Oasis `embarrassed by the hype', says Noel

Don't bother to buy Oasis's eight minute-single All Around the World on 12 January, still less their latest album. At least, one might be forgiven for holding on to one's money after comments its writer Noel Gallagher, reported yesterday.

Gallagher said he was embarrassed by the huge hype surrounding his band this year.

Be Here Now, which received massive promotion and has gone five times platinum, is "not even that good", said Gallagher.

"Everyone thought we had gone into Abbey Road to write our Sgt Pepper" he told the pop paper New Musical Express.

This did not turn out to be the case, at least not among the readers of music papers.

Be Here Now is ranked eighth in the list of this year's best albums as chosen by readers of Melody Maker.

New Musical Express readers thought less of it and rated it twenty fifth behind groups such as Mogwai, Death in Vegas and Yo La Tengo.

The older of the Gallagher brothers realises that he won't, unlike one of his biggest hits, live forever. At 30, he wonders if he has not already peaked as a songwriter.

Be Here Now, Oasis's third album, had a lot of songs on it left over from the second album What's the Story, Morning Glory.

"I think people only have only so many good tunes in them," Noel said.

But perhaps he protests too much. Fans of the group continue to buy the latest album in sufficient quantities to keep it at number 18 after 16 weeks in the charts.

When asked about the ubiquitous Spice Girls, Gallagher said he thought that sacking their manager was "a bit unfortunate".

He added that the female ensemble had "caned it for all it's worth", and his advice to them for the future: "Go dig a hole".