oasis becoming a cultural ubiquity for a brief period, featuring in tabloid newspapers on an almost daily basis and breaking sales records for live concerts. ==Track listing==

Original release Note Vinyl version Singles box set The '''''(What's the Story) Morning Glory?''''' box set was released on 4 November 1996, featuring four discs of singles, including B-sides, and one disc of interviews. The album charted at number 24 on the UK Albums Chart. All songs written by Noel Gallagher, except "Cum On Feel the Noize" by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea; "Step Out" co-written by Stevie Wonder, Henry Cosby and Sylvia Moy. Charts Certifications 2014 reissue As part of a promotional campaign entitled Chasing the Sun, the album was re-released on 29 September 2014. The 3-disc deluxe edition includes remastered versions of the album and its associated b-sides from the four UK singles. Bonus content includes 5 demo tracks, and live choices taken from the band's iconic gigs at Earls Court, Knebworth Park and Maine Road. 2025: 30th anniversary reissue To mark the 30th anniversary of the original release, the album was reissued on 3 October 2025. The reissue includes the remastered original album packaged with one additional disc containing five unplugged recordings produced and mixed by Noel Gallagher and Callum Marinho from the original masters. ==Personnel==

Oasis • Liam Gallagher – vocals (1–3, 5, 7–10, 12), tambourine • Noel Gallagher – lead guitar, acoustic guitar, backing vocals, lead vocals (4), Mellotron, piano, EBow, bass (3, 6, 8, 9, 11), production • Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs – rhythm guitar (all except 3), • Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan – bass (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12) • Alan "Whitey" White – drums, percussion (all except 7) Additional musicians • Tony McCarroll – drums (7) • Brian Cannon – keyboards (10) • Owen Morris – Kurzweil strings (3, 4), Mellotron (12) • Paul Weller – lead guitar (6, 11, 12), backing vocals (12), harmonica (6, 11), whistle (12) Additional personnel • Owen Morris – production • Neil Dorfsman – multichannel mixing (SACD version) • David Swope – assistant mixing (SACD version) • Barry Grint – original audio mastering at Abbey Road Studios • Vlado Meller – mastering (SACD version) • Michael Spencer Jones – photography • Brian Cannon – artwork, design • Mathew Sankey – assistant design ==Charts==

Weekly charts Year-end charts Decade-end charts All-time charts ==Certifications and sales==