(What's the Story) Morning Glory?
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? is the second studio album by the English rock band Oasis. Released on 2 October 1995 by Creation Records, it was produced by Owen Morris and the group's lead guitarist and chief songwriter Noel Gallagher. The structure and arrangement style of the album was a significant departure from the band's previous album, Definitely Maybe (1994). Gallagher's compositions were more focused in balladry and placed more emphasis on "huge" choruses,[1] with the string arrangements and more varied instrumentation contrasting with the rawness of the group's debut album. Morning Glory was the group's first album with drummer Alan White, who replaced Tony McCarroll (though McCarroll still appeared on the album, drumming on the track "Some Might Say").
(What's the Story) Morning Glory?
2 October 1995
March 1995 ("Some Might Say")
May–June 1995
50:06
The record propelled Oasis from being a crossover indie act to a worldwide rock phenomenon, and is seen by critics as a significant record in the timeline of British indie music.[2] Morning Glory sold a record-breaking 345,000 copies in its first week in the UK before going on to spend 10 weeks at number one on the UK Albums Chart. It was also the band's breakthrough in the United States, reaching number four on the US Billboard 200 and being certified 4× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The album yielded four major hit singles in the band's native Britain: "Some Might Say" and "Don't Look Back in Anger" reached number one, and "Roll with It" and "Wonderwall" peaked at number two; the latter has emerged as the band's biggest-selling UK hit, spending 30 consecutive weeks on the chart. "Champagne Supernova" and "Wonderwall" reached number one on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart. At the 1996 Brit Awards, the album won Best British Album. Over several months in 1995 and 1996, the band supported the album with an extensive world tour, which saw them play to among the largest audiences ever at the time.
Although a commercial success, the record initially received lukewarm reviews from mainstream critics; many reviewers deemed it inferior to Definitely Maybe, with the songwriting and production being particular points of criticism. However, critical opinion towards the album saw dramatic reappraisal in the ensuing months and years, with critics recognising its strengths and its "populist appeal".[3] Despite the acclaim surrounding it being lesser today due to its intensive media hype at the time,[4][5] Morning Glory is still considered a seminal record of both the Britpop era and the 1990s in general. The album has also appeared on several lists of the greatest albums in rock music, and at the 2010 Brit Awards, it was named the greatest British album since 1980.[6] It has sold over 22 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time.[7] As of January 2024, the album has been certified 17× platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for selling 5.1 million copies in United Kingdom.[8]
Background and recording[edit]
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.[9] 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" incident 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.[10][11]
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."[1] Paul Weller joined them in the studio and provided lead guitar and backing vocals for "Champagne Supernova",[12] and harmonica for the two untitled tracks known as "The Swamp Song".[13] Noel wrote the last song for the album, "Cast No Shadow", on the train as he returned to the studio.[9]
Morris claimed the album was recorded in 15 days, at a pace of one song a day.[14] "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.[14] When the album was finished, Morris said it would "wipe the field with any competition ... It's astonishing. It's the Bollocks for this decade."[15] Creation Records boss Alan McGee was similarly enthused, saying that "You just cannot slag this record. It's gonna speak to real, working class lads in a way that a Suede or Radiohead could only dream of doing."[16] The album's title was inspired by Noel's friend Melissa Lim answering the phone with said phrase, which is itself derived from a line in the song "The Telephone Hour" from the film Bye Bye Birdie.[17]
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."[18] 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."[19]
Composition[edit]
The music on (What's the Story) Morning Glory? has been characterised by commentators as rock[20][21][22] and Britpop.[23] 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.[24] 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.[25]
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."[26] Music critic Derek B. Scott remarked "a Beatles-influenced vocal harmony that includes falsetto and echoing of words is heard in 'Cast No Shadow'".[27]
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."[28] 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.[29] 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".[29]
Promotion[edit]
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.[32] 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[33] 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.[34] 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."[10]
During a promotional interview in September, the month before the album was released, Noel spoke about the rivalry with Damon Albarn and Alex James from Blur, and was quoted in the 17 September edition of The Observer saying he hoped "the pair of them would catch AIDS and die because I fucking hate them two."[35] Although Noel recanted and said that AIDS is no laughing matter,[36] 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".[35] 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."[10]
On 2 October 2018, to mark the 23rd anniversary of the album release, a new lyric video for the track "She's Electric", described as being "loaded with psychedelic imagery", was published on the band's YouTube VEVO channel.[37]
Release[edit]
(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.[3] 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.[38] 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 an astonishing 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.[39] "Wonderwall" also topped the Australian and New Zealand singles charts.[40]
(What's the Story) Morning Glory?
Oasis
Additional musicians
Additional personnel
Footnotes
Bibliography