So many people insist that (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is Oasis’ crowning achievement, rather than their debut, Definitely Maybe. The truth is, Maybe is clearly their best album, and Morning Glory isn’t very good at all, for a myriad of reasons. Hear me out. I know it’s 2017 and I’m about to write an Oasis thinkpiece, but hear me out.
If Definitely Maybe is the sound of Liam and Noel Gallagher trying in earnest to make it to the top, Morning Glory is the sound of the two brothers already at the top, gloating and reveling in their own fame and success. This isn’t a good thing at all - Oasis’ appeal has always been in their Mancunian working class scruffiness and values.
Be Here Now, the group’s infamous 1997 flop, is commonly cited as the point where they jumped the shark and fell off their pedestal, where the coke-sniffing habit ruined everything. I’d argue that that happened with Morning Glory. The bombast is ridiculous; there’s an abundance of lofty, self-serious, overlong ballads obviously catered for stadium shows (“Champagne Supernova” being the most egregious example), and not enough straightforward alt-rockers. It reeks of white lightning like John Belushi’s dressing room.
I’m not going to talk about fucking “Wonderwall” because you already know what I’m going to say. Moving on.
Listen to the album’s production - it’s bewilderingly muddled, murky, overly noisy. It’s a fucked dispatch from an abysmally run studio at the height of the loudness war, is what it is. The title track, “Morning Glory,” is the worst offender - it’s a wall of sound, and not in a nice, clean, Phil Spector Brill Building kind of way. Liam’s voice is mixed so poorly along with the (itself poorly mixed) instrumental that it all sounds like someone just turned all the knobs on the panel up to 10 and said, “fuck it.” It’s a mess, made all the more painful by the fact that “Morning Glory” is one of the better-written songs on the album - one wonders how it would sound with cleaner production.
The almost comical pomposity of Morning Glory is a stark contrast to the (relative) humility of Maybe. The latter’s first track, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,” encapsulates what made phase one Oasis so great: sturdy, post-Big Star power-pop guitar hooks and staunchly unpretentious lyrics. “I live my life in the city, there's no easy way out / The day's moving just too fast for me.”
“Live Forever,” predecessor to “Some Might Say” is yearning existential pondering, is a mammoth of a single, an alternative rock radio staple, and miles better than any of its successors.
Then there’s “Columbia,” arguably the best track on the album, and an evolution of that Madchester sound that spawned from the group’s hometown with Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses. It’s danceable and compulsively listenable.
Morning Glory’s popularity over Maybe has always been confusing to me - the former is watered down arena rock, the latter is inspired lightning in a bottle.
