it was a terrible album, and to his credit Noel recognises that much. The first week sales were a triumph of hype over content.

It may have sold 1 million in 2 weeks, but that doesn't look so great when 999,860 (official second hand figures from the time) of them were sitting in second hand shops the week after.

I remember the day Whats The Story Morning Glory was released. I was working just off of Cheapside (City Of London for those who aren't familiar) and there was a tiny Our Price there.
By about 8.15, there was a queue outside waiting for it to open at 8.30. There was just a pile of that CD next to the door and an assistant handing each person who walked through the door a copy.
At lunchtime, the queue was even bigger and this seemed to be repeated all over the country.
I'll be shocked if they sold more than a tiny handful of any other CD that day

Don't pass judgement on the album before you have listened to it yourself. It's nowhere near as bad as some suggest here. 'Be Here Now' is probably an appropriate record to mark the end of BritPop. Liam's view is closer to the truth when he said it's 'just not What's the Story?'

The amazingly quick sales are indicative of popularity and visibility of Oasis at the time and show how sales aren't an accurate guide to quality. People here are talking about Adele in the same way, talking about how quickly her next album will sell irrespective of not having heard a song from it or whether it is any good.

Be Here Now might not have proved to be as popular as those initial huge sales suggest but imo follow up album Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants wasn't much better either.

At least Oasis eventually got round to writing a decent song by time Heathen Chemistry was released. By this point though, Oasis were never going to sell over a million albums in 2 weeks.

Silly post.

Definitely Maybe is my favourite Oasis album. It's probably my favourite album of all time. I didn't think much of Be Here Now.

This is a good interview with Noel where he's commenting on all the Beatles stuff:

Go from 15:25 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUup0dtwDD8

Yeah, because Oasis songs never sounded like Beatles records, and Noel Gallagher's current single sounds nothing like the Foo Fighters...

The Masterplan wasn't a proper album though. It was a compilation of b sides.

Watch the video I posted. All explained amigo.

The hype for Be Here Now was insane. It was never going to live up to it.
There was a documentary on Oasis with men talking about the album which was shown on the BBC the night before release. I remember watching it with mates then we ended up staying up all night drinking. Walked up to HMV about 5:30am as record shops were opening at 6am to sell the album. We walked up through MK city centre and it was deserted. Welled through the shopping centre and it was much the same. Walked round a corner to where HMV was and there was several hundred people waiting for it to open.
Decided we couldn't be bothered to queue so went round to Our Price where there was 1 guy sat in his own. There were 3 staff in there and one was sent round the corner to see how many were at HMV because no-one had turned up at their opening. In the end the shutters went up at 6 and a few of us walked in and bought the album.

I remember getting home, sticking the album in the CD player, listening to the first track and the flicking through all the other tracks listening to about 30 seconds of each then going to bed and getting up late afternoon. Ended up listening to it properly later that evening and thought it was ok, just not as good as the first 2 albums!

As the third biggest market for music in the world UK sales are important.

Please don't tell me you are one of those people who think the 80's was actually better. Sure it has good quality stuff but that decade also had more cheese and fluff than any other as well.

Lots of Footy fans who like listening to meat and gravy by the book anthemic rock with absolutely no originality I guess. When I hear Oasis thesedays I just automatically think of shell suited adults.....

That's pop culture for you. You can't choose the form which pop culture takes. In the '90s, it was Euro '96, the Premier League, shell suits, Cool Britannia, Spice Girls, they were all part of it.

The music was a throwback to the guitar bands of the 60s and the British glam rock of the early 70s. So, it wasn't meant to be totally original, it was meant to be a mixture of Slade and The Who (as Noel mentions in the interview link above).

If anything BritPop and Oasis in particular were trying to say what it was to be young, working-class and British in the '90s and it was a something of a reaction to Grunge. The self-indulgent nature of 'Be Here Now' is perhaps symptomatic of what BritPop became.

Grunge was arguably the last important music youth movement. Britpop and in particular Oasis was just a horrible thuggish Lad culture precursor, Blur embraced the total twattishness of Britpop (culminating with that The Country House video) and it almost killed them as a band, they have since proved they are far better than that.

Yes, there's a lot to be said for Grunge and the Pacific North West scene. And yes there are elements of BritPop which might be classified as laddish. But these elements shouldn't be allowed to characterise an entire movement. 'Wonderwall', 'The Universal' and 'Common People' are some of the amazing songs from this time. The style of the music, the English accents, the humour, the use of guitars...it was an authentic music just like grunge. It might be some time before you hear the like again.

(The Arctic Monkeys notwithstanding).

It's the whole Britpop label I detest. Your right in that Britpop was cleverly used to combat the popularity of the Grunge movement in the UK by the media - however clumping a host of bands together and sticking that label on them was pretty weak, Pulp had been round for years, mostly ignored and Blur were on their 3rd album when they suddenly found themselves as posterboys for a music scene that they really weren't comfortable with. Oasis for me are dirge of the highest order - and they spawned a whole host of awful copycat acts, that's the horrible legacy of Britpop for me.

Those were the days when you bought CDs not just downloaded them while sitting in the house watching TV

Be Here Now is a bloated album, I have to admit, but I like it. It contains one of my favourite Oasis songs in "I Hope, I Think, I Know".

It will never happen again because the music market is completely different. The number of people downloading illegally back then was pathetically small compared to today, plus of course you can now buy individual tracks, stream music etc etc.

Erm, no they haven't. Apart from Britney I think, none of the artists listed have sold more albums than Oasis. That might change in the future but as of now...nope.

Compilation album according to the blurb. Good enough for me. Still genuinely think it is their best release - compilation of b sides though it may be.

I had this weird thing with Oasis where I liked their lesser known songs more. I genuinely think...

Acquiesce
Talk Tonight
Going Nowhere
Fade Away
Rockin' Chair
Half The World Away
The Masterplan

...are all better songs than....

Roll With It
Some Might Say
Wonderwall
Cigarettes and Alcohol

....yet those were their big anthem singles that sold well. I thought so at the time and still think so now. Then again I always liked Be Here Now more than WTSMG so I probably just have weird taste. And I guess the anthems cross over more into sports chants and parties, pub music, etc.

Stadium Rock at it's finest....though don't get the hype surrounding it as an album.