Every Oasis Album - Ranked From Worst To Best

Attempting to combine the brash rock of Definitely Maybe with (What's the Story) Morning Glory?'s more melodious tendencies, Be Here Now was an overblown Britpop behemoth that suffered from a lack of objectivity and editing.

That's not to say that the songs on offer here aren't good. In fact, Be Here Now presents some of the band's best tunes to date with almost every track bringing something new and interesting to the table. The obvious exception here is the almost seven-minute long 'Fade In-Out', revolving around drab, directionless guitars and the kind of non-chorus that can be expected from a more experimental album. This song - albeit in clipped form - might have had a place elsewhere, but just served to bog down an album otherwise built on crowd-pleasing, sing-along appeal.

'I Hope, I Think, I Know' and 'The Girl in the Dirty Shirt' are Oasis at their most euphoric, while 'Stand By Me' and the heart-wrenching 'Don't Go Away' rival any of the slower moments on What's the Story. While the operatic 'All Around the World' (penned, apparently, before the band's debut album had even been released) and its gorgeously joyful instrumental reprise prove Oasis' monolithic ambitions, the band let their hubris consume them here, with all but three of the twelve tracks stretching beyond the five-minute mark.

Much of these excessively long runtimes can be attributed to extraneous instrumental introductions and outros or sheer mindless repetition ('All Around the World' says everything it needs to long within three and a half minutes), making it difficult to sit through this one-and-a-quarter hours record. Perhaps appropriately for what feels like a summer record best enjoyed poolside, this is one for streaming and shuffling, not to listen to end-to-end.