10 Things You Didn’t Know About Oasis’ ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’
Twenty years ago today, an already-buzzing English rock band named Oasis released their second studio album. Almost immediately, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, a more pop-friendly effort than its predecessor, completely changed the band’s trajectory: The album became the third-best-selling LP in England’s history, topped only by the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Queen’s Greatest Hits, and made the band’s co-leaders and brothers Gallagher, singer Liam and guitarist-songwriter Noel, paparazzi-level famous. (That their bickering and in-fighting would grab most of the subsequent headlines foreshadowed the group’s eventual demise.)
Sure, you know that the album spawned a pair of hit singles Stateside with “Wonderwall” and “Champagne Supernova,” but there’s plenty more to learn about this quintessential Britpop masterpiece. We’ve dug through the archives and uncovered 10 things you might not know about (What’s the Story), from the young woman who inspired its hit single to Noel’s unorthodox songwriting method.
The songs on (What’s the Story) were a direct counterpoint to those on the band’s 1994 debut album, Definitely Maybe.
“The whole of the first album is about escape,” Noel, the band’s principal songwriter, told Rolling Stone in May, 1996, of ’94’s Definitely Maybe. “It’s about getting away from the shitty, boring life of Manchester. The first album is about dreaming of being a pop star in a band. The second album is about actually being a pop star in a band.”
“Wonderwall” takes its name from a George Harrison album, and was written for Noel’s then-girlfriend, Meg Matthews.
While it borrows its title from George Harrison’s debut solo release, Wonderwall Music, the soundtrack to the 1968 film Wonderwall, the Morning Glory track “Wonderwall” — the album’s oft-quoted breakout hit — was actually written for Noel’s girlfriend at the time, and later his wife, Meg Matthews. She was out of work, and he wanted her to know how important she was to him. For Matthews, having a famous song written about her was a bit odd. “You can’t go up to someone and say, ‘Hi, I’m Wonderwall,'” Matthews, who later would marry and then divorce Gallagher, told The Sunday Times in February, 1996. “It’s a joke between me and all my friends, but the average Joe Bloggs doesn’t know. George Harrison wrote the music to the film Wonderwall, so that’s the reference, but to me, it’s about being his wall of strength. His solidity.”
That didn’t stop Liam from downplaying the song’s significance. “A wonderwall can be anything,” Liam told Rolling Stone months after the song’s release. “It’s just a beautiful word. It’s like looking for that bus ticket, and you’re trying to fucking find it, that bastard, and you finally find it and you pull it out, ‘Fucking mega, that is me wonderwall.'”