The song neither Gallagher would give up

When Oasis walked back on stage in Cardiff on 4 July 2025, "Wonderwall" came third in the encore. setlist.fm's note for that night reads simply: first performance since 22 August 2009.

First performance by Oasis, that is. In the sixteen years the band didn't exist, the song barely had a night off. Liam sang it with his solo band. Noel sang it with his. Between them they played it around 450 times, which is almost as often as Oasis had played it in the first place.

A song Noel nearly kept for himself

Noel Gallagher wrote it, originally under the title "Wishing Stone". He gave Liam the choice of singing either "Wonderwall" or "Don't Look Back in Anger"; Liam took "Wonderwall", and Noel sang the other. The final title came from George Harrison's solo album Wonderwall Music. The band recorded it in May 1995 at Rockfield Studios in Wales, with Owen Morris and Noel producing.

Released on 30 October 1995 as the fourth single from (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, it reached the top 10 in 20 countries. It went to No. 1 in Australia and New Zealand, stalled at No. 2 in the UK and Ireland, and reached No. 8 on the US Billboard Hot 100, their only top-10 hit there. On the US Modern Rock chart it spent a then-unprecedented ten weeks at No. 1.

It never really left. In October 2020 it became the first song from the 1990s to reach one billion streams on Spotify. In the US alone it has sold 2.9 million downloads and passed 1.5 billion official streams. It is certified nine times platinum in the UK.

What it's about depends on which brother you ask. Noel told NME in 1996 that it was written for Meg Mathews, his girlfriend and later wife. After their divorce, he said otherwise:

“The meaning of that song was taken away from me by the media who jumped on it… It's a song about an imaginary friend who's gonna come and save you from yourself.”

— Noel Gallagher, BBC Radio 2, 2002

The video was shot by director Nigel Dick at a studio in Woolwich, south-east London, on 30 September 1995. Bassist Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan was off with nervous exhaustion, so his stand-in, Scott McLeod, appears in his place. It won British Video of the Year at the 1996 Brit Awards.

On stage, 1995 to 2009

Its first live outing wasn't with the band at all: Noel played it on his own backstage at Glastonbury, broadcast by Channel 4 on 24 June 1995. Oasis first played it in concert on 1 October 1995, in a five-song set at the Virgin Megastore in London.

On the Morning Glory tour it was usually Noel's moment, played acoustically on his own. On some nights, including Maine Road and Knebworth, the full band played it with Liam singing.

Noel has said the acoustic arrangement came late, and from necessity:

“I used to play it on electric guitar and I f**king hated it… It wasn't until we stopped taking drugs that we thought 'acoustic might work better on that'.”

— Noel Gallagher, on Matt Morgan's Funny How? podcast, 2020, as reported by Radio X

By the time of the split, Oasis had played it more than 500 times. Their last performance of the first run came at V Festival on 22 August 2009, six days before Noel quit.

Sixteen years, two bands, one song

Noel brought it into his High Flying Birds sets from 2011. Liam added it to his solo shows from 2017, and played it at the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony with Beady Eye. Neither dropped it. Their busiest year for it was 2018, when the two of them played it 132 times between them, more than Oasis ever managed in a single year.

Liam, as ever, had his own view of what the song meant to Noel:

“But obviously that wasn't meaningful enough for Noel… so he decided to say it was about some girl.”

— Liam Gallagher, Rolling Stone, 2020

Everybody else's song

setlist.fm has logged "Wonderwall" 3,734 times across 616 artists. Take out Oasis, and that's 3,184 performances by 615 other acts. A covers band called Royale with Cheese has played it 234 times. Ryan Adams has played it 174 times, solo and with The Cardinals; Rihanna, 38; mgk, 29; OneRepublic, 25; Robbie Williams was playing it as recently as September 2026.

Ryan Adams' slowed-down version, first played in 2001 and released in 2003, is the one its writer singles out:

“Ryan Adams is the only person who ever got that song right.”

— Noel Gallagher, Spin, 2008

The most unlikely hit version came early. At Christmas 1995 the Mike Flowers Pops' lounge version reached No. 2 in the UK, exactly where the Oasis original had stalled two months earlier.

The covers have kept coming, from Cat Power, Brad Mehldau and Paul Anka (on his 2005 album Rock Swings) to Bring Me the Horizon, who released their version in January 2025. Liam's review of that one was brief:

“absolutely incredible made my day”

— Liam Gallagher, on Bring Me the Horizon's cover, January 2025

The people's song

Critics rate it highly (Rolling Stone placed it at No. 95 in its 2021 list of the 500 greatest songs of all time), but the public rates it higher still. In 2005 it topped a Virgin Radio poll of more than 8,300 listeners, ahead of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Stairway to Heaven". In Australia, Triple J listeners had voted it No. 1 in the Hottest 100 of 1995, and in 1997 it was nominated for two Grammys, Best Rock Song and Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group, winning neither. In 2016 Radio X listeners voted it the greatest British song of all time. Noel's response:

“What can I say? The people have spoken.”

— Noel Gallagher, 2016

It became a football song long before 2026: it's played after every Manchester City home game, it's the team song of Minnesota United in the US, and Adelaide United play it before kick-off. It even became a joke about itself: the "Anyway, here's Wonderwall" meme dates from a 2013 video.

Back where it started

When the reunion was announced in August 2024, "Wonderwall" re-entered the UK chart at No. 17. On the 2025 reunion tour, Oasis played it at all 41 shows, and in July 2026 it climbed back to No. 2 in the UK, the same peak it reached in 1995. The year after, it went somewhere no setlist could take it: England fans sang it through the 2026 World Cup, and it re-entered the US Billboard Hot 100 at No. 27, its first appearance there since 1996, and reached No. 4 on the Billboard Global 200. Noel's verdict:

“'Wonderwall' belongs to the people, and it was a magical moment between the people and the players.”

— Noel Gallagher, quoted by Billboard, 2026

Not every band treats its biggest song this way. Radiohead have left “Creep” unplayed since 2018, while The Killers have played “Mr. Brightside”, the first song they ever played live, 1,107 times, and the Goo Goo Dolls have kept “Iris” in their set since 1998.