Oasis - Morning Glory

JUL 01 1995 · 12:00

Oasis - Morning Glory (1995) Director: Jake Scott Era: Britpop Peak Era (1995) - The apex of mid-90s British guitar rock, coinciding with the release of (What's the Story) Morning Glory? on Creation Records, when Oasis crossed from indie phenomenon to global rock institution. High-tier archive asset. This video functions as both a primary cultural document of the 1995 Britpop apex and a significant entry in Jake Scott's early directorial canon. The Balfron Tower location footage carries independent architectural and sociological value. The 2020 HD remaster makes it one of the better-preserved 1990s British rock promos in circulation, suitable for exhibition contexts spanning music history, British urban photography, and 1990s subcultural studies. Context: Released in September 1995 at the precise apex of the Britpop movement, 'Morning Glory' arrived as Oasis completed their transformation from critically lauded indie act to the dominant force in British popular culture. The album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? sold a record-breaking 345,000 copies in its first week in the UK and spent 10 weeks at number one. The video's setting in a London brutalist council block, Balfron Tower, a landmark of post-war social housing, visually grounds the song's working-class Northern defiance in a recognisably British urban landscape, lending sociological weight to what Noel Gallagher described to NME as 'a cynical song about drugs.' The comic tension of neighbours protesting the noise mirrors the band's real-world status as a disruptive cultural force. The 1995 'Battle of Britpop' between Oasis and Blur provided the media context in which this video circulated. Director notes: Directed in 1995 for Creation Records, concurrent with the release of (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. The video was shot at and around Balfron Tower, a brutalist residential tower block in Poplar, East London, with the band performing inside a cramped domestic flat. The narrative conceit, neighbours serially disturbed by the band's noise and gathering at the door, plays as deadpan social comedy underpinning the song's themes of urban alienation and drug culture. The video was officially remastered in HD and re-released on 25 September 2020 as part of the album's 25th anniversary campaign. Scott's approach reflects the naturalistic, location-driven aesthetic he deployed across his 1990s rock video work, prioritising gritty physical environments over studio artifice.