(1995) The holy grail of Liam-and-Noel duets. “We need each other, we believe in one another” – sung separately by the battling brothers. It’s the closest we’ll ever get to a truce. The riff is pure electricity, and the “Because we need each other” bridge still gives chills. How this was left off Morning Glory is rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest mystery.

Decades after the height of Britpop, these songs endure. They are not merely footnotes in the Oasis story; they are the very foundation of it.

Other tracks, such as the punk-infused "Headshrinker" or the melancholic "Half the World Away," highlight the band's range. The latter, specifically, became a cultural touchstone in the UK, proving that Oasis could be just as effective with an acoustic guitar and a vulnerable vocal as they were with a wall of distorted Marshalls.

A gentle acoustic ballad that achieved massive UK fame as the theme song for the TV comedy The Royle Family . "Roll With It" (1995) Liam Gallagher

(1994) Before it got a second life on the Help charity album, this was a Definitely Maybe –era B-side. A punk-rock cry of frustration (“We don’t see as we think we should, and we don’t say as we know we could”) that barrels along like a train with no brakes. It’s Some Might Say ’s angrier cousin.

Critics and fans often argue that if Noel had saved these tracks for a third album instead of "relegating" them to B-sides, the band's trajectory might have been even more legendary. ICMP Songwriting Tutors | BBC 6 Music | Musicology | Part 6 9 Oct 2024 —

No other major rock band has dared to do this so early in their career. Usually, a B-side comp is a cash-grab for the grave (see: Bob Dylan, The Beatles). For Oasis, it was a victory lap.

Instead, when it came time to record Be Here Now , Noel found himself creatively drained and facing severe writer's block. He was forced to pad out the album with over-produced, nine-minute songs because he had already spent his finest currency on the backs of singles. The subsequent decline of the Britpop movement was hastened by the fact that Oasis’s best songs of 1997-1998 were already sitting on fans' shelves from 1995. Legacy and Impact

By 1998, the demand for these elusive tracks had reached a fever pitch, particularly in North America where UK import singles were expensive and difficult to find. To bridge the gap between Be Here Now and their next studio project, the band released , a 14-track compilation composed entirely of B-sides.

The band’s philosophy was simple: If it was good enough to be a B-side, it was good enough for the fans to hear. According to popular fan consensus on forums like Live4ever , many of these songs were crafted during the same sessions as Definitely Maybe and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? , yet they didn’t make the cut for the album because the albums were already packed with hits.

The sheer volume and quality of Noel Gallagher's songwriting output meant that studio albums could not contain everything. These discarded gems became the holy grail for collectors, quickly earning the band a reputation for "being as important as the official records". Songs that would have been lead singles for any other band became the "second-best" track on a Friday afternoon purchase.

In the mid-90s, the battle for the top of the UK charts was fiercely competitive. Oasis needed to release singles with multiple, high-quality exclusive tracks to provide value for fans buying physical CD singles. Noel Gallagher has famously noted that he wrote so many songs during this period that he didn't need to save them for albums.