Awful production ruined the first album. It was a great bunch of sings. If I Had A Gun should have been a classic but ended up a plodding mess. Really enjoying the 2nd album thought it flowed and sounded a lot better. WBTM again was decent but I soon got bored with it although i have grown to really like fort knox. Dead in the water is classic noel. Noel seems to consider the album a masterpiece but it’s not. In terms of live his shows have became very boring in terms of setlist. This is reflected in ticket sales. The fans have also got bored. I think the 2 songs released with the best of show noel and his management both know the fans want more classic/typical noel sound. Not sure what the new album will bring. Part of me thinks because of the length of time since his last album he should have some great tunes but part of me just thinks he is in semi-retirement mode. He doesn’t appear to have much drive or ambition these days so part of me thinks the new album will be half arsed

Average really

A few good songs here and there

I don’t judge it too harshly though. He would’ve started his solo career in his 40’s. You can probably count on one hand the people who were consistently making music as good as they did in their 20’s when they are 40+

If you judge it on its own merit, it’s been decent enough. Pretty boring live act though.

9/10

I respect Noel as he himself is one of the great songwriters & doesn’t care about trends and latest chart, he wants to make the music he wants, in this day that’s rare.

First album sold a ton, a generic Noel album but some great tunes on there, love SBAJF, really solid debut album. EOTR is a classic.

Chasing Yesterday is another solid album, love The Right Stuff, and Riverman.

WBTM is my personal favourite of the three. Fort Knox is amazing as is hugely successful Holy Mountain. IABW, STMHTF & LITL all top class tunes. Love the production. Love the style, and media seemed to love this album, for good reason.

Seen HGHFB Live 5 times, excellent every time, favourite was in Brighton, great gig.

Always look forward to anything Noel is involved with, admire his attitude towards music and has by far and away had the more respectful path of the brothers imo.

Agree about the WBTM remixes being better than the album versions!

This part really rang a bell with something I've been pondering for the past 2 weeks. I recently watched 2 of his lengthy interviews from 2011, the one with Gay Byrne and the one with Mark Lawson and, along with the music he was making, seemed to indicate a mature Noel. He was still his funny, cocky-self-assured, subtle humour self but he seemed to have grown.

That lasted until the end of the CY era and the Supersonic documentary and so on.

But it's like in the last years, starting around WBTM, when he changed as it's been discussed earlier in this thread, that I think he started acting immature like an late teen/early 20's teenager who doesn't give a fuck and thinks their the best thing since sliced cheese and has no subtlety in their humour and brags about smoking loads of weed and writing a song and so on. It's all so very juvenile. Add to that the fact that he's one of the pioneers of his generation that wanted to break down the barriers and standards built by previous generations who now bemowns that the youth is trying to do the same thing. It actually made me wonder if Pretty Boy was him mocking the younger generation trying to take down gender norms (I don't want to start a debate about this here) and I'm not interested in hearing a song about that, especially not from Noel who mostly was and is supposed to be all about love, which he hasn't been in the last 5-6 years. But this is the first time I've doubted Noel's songs to be an attack since Keep On Reaching where I clearly hear an attack against Liam:



And just like when Liam does it, I'm not interested in that shit. Keep your bickering out of the songs, I don't care.

That also includes him blocking Liam from using Oasis songs. In "As It Was", Noel said he blocked them because it would be a documentary calling him a tw@t, which it was in part, so fair enough. But the Taylor Hawkins tribute and Liam's Knebworth release? That's all very very immature and childing and spiteful and useless.

And finally, like I've said in my previous post in this thread, the EPs which all feel like a revenge against his fans who didn't like WBTM. WBTM was at least artistically honest. The titular songs on the EP's feel like "I'll show you how far I can go". They're far from his best songs, never mind the style (it's all about the songs he used to say... well those aren't it).

So yeah, I feel like Noel is in his late teen years immature spiteful bitter brat era and I don't like it at all...

Well that's an opinion, I dont agree with it all but Noel clearly has a problem with his fans. The WBTM tour was strange, with the first part of the set where the crowd wasn't responding at all, and the band playing like it's a rehearsal with little to no interaction with the crowd. then the "best of" part which was more like the usual.

I dont know if it's being immature or him wanting to relive his youth through his music (he recently said that the era he would like to re-live is actually the 90s, but the music says otherwise). He clearly wants to kill the Oasis Noel to become the 80s Noel. Maybe he regrets not having been a star back in the mid to late 80s. I mean, he was rejected as a singer in 89 by the Carpets. It is something that still hurts ?

He always talks about 80s bands in high regards when Oasis blew them out by a million miles. Yet when he talks about them (U2, Jam, Roses, the Smiths, etc), it's always with an inferiority complex.

What's weird is that he also just said in the Beatles podcast that his songs lyrics dont mean anything, and that fans shouldn't look for message in them. Then he releases that, with a so-called message. I mean... WTF.

There's more than one person in this body that's for sure he's full of contradictions, but aren't we all ?

He's a player, has always been and this song feel very calculated. But his musical strength lies, or used to lie, in spontaneity. Good old two faced NG. But we prefer the other

First album is not overproduced it’s over compressed. Instruments can’t breath but the production would blow away all the haters if it was properly remixed and remastered.

Oh, the good old days when we were talking about every little detail. Nobody is even talking about how shit production is on Pretty Boy because we still didn't get there from other bad things about that song.

Plus Pretty Boy is new song and Noel's first album is more than 10 years old, one would expect some improvement.

Welcome to the Forum Noel!

One, no one is advising anyone but saying how they feel about the production. Some might explain how they would have liked it and some never liked Sardy's production even during the Oasis days. But that's got nothing to do with someone being a good songwriter and a popular artist.

And it also has nothing to do with expressing opinions on the Internet because music fans have been talking about the production for decades before the Internet existed.

And I don't mind the production on NGHFB myself. But that doesn't invalidate the opinion of those who expected a more stripped down approach.

Second, the quality of the songs has nothings to do with the production and that's always been the case with Noel. The production on DM, MG and BHN is awful (even Noel is saying that now). But that doesn't make Live Forever, Cast No Shadow, Champagne Supernova, etc. less iconic because the songs are what they are.

Lastly, I don't think anyone here is going to look at what's being said on here and decides it's a consensus so I don't know what you're on about. There definitely seems to be a dislike for the production on NGHFB around here. That doesn't mean it will translate in the real world because most people don't care about that kind of thing. They just listen to the songs themselves.

Don't dismiss how people feel about these things with "Guess if you go looking for negativity" because that's horseshit, plain and simple. You can say you disagree and you can even say you think anything he does is the best thing since sliced cheese... that doesn't make your opinion more valid than theirs.

You love the production on these records? You think Noel can do no wrong? Good for you! You do you boo.

QUOTE >>> Some of us are happy people : )

Man those remarks are always a red flag ! when you need to say it it's fishy

I dont see anyone trolling here, we.just.dont.like.that.crap.of.a.song.and.are.disappointed.in.a.former.great.songwriter.comeback.single.after.5.years.and.a.pandemic.where.he.had.millions.of.hours.to.come.up.with.something.Gold BUT who can still surprise us on the album


Clearer ?

Nothing to do with being happy or not. jeeee-Z

It's like being in 95, having lived on Whatever for the whole winter and he comes back with Little James. WTF.

The thing is that most of the people don't like the song and that is the fact, stop saying that just few people are trolling or that it has something to do if you are happy person or not.