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Oasis - (What's The Story) Morning Glory? (1995)

When Oasis's second album was released in 1995, reaction from certain sections of the critical press was lukewarm at best. Attitudes changed when (What's The Story) Morning Glory? went on to sell about a gazillion copies, but the truth is that the dissenters were right all along.

Wonderwall, the record's commercial highpoint, remains the dreariest of mid-tempo strum-a-longs, while Don't Look Back In Anger isn't the anthem it wants to be.

And then there are the lyrics: She's Electric sounds like it was knocked off in five minutes by someone with an unhealthy amount of respect for a rhyming dictionary, and Champagne Supernova's "Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball" is a couplet that makes me recoil every time I hear it.

Morning Glory is by no means a terrible album, but its place on countless 'best ever' lists is wholly unjustified. Even Noel Gallagher admits that Definitely Maybe is a superior record and, let's face it, any record that opens with a song that takes its lead from a Gary Glitter number has got to be a bit wrong. (BR)

Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue (1977)

Unavailable for years due to disagreements over copyright ownership, Pacific Ocean Blue has long been hailed as a lost classic, a work of extraordinary emotional depth from a former Beach Boy wrestling with alcohol problems.

As a result of its scarcity, it's become an achingly cool album to namecheck, but even after a couple of listens it's clear that Pacific Ocean Blue is no Surfin' Safari, let alone Pet Sounds.

Mired in mid-seventies saccharine and easily capable of causing even the most ardent keys fan to suffer a piano overdose, the arrangements hamstring much of the emotive potency of a record that ultimately sounds as lost as its tragic protagonist.

While certainly worth further investigation, Pacific Ocean Blue is an album to file under 'curio' rather than 'classic'. (CV)

So, what do you think? Are we uncultured, cloth-eared and tasteless, or have we hit the nail on the head? Let the debate begin…

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