Noel Gallagher said DJs expected one Oasis song to be as good as The Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” “Hey Jude” lasted longer on the charts than every Beatles song except one.
Oasis’ Noel Gallagher said DJs and fans expected one of his songs to be as good as The Beatles‘ “Hey Jude.” Despite this, he didn’t think the song was good. Notably, “Hey Jude” lasted longer on the charts than every Beatles song except one.
Noel Gallagher felt Oasis’ ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ wasn’t like The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’
In a 2009 interview in the book The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters, Gallagher discussed the initial reaction to one Oasis song. “I remember being in this very room putting on ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’” he said. “There must have been 20 people from all over the world: Sony representatives, radio pluggers saying, ‘This is going to be the first single.’ It starts off with a minute of feedback and you could see people like this … It was kind of symptomatic of that whole record; it couldn’t live up to the hype, the expectations.
“The minute the song kicked in I was thinking, ‘I’m not sure this is any f****** good,’” he said. “It certainly didn’t warrant all these people. People had flown in from Japan just to listen to it. I don’t know if they were expecting ‘Hey Jude’ or something. I was a f****** drug addict by that point, I couldn’t be arsed being there.”
Noel Gallagher revealed what he thought about Oasis’ album ‘Be Here Now’ as a whole
Oasis “D’You Know What I Mean?” appeared on the album Be Here Now. Gallagher revealed what he thought of Be Here Now in retrospect. “I listen to those words now and cringe,” he said. “I was heavily into drugs at that point and didn’t give a f***.”
Gallagher compared Be Here Now to urine. Gallagher said he wrote Oasis’ first two albums, Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, for himself. However, he wrote Be Here Now and several subsequent albums were written for fans when he had no musical inspiration. In Gallagher’s opinion, his songs got better when Oasis released Don’t Believe the Truth.
How ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ performed in the United States
“Hey Jude” was The Beatles’ longest-running No. 1 single in the United States. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks, staying on the chart for 19 weeks. It spent more weeks on the chart than any Fab Four tune besides “Twist and Shout.” “Hey Jude” was originally a non-album single but it later appeared on the record Hey Jude. That album peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on the chart for 36 weeks.
On the other hand, Oasis’ “D’You Know What I Mean?” did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The song’s parent, Be Here Now, became far more popular. That record climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the chart for 26 weeks. Be Here Now remains the band’s highest-charting album in the U.S.
“D’You Know What I Mean?” wasn’t as successful as “Hey Jude” in the U.S. but it is still one of Oasis’ most famous tunes.