Standing on the Shoulder of Giants


Standing on the Shoulder of Giants is the fourth studio album by English rock band Oasis. It was released on 28 February 2000. The album was Oasis' first release on their record label Big Brother Recordings. It is the 16th fastest selling album in UK chart history, selling over 310,000 copies in its first week. Standing on the Shoulder of Giants has been certified double platinum by the British Phonographic Industry and has sold around 208,000 copies in the US.
In 1999, the year preceding the final release of the album, Alan McGee closed Creation Records and Oasis had lost two founding members and hired new producer Mark "Spike" Stent to replace Owen Morris.
The album is a modern psychedelic record complete with drum loops, samples, electric sitar, mellotron, synthesizers and backward guitars, resulting in an album more experimental with electronica and heavy psychedelic rock influences. Songs such as "Go Let It Out", the Indian-influenced "Who Feels Love?", and the progressive "Gas Panic!" were a departure from the band's earlier style.

Background

The album's title is a misquote of an expression said by Sir Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". Noel Gallagher saw the quote on the side of a £2 coin while in a pub, and liked it so much he thought it would be a suitable name for Oasis' new album. He then wrote the name on the side of a cigarette packet while drunk, and when he woke up in the morning, he realised he had written "Standing on the Shoulder of Giants". He had also accidentally written "a bum title" on the packet instead of "album title".
Noel decided to drop the equipment used in the three previous albums and instead buy "loads of really weird pedals, old guitars, and small amps" as the lack of a deadline on the album allowed him to "take quite a few days just messing around" and experiment with new musical landscapes. Noel was forced to play nearly all the instruments on the album, with help of some additional musicians; due to the departure of two founding band members while the album was still being recorded, their parts were re-recorded for legal reasons. The album therefore only features Noel and Liam Gallagher alongside drummer Alan White, who are also the only ones depicted on the sleeve of the album.
In a 2011 interview with Grantland, Noel disowned the album:

Album cover

The album's artwork features the photo of the Manhattan skyline taken from the rooftop of 500 Fifth Avenue. Some famous buildings can be seen here, for example the Empire State Building is seen in front and the former World Trade Center is seen in the back. To create the cover photo, the photographer captured the same frame every half an hour in 18 hours during the whole day's course; the photos were digitally composited into the final picture. All of the singles released from this album contained artwork that was based on the album artwork; the shot used for "Go Let It Out" can be seen above one of the buildings at the front, which depicts five men playing football. This shot was taken from the roof of a football stadium, and the footballers from the car park were edited onto the rooftop on the final cover.

Reception

The album initially received generally mixed reviews but was more warmly received when Q Magazine gave it four stars out of five. The B-side to "Go Let It Out", "Let's All Make Believe", was featured in Q's top 500 lost tracks, who also said that if "Let's All Make Believe" were on the album, "it probably would have carried the album to another star." However, Q later included the record at number 46 in their list of the 50 worst albums ever made.
Despite its lukewarm critical reception, both Liam and Noel Gallagher have praised certain aspects of the record. During a radio interview with Gary Crowley in 2002 Liam said "Some people reckon the album is shit, but I think it's a great album ... it's just a bit different", whilst Noel Gallagher has stated that he regards "Go Let It Out" as "up there with some of the best things that I've done." He also stated in a 2005 interview with Rock Profiles that he thinks "Fuckin' in the Bushes", "Go Let It Out", "Gas Panic!", and "Where Did It All Go Wrong?" are "real pieces of music". Noel has also praised the sounds and production of the record.
Standing on the Shoulder of Giants spent 29 weeks on the UK album chart, the fewest for any Oasis studio album. It was the ninth biggest selling album of 2000 in the UK.
Standing on the Shoulder of Giants debuted at number 24 on the Billboard 200 in the US, selling about 55,000 units in its first week, but sales slumped its second week and fell to #84 with a 64% sales drop. The album received a huge sales hike following the VH1 airing of the group's Behind the Music in April 2000, jumping from #194 to #113 on the Billboard 200 the week following the episode's airing. In March 2000, the IFPI certified Oasis for selling one million units of the album in Europe.
Eleven years after its release, Noel Gallagher said he regretted releasing the album, saying he was not feeling inspired as a composer, particularly for going off his drug addiction with prescription drugs, "which is fucking worse because they come from a doctor." This was partly a motivation to delegate the songwriting to the other bandmembers in later albums, as Noel considered "I'd slowed down as a writer and didn't feel like I could keep writing 20 songs every two years."

Controversy

The album was banned by Walmart due to their objection to the song "Fuckin' in the Bushes".

Track listing

Personnel

Oasis