Two men pass each other on a London street, one holding a box with a master tape in front of his face. The record inside that box is (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, the second album by the British band Oasis, and it arrived on the 2nd of October 1995 like a crate of nitro. Nobody involved in making it could have guessed that thirty-one years later it would stand as the most-purchased studio album in UK history.
A drummer change before the sessions
The album's birth was messy from the start. The band, already riding high on their debut Definitely Maybe, had a drummer problem. Tony McCarroll was out, but he still played on 'Some Might Say', the first song recorded for the new project at Loco Studios in Wales. That single topped the UK chart in late April, and on the very day it was released the group announced McCarroll's departure. A new drummer, Alan White, stepped in just in time for the main sessions.
Those sessions were astonishingly quick. Producer Owen Morris claimed the whole record was cut in fifteen days, roughly one song per day, starting on the 8th of May at Rockfield Studios in Wales. The first tracks laid down included 'Roll with It', 'Hello', 'Wonderwall', 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and most of 'Champagne Supernova'. Paul Weller, the former frontman of The Jam, dropped by to play guitar and add backing vocals on 'Champagne Supernova', and his harmonica ended up on two untitled swampy interludes.
The chart battle with Blur
The pressure was not only in the studio. That August, Oasis released 'Roll with It' as a single a full six weeks before the album, an unusually long wait for the industry. On the same day Blur put out 'Country House', and the press turned it into a national battle for the soul of Britpop. Blur won that first chart fight by a margin of 54,000 copies, but the real prize was still months away. Oasis were not just competing with another band; they were competing with their own momentum.
Not everything recorded made the final tracklist. 'Step Out' was pulled before release because it sounded too close to Stevie Wonder's 'Uptight (Everything's Alright)', and the threat of a lawsuit was enough. The album's title came from a phrase a friend of Noel Gallagher's said when she answered the phone, a line borrowed from the musical Bye Bye Birdie. The cover itself was shot on Berwick Street in London, chosen because the road was packed with record shops, and two acquaintances became the accidental faces of a generation.
Ballads, strings and stadium ambition
What listeners heard was a band pushing beyond the scrappy energy of their debut. The songs leaned into ballads, enormous choruses and string arrangements, a shift that had been tested on the single 'Whatever' with the London Symphony Orchestra. 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and 'Champagne Supernova' in particular sounded like a different group, one aiming for stadiums rather than back rooms. The swagger was still there, but the edges were softened with melody and reverb.
The first week response was unlike anything British shops had seen for years. The album shifted 345,000 copies across the UK in seven days, enough to make it the fastest-selling record since Michael Jackson's Bad. It sat at the top of the UK Albums Chart for ten weeks and eventually went nineteen-times platinum in Britain. By the middle of 2026, Official Charts Company calculated that no studio album in UK history had sold more.
The album shifted 345,000 copies across the UK in seven days, enough to make it the fastest-selling record since Michael Jackson's Bad.
The live campaign behind the record was equally outsized. A world tour stretched from a 1,400-capacity hall in Bath to a civic centre in Minnesota, covering a hundred and three shows. It was a tour of walkouts, cancellations and brotherly warfare, but the album it promoted never stopped selling. Thirty-one years on, that master tape on Berwick Street still casts a long shadow over every British rock album that followed.