Oasis - (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? (Deluxe 30th Anniversary Edition) Review

Three decades on, Oasis’ Britpop behemoth still looms large over British music, but its 30th-anniversary reissue raises an inevitable question: how much more can be squeezed out of a record that already defined an era?

Reviewing (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is a Sisyphean task. Like it or loathe it, it’s already a well-established classic, lauded by many as a kind of cultural monolith that landed in the dead centre of the ’90s and helped send Cool Britannia into the stratosphere. It’s a key ingredient in a curious melting pot bubbling with Geri Halliwell’s Union Jack dress, a stack of Loaded magazines, Jim Royle’s cardigan, Tracey Emin’s bed, Tony Blair’s nefarious grin, and Gazza’s goal against Scotland - all mixed together with an overwhelming sense of misplaced optimism. These days, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? seems less an album and more an intrinsic part of the seemingly endless, paradisiacal summer that was the 1990s.

On a personal level, it was the album I listened to on my Walkman during long car journeys to Skeggy. For reasons unknown, it was the only thing that stopped me feeling travel-sick. I was twelve, and these were more innocent times. When Liam sang, “All your dreams are made when you’re chained to the mirror and the razorblade,” I thought he was singing about having a shave. Since then, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? has been elevated into the pantheon of rock and roll royalty, firmly cementing its status as an all-time classic.

But it wasn’t always like this. On its release, Morning Glory was largely dismissed by critics. Q Magazine gave it an underwhelming 3/5, while Melody Maker went even further, suggesting Liam’s vocals were off, the songs were disappointing, and the band sounded knackered. The media’s response to (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? remains one of the biggest missteps in music journalism history, one many attempted, and failed, to atone for when Be Here Now came out a couple of years later, showering it with all the plaudits its predecessor should have got.

Originally released in October 1995, Morning Glory spent ten weeks at the top of the UK album chart and went on to sell over 20 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the top five biggest-selling albums of all time in the U.K. A million of anything might not seem like much in today’s world of likes, listens, follows, and shares, but this was the ’90s and Tim Berners-Lee’s world-wide-web-sized Pandora’s box had only just been opened. Oasis were about to ascend from the front pages of the music press to the front pages of just about every newspaper in Britain. This was the album that catapulted them to Knebworth and beyond. To put it mildly, it was a big deal.

Of course, just because something is very popular doesn’t mean it’s good. Ginsters pasties, Brewdog beer, The Big Bang Theory, Maroon 5, and Jamie Oliver are all very popular - and all terrible.

So what about (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? Is it an overhyped product of its time? Or is it as good as its legacy suggests? The quick answer is - obviously, yes, it’s great. Any album containing gargantuan mega-hits like ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, ‘Some Might Say’ and ‘Champagne Supernova’ deserves to be as big as it is. And judging by the popularity of this year’s reunion tour, with a set-list containing all but two of the album’s ten tracks, it’s clear time has done little to dent its appeal.

However, as good as it is, Morning Glory isn’t perfect. ‘Hello’, though a strong opener, is retrospectively tarnished by its Gary Glitter associations. ‘Hey Now!’ feels more like a B-side than any of the actual B-sides from that period, namely ‘Acquiesce’ and ‘The Masterplan’. The album is also famously devoid of any real experimentation, though that seemed more of a problem back then than it does now. And overall, it’s not quite as cool, or arguably as good, as its predecessor, Definitely Maybe. But these are minor gripes; a bit like complaining that the glovebox in your Rolls-Royce is too small. Something I’ll never have to worry about.

So, now we’ve (re)established that the album is still great (you see, a Sisyphean task), what of the extras included on this 30th-anniversary reissue? Now that we live in the age of the prophesied “extra track and a tacky badge,” do we really need another version of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? The main draw here is the “newly released” unplugged versions of ‘Cast No Shadow’, ‘Morning Glory’, ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Acquiesce’, and ‘Champagne Supernova’. And to be fair, instead of the usual stripped-back “Noel demos” that tend to appear on these kinds of anniversary editions, these are fully formed versions in their own right, with Liam himself on vocals.

At first, they sound pretty good. Liam’s vocals are more exposed in the mix, and all the more impressive for it. ‘Morning Glory’ has a neat little piano solo, and ‘Cast No Shadow’ even makes a case for being better than the album version. The inclusion of bongos on Wonderwall is a bit unnerving, but otherwise, they’re all pleasant enough. The problem is that these aren’t hidden gems unearthed from the Oasis vaults, they were mostly recorded and mixed earlier this year by Noel in his home studio. A few sources use the term “reworked takes,” but as far as I can tell, only Liam’s vocals are from an actual bygone studio session, with everything else newly recorded. It creates a kind of Frankenstein’s Monster conundrum: Liam’s retro vocals crudely stitched onto Noel’s box-fresh backing tracks. These versions are nice enough, but something genuinely lifted from the vaults, or even a few live tracks from back in the day, would have been more interesting. Their inclusion feels tacked on, little more than an excuse to slap “deluxe edition” on the sleeve of your marble-effect vinyl record. I also lament having to use Oasis and bongos in the same sentence.

And what of the remastered album itself? A good remaster of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? would surely justify this anniversary edition’s existence. The good news is that it’s a fairly solid remaster: it pries apart and somewhat polishes a tangled deluge of instruments while retaining that infamous wall of sound. You can even hear Guigsy’s (or Noel’s) bass much better than on the original mix. The bad news is that it’s actually just the same remaster released back in 2014. In fact, the 2014 reissue of Morning Glory is superior in almost every way, with live versions, demos, and all of the B-sides included. As a result, this 30th-anniversary edition feels a bit impotent. 

Personally, I’d have liked a few more extras beyond the aforementioned unplugged versions, but I imagine they’re saving those for the 40th-anniversary Mega Deluxe Biblical Edition. 

(What’s the Story) Morning Glory? remains a seminal album and will do regardless of which version you listen to. But if you’re looking for the definitive version, I’d recommend listening to it on cassette, in the back of your parents’ car, on the way to Skegness.