As a decade-long Oasis fan, I can’t tell you what a trip it is every time I hear Be Here Now’s “All Around the World” on an AT&T ad. It seems like only yesterday that Oasis pissed away all the “Wonderwall” fame they’d accumulated in America with their bloated, coked-up, lumbering follow-up to (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, recording an album that has now become synonymous with wretched excess. “All Around the World” serves as its calling card—over nine and a half minutes long, overpowered by strings and horns and God knows what, reaching for anthemic resonance but ending up just sounding like a four-minute pop song extended to desperately ape “Hey Jude”. With hindsight, shilling Cingular phones is probably the best possible use for the damn thing.

What’s even funnier (or sadder, I guess) is that Oasis already has a glorious anthem in its discography, one that most Americans have never heard. “Whatever”, Oasis’ 1994 UK Christmas single, succeeds where “All Around the World” fails, six and a half blissful minutes of a great rock band at the peak of its powers. The song kicks off with a slowly strummed acoustic guitar (very similar to “Wonderwall”’s famous intro, showing that Noel Gallagher has no problem recycling ideas from even himself), and a four-piece string section pops into the picture before Liam Gallagher’s trademark sneer introduces the rest of the band.

The song’s lyrics are typical Oasis—uplifting “raise your lighter” sentimentality, an attempt to harness the universal sentiment of “be yourself” that Noel likes to take a shot at every couple of songs. However, he’d never come as close as this song; “I’m free to be whatever I / Whatever I chose, and I’ll sing the blues if I want” is, frankly, as good as Noel’s lyrics ever get. Even so, the final wordless minutes of the song, as violins beautifully soar above Noel’s inspired soloing before the band drops out and leaves the lead guitar to duet with the strings for the last couple bars, really hold the most emotional resonance. A couple hangers-on in the studio applaud enthusiastically as the song ends, and you can hardly blame them. The bridge between Definitely Maybe’s thundering 70’s throwback stadium rock and Morning Glory’s more eclectic, FM-ready “Britpop” had been crossed, all in this glorious one-off. And it didn’t even need to be used to sell phones.

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