The 10 Best Classic Rock Covers by Oasis

If you were to make a list of all the rock bands that influenced Oasis, musically or otherwise, it would get long.

Among them would undoubtedly be the Beatles, the Sex Pistols, the Kinks, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, etc. And as far as Noel Gallagher is concerned, there is nothing wrong with wearing your influences on your sleeve.

“When I’m making a record,” he explained to MusicRadar in 2024. “I’ve always been of the notion that if a song sounds like T. Rex, well, fuck it, let’s make it sound more like T. Rex! Do you know what I mean? I know there’s bands that might write something that sounds like the Smiths, and they’ll go, ‘Oh, it sounds like the Smiths, we’ve got to make it sound not like the Smiths.’ And I just go, ‘Fuck it — let’s make it sound like the Beatles. [Laughs] If I’m writing a song and I say to myself, ‘Oh, hey, it sounds like the Kinks,’ then I’m going to turn it into a Kinks track.”

This would also explain why Oasis sometimes paid flat out tribute to some of the aforementioned artists with covers. Below, we’re taking a look at 10 of the best, with two entries each dedicated to Noel and Liam Gallagher‘s solo catalogs.

1. “Heroes”
Artist: David Bowie

“Heroes” was the first song of David Bowie’s that Noel ever heard — he saw the music video for it on television in 1981, as he remembers it. “It totally fucking blew me away. I went down to my local second-hand record shop a couple of days later and got Best of Bowie and never looked back,” Noel said to Rolling Stone in 2016. “It must have been awful to have been one of his contemporaries in the late ’70s going into the ’80s, thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve done something really great here,’ and then every single Bowie put out would be f****** better than the last one.”

 

2. “To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have a Nice Time)”
Artist: The Jam

For a period in the late ’90s, Oasis would dedicate a portion of their set list for Noel to have his own solo acoustic section. Multiple times, he included a cover of the Jam’s “To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have a Nice Time)” from 1978’s All Mod Cons. Paul Weller was undoubtedly an influence on Oasis, but as years went on, Weller turned his own ear to them, as well as Noel’s solo work. “I’ve liked everything he’s done solo,” Weller told NME in 2018. “I don’t really need to talk about what a great songwriter he is, because everyone knows that. But, for me, he’s got better.”

 

3. “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)
Artist: Neil Young

This may be surprising to some readers — it was to this writer, at least — but Oasis and Neil Young once shared a bill together back on Aug. 31, 1996 at a festival in Ontario, Canada. “He’s always been very respectful to Oasis,” Noel said to Mojo in 2011, “and to me when I’ve met him. I’ve seen him with Crazy Horse, with acoustic gigs, and he always comes from a place of truth. He’s invented a car that runs on f****** grass or something. The world can be split into two camps: people that like Neil Young and people that don’t. And the people that don’t are fucking idiots.”

Liam, for his part, sees common ground between his solo work and that of Young’s. “I stick to my formula and it works,” he told Billboard in 2019. “If people think that’s playing it safe, so be it. Neil Young’s been doing the same thing for f****** 40 years and no one seems to give him shit. I’m not comparing myself to Neil Young, but [to] people who don’t change the formula.”

 

4. “My Generation”
Artist: The Who

Liam and his band have supported the Who live on a few occasions over the years, and he’s a proper fan. According to a social media post of his from 2019, his favorite Who songs are “My Generation,” “Disguises” and “Armenia City in the Sky.” Pete Townshend, however, might be the only person on the planet who is “disappointed” that Oasis will reunite in 2025, but only “because I really like their solo albums” he said to The Standard in 2024. (Side Note: If you’re not following Liam on X yet, we highly recommend it. He’s a riot.)

 

5. “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”
Artist: Bob Dylan

“The Oasis Brothers, I like them both,” Bob Dylan said to The Wall Street Journal in 2022. That’s about as profound of a compliment you’ll likely get out of a man who rarely gives interviews or, frankly, compliments. Here we pause to focus on a few songs recorded by Noel and Liam post-Oasis split, starting with Noel and his High Flying Birds’ version of “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.” This is the 1971 version from Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume II, not the Basement Tapes version, which has different lyrics.

 

6. “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”
Artist: The Smiths

Noel is actually good friends with Johnny Marr, formerly of the Smiths — you’ll often spot the two of them sitting together at Manchester City soccer games — which must be something of a full circle moment for Noel, who soaked up the Smiths music as he was coming into his own as a musician. “I never invented anything like the Smiths, who were the most unique band ever to come out of England,” he said in a 2018 episode of Once in a Lifetime Sessions (via Far Out). “So I had an idea of what it should be like, but then when the songs came it was just unbelievable.”

 

7. “Natural Mystic”
Artist: Bob Marley and the Wailers

You might not think a reggae song by Bob Marley and the Wailers would sound all that good sung by a Britpop artist. And yet, Liam’s cover of “Natural Mystic” works. In 1998, both Gallagher brothers were asked by NME what song they would like to be played at their respective funerals. Noel chose “Going Underground” by the Jam,” Liam chose “Natural Mystic.”

 

8. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”
Artist: The Rolling Stones

Liam appears to admire the Rolling Stones and also be grateful he is not them. In August of 2017, he brought up Mick Jagger specifically in an interview with GQ: “Fair play to ol’ dinosaur hips, but I’m not that man. I’m anti-entertainment. Poor sod, he’s got to dance until he’s 108.” Just a few months later, he had kinder words to share with NME: “The Stones, as much as the Beatles were great, the Stones were the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll band as far as I’m concerned. the Beatles were like wizards, where the Stones were the boys, man.”

 

9. “I Am the Walrus”
Artist: The Beatles

This simply wouldn’t be a list about Oasis without a few Beatles covers. It also would be fair to say that without the Beatles, there’s a real possibility Oasis might not have existed at all — their influence on the band was so strong that they sometimes are jokingly referred to as the world’s biggest Beatles cover band. As Liam once eloquently put it on social media, “the Beatles could shit in my hand bag I’d still hide my polo mints in there.”

 

10. “Help!”
Artist: The Beatles

According to Noel, he literally entered the world to the soundtrack of the Beatles. “Sgt. Pepper is special for me because I was born on May 29, and it came out on the 1 June,” he said to BBC News in 2007. “So when I was being born in Saint Mary’s Hospital, Manchester, it was being played on hospital radio.”