Don't Believe the Truth

Don’t Believe the Truth is Oasis’s sixth studio album, released on 30 May 2005 on Big Brother Recordings. It entered the UK Albums Chart at number one with first-week sales of 237,865 copies. The album delivered two number one singles, Lyla and The Importance of Being Idle, and critics called it the band’s best in a decade.

The record also completes a change that Heathen Chemistry started, and the Oasis albums hub maps the full run around it. Songwriting duties now spread across the whole band, with Liam Gallagher, Gem Archer and Andy Bell all contributing tracks alongside Noel. A new drummer, Zak Starkey, powered the sessions after Alan White’s departure in early 2004.

How was Don’t Believe the Truth made?

The album took two attempts and the best part of eighteen months. Sessions began in January 2004 at Sawmills Studios in Cornwall, with the production duo Death in Vegas overseeing the work. The band scrapped those sessions and started again, which cost them most of a year.

After that false start, Noel took control at Wheeler End Studios in Buckinghamshire. He produced the early replacement sessions himself, with Zak Starkey now sitting behind the drums. Starkey, the son of Ringo Starr, had already toured with The Who and brought a harder, straighter attack than White’s looser style.

Finally, producer Dave Sardy joined the project and shaped the finished record. The final sessions ran from October to December 2004 across studios in London, Buckinghamshire and Los Angeles. Sardy produced most tracks, Noel produced three himself, and the pair shared credit across the album.

In the end, that long gestation changed the material for the better. Songs arrived at the sessions road-tested in the band’s heads rather than half-formed, and the tracklist settled at a tight 11 songs. The album sounds lean because the band threw away an entire first version of it.

The two attempts also explain the album’s unusual confidence. A band that has already thrown away one version of a record stops protecting its weak songs. Every track here survived a comparison with a discarded alternative, and the tracklist sounds lean because of it.

How did Don’t Believe the Truth do on release?

On release, Don’t Believe the Truth gave Oasis their sixth consecutive UK number one studio album. Its first-week sale of 237,865 copies made it, at the time, the 32nd fastest-selling album in UK chart history. The BPI now certifies it 3x Platinum, covering 900,000 UK units.

In America, the album peaked at number 12 on the Billboard 200. That figure looks modest beside the UK run, yet it kept the band commercially present in the United States through the decade. Big Brother handled the UK release, with the first chart date falling in June 2005.

Meanwhile, the singles did the heavy lifting at home. Lyla reached number one in May 2005 and became the band’s seventh UK chart-topper. The Importance of Being Idle followed it to number one that August, their eighth, and Let There Be Love closed the campaign at number two.

Awards followed the chart success that autumn. The album won Best Album at the Q Awards and collected the magazine’s special People’s Choice Award as well. For a band written off as a nostalgia act two years earlier, the double win landed as a public rehabilitation.

For context, the run behind those numbers matters as much as the numbers themselves. Don’t Believe the Truth was the sixth consecutive Oasis studio album to reach number one in the UK. That sequence stretched back to Definitely Maybe in 1994, and only Dig Out Your Soul extended it further.

Which songs define Don’t Believe the Truth?

Turn Up the Sun opens the album with Andy Bell’s swaggering rocker. The track sets the record’s tone in four minutes: confident, melodic and played by a band rather than assembled around one writer. Gem Archer’s A Bell Will Ring sets up the finale, its title punning on his bandmate’s surname.

Lyla carries the campaign’s biggest chorus. Noel reportedly disliked his own song at first, yet its single release in May 2005 sent it straight to number one. The track’s stomp and handclaps made it a live fixture for the rest of the band’s original run.

Mucky Fingers, one of Noel’s own three productions, coils around a single riff. Liam sings it at full snarl, and the track shows Dave Sardy’s influence at its clearest.

The Importance of Being Idle gives Noel his standout moment. He sings lead on a song that borrows its lilt from The Kinks and still sounds entirely like Oasis. Its number one placing that August confirmed the album’s grip on the year.

Elsewhere, Liam’s songs hold their own in strong company. The Meaning of Soul tears through two minutes at full speed, while Guess God Thinks I’m Abel slows his writing down into something reflective. Love Like a Bomb, which Liam co-wrote with Gem Archer, supplies the album’s purest pop moment.

Part of the Queue keeps Andy Bell’s run of contributions going with a loping, confident groove. Keep the Dream Alive, also Bell’s, supplies the album’s most straightforward anthem as the tracklist nears its end.

Let There Be Love ends the record on a shared vocal. Liam and Noel trade lines across a slow, piano-led closer that the band released as the third single. It reached number two and gave the album a gentler full stop than its opening suggested.

How does Don’t Believe the Truth stand now?

At the time, critics greeted the album as a genuine return to form. Metacritic aggregates the reviews at 64 out of 100, the band’s healthiest score of the decade. Many reviewers called it the best Oasis album since Morning Glory, a judgement nobody had offered the previous three records.

Since then, that reputation has survived the reunion era intact. Fans returning to the catalogue usually place it at the head of the later albums, ahead of Heathen Chemistry and Dig Out Your Soul. The even spread of writers helps, because no single voice tires across the 11 tracks.

For balance, the album still sits a clear tier below the first two records in most rankings. Nobody argues it changes the band’s story the way Definitely Maybe did. Its achievement is narrower and real: it proved the second Oasis lineup could make a coherent, confident album of its own.

Will you hear Don’t Believe the Truth at Live ‘27?

The Importance of Being Idle gives this album its strongest claim on the 2027 set. Noel sang the song throughout the band’s later tours, and its mid-set slot suits his vocal turns in a stadium show. Lyla sits close behind it in the queue of realistic candidates.

Further down the list, Let There Be Love holds an outside chance as a late-set breather. The shared vocal would give a stadium crowd a genuine Gallagher brothers moment, though the band usually spends that slot on older ballads. Turn Up the Sun remains a longer shot still.

No song from this album sat in the 2025 blueprint. The setlist log for Live ‘27 will record any change from the first night in Glasgow. Check it after your show to see whether the 2005 material made the cut.

Lyla and The Importance of Being Idle hold no confirmed place in the 2027 set. Both songs stayed outside the 2025 blueprint, so any return needs a played setlist to confirm it.