10 Albums That Were Released Completely By Surprise

After going on one of the biggest tours they have ever known, Oasis were actually at a fairly low point during the mid '90s. While the numbers for Be Here Now may have been great at the start, Noel Gallagher started to develop a sour taste for the album almost immediately after the tour ended, which led to the band taking a hiatus which would ultimately end with Bonehead and Guigsy leaving the group in the early '00s. To put a canopy over them while they recovered though, we got an all new Oasis album...with songs that we had already heard.

Even though the Masterplan is a bunch of miscellaneous songs that just happened to be slapped on an album, this might be one of the best Oasis projects that the group never technically made. On nearly every single track, you can feel the Oasis magic that would work just as well on any A-side single, from the rare Noel-Liam duet on the song Acquiesce to seeing the more vulnerable side of Noel's songwriting on tracks like Half the World Away and Talk Tonight.

These aren't 'just good for B-sides' material either. In searching through some of these songs, tracks like The Masterplan could justifiably be considered one of the band's masterpieces, bringing in sweeping strings to create one of the most grandiose songs that Noel Gallagher would ever create. The '00s would not be as kind to Oasis' image in and out of the studio, but in the decade that birthed them, they had no room for any throwaway cuts.