Be Here Now
| Oasis
Be Here Now
Be Here Now is the third studio album by English rock band Oasis, released on 21 August 1997 by Creation Records. Following the worldwide success of their first two albums, Definitely Maybe (1994) and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995), the album was highly anticipated. Oasis' management company, Ignition, were aware of the dangers of overexposure, and before release sought to control media access to the album. The campaign included limiting pre-release radio airplay and forcing journalists to sign gag orders. The tactics alienated the press and many industry personnel connected with the band, and fueled large-scale speculation and publicity within the British music scene. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Oasis’ third album from 1997 was always more circus than substance. The bloated and indulgent remaster only reinforces it as one of the most agonizing listening experiences in pop music.
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NME
this was ambition and self-belief on a grand scale, with big tunes thrown in for good measure.
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The Quietus
Yet it remains, for these reasons, by far and away the best Oasis album, and one of the more compelling and involving records of the decade it was made in.
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Rolling Stone
Be Here Now is ’60s and ’70s rock classcism writ large and loud, all broad strokes and bullish enthusiasm.
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Spin
Which is all to say that what we have here is another quality Oasis record. Truly, there is an art, or at least an impressive lack of self-regard, to the construction of such extravagant melodic spaces for such fatuous lyrics.
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Drowned in Sound
Be Here Now, contained within its 71 minutes is a fascinating self–portrait of a band, a time and a movement that may never be replicated or repeated. For that alone, it deserves its unique, strange and unwieldy place in rock and roll history.
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Sputnik Music
You put this album on and you feel like the king of the world. It's empowering music, and the lyrics strike a chord even when they're smothered by the chaotic guitars.
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Culture Crossfire
Be Here Now is a good album hindered by shoddy production (no bass guitar being a big culprit) and several tracks simply going on way too long.
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The Line of Best Fit
it’s an album that slowly suffocates under the weight of its own bloat.
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Houston Press
The band went from releasing a record like Be Here Now, which was viewed as bad but is an album that's actually quite good, to releasing albums like Heathen Chemistry and Don’t Believe the Truth.
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Pop Junkie
Be Here Now is a swaggering soundtrack to a charlie and lager-fuelled Saturday night out that’s followed by a crashing comedown (check out the evil country blues of Fade In-Out with Johnny Depp on mean slide guitar) Opening track, D’ You Know What I Mean? is a long-lost Oasis single.
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Louder
Be Here Now was never going to epitomise Britpop, but it needn’t have been its cyanide pill.
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BBC UK
As albums with terrible reputations go, Be Here Now might be the best ‘worst album’ you’ve ever heard.
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The Telegraph
Twenty years on from the hysteria of its release, it’s now viewed as an albatross; an impossibly vaunted, overblown cocaine-rock fantasia; the album that puffed the Britpop balloon up with so much B&H Gold-dirtied hot air that it burst.
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Joe
Now it feels like you're back into an Oasis album, it could have even opened Be Here Now but after the abysmal middle section, it's just what 'Be Here Now' needs when you're getting ready to eject the CD.
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The Student Playlist
But while Be Here Now may have been a huge disappointment, it wasn’t a disaster then and still isn’t now. Perhaps it’s time to stop using it as a punching bag.
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The Young Folks
Yeah, Be Here Now has lost some of its steam twenty years later, but at the time, it was an impeccable record for the turn of the millennium.
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Stereogum
At the same time, there’s something transportative about a rock record like Be Here Now, something so over the top, so deranged and grandiose. It feels as if it only could have existed in that moment, in the late ’90s, making it a fascinating relic not just for the end of the Britpop era or Oasis, but for the pop decline of rock music as a whole.
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Penny Black Music
'Be Here Now' serves as a time capsule back to the messy end of an era, and a salutary lesson to rampant egos, spiralling drug habits and a music industry desperate to continue the run of success it had hit upon.
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HTF Magazine
Be Here Now is the band’s finest hour -or 69 minutes and 29 seconds to be exact. This album kicks their debut into touch.
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oocities
In short, there’s plenty of high-quality stuff here, but for a self-important band that sought to dominate music this wasn’t exactly what the doctor ordered. Perhaps if Oasis rein in some of their self-indulgent tendencies and Noel puts more effort into developing new ideas (rather than recycling old ones) their disappointed and diminished audience will return en masse.
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All Music
Arriving with the force of a hurricane, Oasis' third album, Be Here Now, is a bright, bold, colorful tour de force that simply steamrolls over any criticism.
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Under the Radar
It sounds like a band who buried themselves away for two years and threw everything they had—including Johnny fucking Depp and Eagles-level amount of cocaine—into the record and created a thick soup with a foul stench.
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Rewind/Fast Forward
The record may have been a disappointment, but it was Britpop's last stand. The dying days of carefree fun, great music and a giddy, wide eyed, optimistic era when the UK was getting loaded and having a good time.
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Record Collector Magazine
The real revelation here is the solo demo of Setting Sun and the realisation that The Chemical Brothers made something pretty thrilling (though of its time) out of a fairly dour, unremarkable acoustic track. Who knows, in a parallel universe they produced the album, Oasis stayed relevant and the world was theirs?
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The Courier
Be Here Now is the worst essential album ever.
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Clash Magazine
It’s a bombastic, overblown and perhaps over-produced album, but it’s also what makes ‘Be Here Now’ great. Tracks like ‘I Hope I Think I Know’ still sound timeless, Noel’s squealing guitar lines skyrocketing, and you can almost hear producer Owen Morris’ eardrums exploding.
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EW
They sound more ferocious and confident than ever, yet less intimate, more distanced. For better or worse, Oasis have become rock stars figuratively walled in. Given their ambitions, it’s no wonder.
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Louder Than War
Be Here Now may not be the disaster people claim it to be (it’s also not Oasis’ worst album), but it occupies a decadent, lumbering part of British music history, and one that perhaps really doesn’t need revisiting.
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The Mancunion
With this album, Oasis continued to shove indie (whatever that means) away from fey, gauche outsider music into a lumpen dad-rock cul-de-sac. Despite a handful of undeniably great songs, they represent a glum re-establishment of the safe and familiar in British music.
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Spectrum Culture
Looking back now, the album isn’t the career-killer that many–including Noel Gallagher–seem to think that it was. Sure, it’s kind of a mess, but it’s still mostly Oasis doing what they did best.
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Anhedonic Headphones
For the casual fan, or the person who was unfamiliar with Be Here Now upon its release, all of this is worth a listen, and it serves as an interesting entry point to the band’s tumultuous history.
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Classic Rock Review
The album is fundamentally a tiresome listen, and one that you will not wish to return to on a regular basis, whether or not you like the band. Make sure you get Definitely Maybe, and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, but there’s no real need to bother with this.
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Galway Advertiser
Be Here Now is more digestable in this era of dipping in and out of albums and playlists, and taking a magpie approach to any kind of collection of music. It's a tough listen all the way through, but to dip in and out of these 40 tracks is to be treated to a number of deloights that will please Oasis die-hards.
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Alan's Album Archives
'Be Here Now' is the last album you'd recommend to a friend curious to know what the Oasis experience is all about, but it's far from the 'worst album ever' tag it so often receives and really doesn't deserve the 'it killed off a whole genre' tag. I say pull down the Princess Diana fountain (she'd have hated it anyway) and erect a monument to Britpop instead and we can mourn it's passing properly and give this poor album a rest!
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No Recess
"Be Here Now" Is a Befuddling Legacy That Lives On.
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Altrockchick
So, without trying to please the Gallagher brothers, the legions of Oasis fans all around the world, and in full possession of an ego that needs no validation, I hereby declare that Be Here Now sucks eggs.
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Retro Album & Music Reviews
Like much else of what's on this record, it contains too many redundant solos in addition to a dragged out ending. Overall this album is far too inconsistent; especially considering this is/was a major rock group we're talking about here.
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