'(What's The Story) Morning Glory?' - In The Week That Oasis' Second Album Celebrate Its 26th Birthday, Our Paul Laird Has Written This Compelling Take

By Paul Laird

Author of "The Birth And Impact Of Britpop: Mis-Shapes, Scenesters And Insatiable Ones"

Morning Glory.

In 1994, just as I celebrated my 21st birthday , a record was released that captured all the joy of  being young, the thrill of knowing that the future was yours, the delights of nights on the town,  and the magnificence of what pop music at its best can give you. 

That record was “Trouble” by Shampoo. 

One of the greatest singles of the Britpop era. 

It came at the same time as music journalists across the country had decided that the future of  pop music was the past. 

In an article in the NME in July of 1994, Sylvia Patterson wrote this: 

“Whatever it is about being young and good looking and wearing fantastic silver suits and skipfuls of make-up, it’s all an affront to those do not understand POP, and there are lots of them about.”  

Bang. 

On. 

Even more accurate were the words of Jacqui and Carrie themselves in the same piece: 

“Everyone hates us,” shrugs Jacqui. “We’re used to it. People think what we look like is disgusting. Or sinister, especially if we wear short skirts and boots an’ stuff. They don’t want to see young people looking glamorous. They don’t understand anything.”  

“Everyone just wants to look the same as everybody else, don’t they?” muses Carrie. “I don’t understand that at all.”  

Nail. 

Head. 

This is what the people who bray about how shit Shampoo were don’t get - they don’t understand  that the real rebellion, the real punk attitude, the real spirit of teenage fury, lay not in some blokes  in football manager coats, mouldy sneakers, and the haircut that the bloke from The Stone Roses had, it lay with two teenage girls who did not give a single fuck about what anyone thought about  them. 

Oasis with their The Beatles obsession, the classic trad rock delivery, and a terrace culture attitude  that instantly excluded anyone who didn’t really want to end the evening with a bit of the old ultra violence and who thought that wishing AIDS on people you didn’t like was a bit of a rum. 

Whatever. 

If only the tastemakers at the NME and Melody Maker had put as much energy into covering  Shampoo as they did into Oasis. What a wonderful world that would be. Songs you could dance  to, lyrics you could giggle at, people you could relate to, arch/art pop of real craft and guile. 

There were one or two dissenting voices of course, people like Simon Price, and the  aforementioned Sylvia Patterson, who actually cared about pop music and who could see exactly  what a future dominated by the influence of Oasis would mean for it. Price nailed it in 2021 when he tweeted: “Here’s what’s just struck me about Oasis: THEY HAVE NO FAST SONGS. They just  lumber about, fat-arse and graceless, at 20mph because it’s a residential area. Music for people  who can’t-dance-won’t-dance. They ARE rock but they DON’T rock. And what’s the fucking  point in that?”

Two years on from that Noel Gallagher told the world this week: “I thought Blur, Pulp, The Stone  Roses, The La’s, whoever, they were great people and they had one two great tunes, but we had  twelve. However loud they were, we were louder. However fast they were, we were faster.  However good they were, we would trump it.” 

But if your measurement for greatness is faster and louder…leave me out. 

I don’t care about who is louder, or faster, I care about dancing, laughing, finally living. 

If you can’t see why a world where kids dressed like, and danced to, Shampoo, Plastic Fantastic,  Orlando, and David Devant and His Spirit Wife is a better world than one where the legacy of Oasis has given us The Lathums, I can’t help you. 

“Definitely Maybe” did at least had some swagger. It was big, brash, bold, and left you a bit  battered and bruised by the time it ended. Of course things like “Cigarettes and Alcohol” were  always destined to be on “Ultimate Fathers Day Football Anthems Ever Vol 37”, but there  were moments where it flashed brightly; Shakermaker and Bring it on Down remain glorious. It  was loud, in places, but it didn't sound like it wanted to be the loudEST. Instead it had what lots  of great debut albums have, a sense of urgency, a feeling that this might be it, and so it better be  as good as it could be. It isn’t a flawless album, it isn’t one of the greatest debut albums ever (no matter what people at Q and Rolling Stone would have you believe), but it is good. 

But when “Morning Glory” arrived in 1995 any trace of that swagger had been completely erased,  replaced with something that was the equivalent of Temazepam in vinyl form. It is the worst thing  any music can be - boring. 

From start to overblown finish it is the sound of someone who believes their own hype. An over-inflated ego running amok. 

“Roll With It” and it’s Status Quo dressed in Stone Island drone. 

The dirge that is “Don’t Look Back in Anger”. 

The when it will end yawn of “Champagne Supernova”. 

On and on these songs go. 

Reaching the bottom of a barrel, already so scraped that you can see the ground underneath it,  with “Wonderwall” - a song that is the aural equivalent of asking your mum for a glass of Coke  and being handed some Creamola Foam instead. Disappointing. Infuriating. Flat. Stale. 

There are moments when it cuts loose and delivers something slightly less pompous and po-faced, “Some Might Say” is good fun, and “She’s Electric” is so silly that you can’t help but smile.  The problem is that those two moments of gay abandon amount to around 9 minutes of the  album’s 50 minutes. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? 

The whole thing sounds exactly like the very thing it is…the musical ejaculations of a man who  had spent the best part of a decade touring the world as a roadie, smoking a lot of dope, noodling  on a guitar at the back of a bus, and growing increasingly convinced of his own brilliance, at the  same time as he was becoming increasingly bitter about the fact that nobody else was noticing. 

Nothing here is relatable to a kid. 

Its success with young men had everything to do with the bravado and macho posturing of the  two protagonists, and the emergence of lad “culture”, and very little to do with the songs painting  any sort of portrait of the lives they were living.