Some Might Say

Some Might Say gave Oasis their first UK number one single in April 1995. Creation Records released it on 24 April 1995 as the first single from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, months before the album reached the shops.

Noel Gallagher wrote the song, and Liam Gallagher sings it across five minutes and twenty-eight seconds. Noel has called the track the archetypal Oasis song more than once, and few singles carry more band history inside one release.

Origins and writing

Gallagher had already demoed the song a full year before its release, in June 1994. Producer Owen Morris recalls a session at Maison Rouge in London that month. The band ran through the new song without Liam, straight after the Whatever session.

That demo ran longer and rougher than the finished single ever would. Gallagher played guitar, bass and drums on it himself, preferred its dirtier feel, and an import CD later carried the demo for collectors.

Morris then mixed the final version at Loco Studios in Wales the following year. The band recorded the single there across three days in February 1995, and that brighter, faster take carried the song to number one.

Inspiration also arrived from across the Atlantic, in a quieter way than usual. Accounts of the song link its feel to Fuzzy by Grant Lee Buffalo, whose blend of grit and melody Gallagher admired.

The writing therefore mixes two clear impulses inside one track. The demo’s sleaze survived within a cleaner, bigger production, and British fans heard confidence first while the craft sat underneath.

Release and chart record

The single knocked a chart giant off the top spot within days of release. Official Charts confirms it displaced Take That’s Back for Good at number one. It held the summit for the week of 30 April to 6 May 1995.

That single week changed the public story around the band almost overnight. Oasis had promised the country a complete takeover since their first interviews in 1993, and a number one single turned the promise into fact.

Its chart life then stretched far beyond that one week at the summit. Official Charts credits the single with eighty-four weeks inside the Top 100 and twenty-nine inside the Top 75.

The B-sides, meanwhile, soon outgrew their support role entirely in the band’s story. Talk Tonight, Acquiesce and Headshrinker filled the single’s various formats. All three songs later anchored The Masterplan, the celebrated B-sides collection, in 1998.

The release also closed the band’s first chapter for good that spring. Some Might Say was the last Oasis recording with drummer Tony McCarroll in the line-up, and the band removed him one week later.

His replacement arrived with a famous recommendation behind him, from Paul Weller. Weller suggested London drummer Alan White to Gallagher during those weeks, and White carried the kit through the band’s imperial years.

Meaning and lyrics

The song runs on stubborn and practical optimism from its first bars. Its verses survey grey skies, thin wallets and dead-end routines in plain language, and the mood stays earthy rather than dreamy throughout.

The central promise lands in one short and famous line near the chorus: “Some might say we will find a brighter day”. Gallagher built the whole record around that single lift of hope, and Liam delivers the line like a man who already believes it.

Critics at the time heard a clear statement of intent in that confidence. The single announced a band that expected the world to bend towards them, and Morning Glory made that expectation real within months.

Gallagher’s own verdict on the song stays the boldest of all, even now. He told interviewers that the track defines what Oasis is at heart. NME repeated that verdict when the single reached its thirtieth birthday.

That confidence explains why the song still opens so many arguments among fans. Supporters who defend the band’s greatness usually start their case with this single, which gives them melody, swagger and hope together.

Live history

The single’s first big television outing reshaped the band in public that spring. New drummer Alan White made his debut behind the kit on Top of the Pops. He performed this song in McCarroll’s place, on Weller’s recommendation to the band.

The song’s own video shoot, however, supplied a famous shambles instead of a promo. Liam never turned up to the filming session at a motorway service station. The finished clip therefore stitches together footage from the Supersonic and Cigarettes & Alcohol videos.

Gallagher retold that story with obvious relish in interviews years later. He joked that Elvis had skipped his own video shoot that morning, and the tale now forms a fixed part of the single’s folklore.

On stage in the nineties, the song worked as an early surge of energy. It lifted crowds long before the encore anthems became a fixed routine, and the band kept it close as albums and stadiums grew.

The reunion restored the song to exactly that early starring role in 2025. On Live ‘25, the band played it fourth every night, straight after Morning Glory, and it fired the first great singalong of each evening.

Nobody has confirmed the song for Live ‘27 at this stage, though. Our setlist tracker follows the official announcements as they arrive, and the tour opens in Glasgow during May 2027.

Legacy and covers

Anniversaries keep pulling this single back into the spotlight, decade after decade. Oasis marked thirty years of the release in April 2025 with a special reissue. The band issued a limited, numbered and pearl-coloured seven-inch single for the occasion.

The reissue carried a remastered Some Might Say on its A-side for collectors. Talk Tonight took the B-side, exactly as the strongest 1995 formats had done before. Collectors then sent the single back into the Official Vinyl Singles Chart during 2025.

The Stop the Clocks booklet later categorised the release as an EP in its own right. That makes it one of very few Oasis singles with official EP status.

Gamers, meanwhile, know the track from a second life on screen in later years. Guitar Hero World Tour included the song as a playable track in its setlist. Its full album arrangement reached players who had never bought a Creation single.

The single also began the band’s greatest sequence of chart success in Britain. Eight UK number one singles followed across the next ten years, starting with this one, and every later chart-topper chased its standard.

Above all, the record marks the moment potential finally became proof for the band. The group had talked about ruling British music since 1993 without the paperwork, and Some Might Say gave them the number one to prove it.