I've been digging through some old websites/music magazine archives recently and found something curious.

It's December 1996, the heat from their fall debacle and split-up is subsiding, year-end roundups from Newsweek, People, and Billboard, etc. included Oasis in their most newsworthy groups, Liam as one of the biggest badly behaved stars, etc. 

In musical terms, the big picture was this: the main trifecta (WW, CS, and DLBIA which failed to scale the same heights as the former two) were beginning to fade from current pop radio/AC playlists. Mainstream rock was doing its last rounds of CS as well. In the alternative radio world, the end of the WTSMG album cycle was finally taking place as airplay of DLBIA was winding down (after starting in September 1995 with the release of the "Morning Glory" single to radio).

However what was interesting is that "Whatever" seemed to pop up on a lot of Alternative radio and some Hot Adult Contemporary playlists in the US (around the same time as "Setting Sun" was getting some airplay too). Old newsgroup posts from the same time confirm it too with some Americans thinking it was the new single from the next album. It would continue to receive a fair amount of airplay until April.

KROQ in LA, Q101 in Chicago (where Whatever was the #80 top song of 1997), Dallas, Lansing, Philly, Washington DC, Baltimore, Detroit (multiple alt stations), Pittsburgh, etc. 

Does anyone know why this was? There doesn't appear to have been any "Whatever" promo release from that time nor any official statements from Sony/Epic? Why "Whatever"? Why over two years after it's UK release? Was it just to satiate America with new Oasis material?

Granted, it wasn't quite as unusual to play non-new single tracks on alternative/mainstream/AAA rock stations in the 90s (During the WTSMG era, some alternative stations played songs like "Roll With It", "Cast No Shadow", "Hey Now" despite not being singles. Hell, in the wake of Live Forever's big success in earlier part of 1995, KNDD in Seattle even played the "Whatever" imported single from the UK for a short time and one or two  stations played "Slide Away") 

It does seem odd though that all these stations played it at once, like there was a big push for it. Yet I'd never heard of it before now.

Did anyone else remember hearing this on the radio at the time?