(What’s the Story) Morning Glory? by Oasis

(What's the Story) Morning Glory?, the second Oasis album, came out on Creation on 2 October 1995, and it's where Noel Gallagher stopped writing for the pub and started writing for the stadium. He produced it with Owen Morris, and where Definitely Maybe, from 1994, was all swagger and sneer, this one leans into ballads, enormous choruses and swooning string arrangements. It was also the first album with Alan White on drums, although Tony McCarroll, the man he replaced, still plays on "Some Might Say".

"Wonderwall" is the one everybody knows, a strummed acoustic hymn that became the band's biggest-selling hit at home and spent 30 weeks in a row on the UK chart. "Don't Look Back in Anger" is a big-hearted singalong with a lump in its throat, "Roll with It" is pure bluster, and "Champagne Supernova" drifts off into druggy, sun-bleached grandeur. The singles were enormous in Britain, and "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova" both topped Billboard's Alternative Songs chart in America.

The critics were lukewarm at first, and plenty of reviewers thought it fell short of the debut, but the public didn't wait for them. Its opening week in the UK brought a record 345,000 sales, spent 10 weeks at number one, reached number four in the US and won Best British Album at the 1996 Brit Awards. The critics came round, the 2010 Brits named it the best British album since 1980, and in July 2026 it was certified the best-selling studio album in UK history, at 6.2 million units, part of more than 22 million sold worldwide.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.