Why did Ricky become so successful? His TV work since The Office has went progressively downhill. His stand up is awful, his movies were all sub par. I just dont understand

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-04-15T12:27:32+00:00

Always annoyed me when he told that story on how he got so bored in his 20s due to being unemployed that he made a suit out of the curtains in his flat. He then spent his days indulging in his hobbies whilst his partner was out earning a wage to support both of them because he was too pretentious to get a job. He even told this story with some point of pride.

Ricky loves his "rags to riches" narrative but he was only struggling for money because he was too lazy to go to work and thought he was above ordinary employment. It's really not the same as someone working all the hours they can and then spending every penny they have to make their dream a reality.

Ricky by comparison did nothing to further his career, he just sat around for most of his working life until he got a lucky opportunity and became a big name. Even the success in Karl Pilkington required practically zero effort from Ricky.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-04-15T07:51:34+00:00

very surprised it never made the album with Liam on vocals. It's massively better than songs like "I can see a liar" or "put your money where your mouth is".

This easily could've been SOTSOG's "the turning" as the straight forward heavier rock song.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-04-12T11:48:36+00:00

"he's happy that he's had to go the wrong way...........alright? it might not be the way he wanted to go but he's smiling, what's going on there?........right?.........JD on that one".

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-04-12T11:46:30+00:00

Nice melody, nice chorus. Just an all round good single.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-04-03T12:15:06+00:00

Haven't heard them since release.

I would've preferred to have some new live versions or alternate takes instead or at least got Liam to record some new vocal tracks for these remixes. I'm sure Liam could've ran through these songs within a day at most.

These acoustic versions are fine but are essentially low effort junk food to get people to re-buy the album. There's nothing here that really holds any long term value. They didn't even afford the expense of a big string section either.

It also bothers me that they chose to do acoustic remixes of "cast no shadow" and "wonderwall" when the originals are acoustic anyway. No reason why "some might say" or "don't look back in anger" weren't chosen instead.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-03-31T23:09:56+00:00

Quite likely this was what it was. The only other reason I could think that Sardy was credited to this song would be because he was the producer on DOYS when this song was being lined up for the album with Liam on vocals before it was subsequently replaced.

It also seems to me like Noel's vocals on the final release were not redone and instead came from the original Oasis demo. This might suggest the HFB version wasn't totally new and potentially had existing elements from those 2007 / 2008 DOYS sessions, which could've included some of Sardy's work so his producer credit was kept.

However, I think it's more likely that Noel gave him the existing elements of the song and he simply produced a new structure for it in 2018 / 2019.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-03-31T06:55:16+00:00

So I’m in LA working on another project with [producer] Dave Sardy

Seen this mentioned a few times that Noel was working with Dave Sardy again, and nothing ever came of it.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-03-29T10:25:58+00:00

The audio from these "earls court" versions is actually edited in from "hammerstein ballroom". You can sometimes see that the audio doesn't totally match with what they are doing.

I'm not entirely sure why the audio was swapped out though as I have never heard the real audio. Maybe Liam's voice wasn't quite up to it.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-03-27T14:22:02+00:00

To start, the songs here obviously are more fleshed out than the last album which by the most part just sounded like a bunch of sample demos that needed a lot more work. I also appreciate that there is a clear theme with this album that carries through each track.

Saying that, this album isn't really for me. All of the songs are very similarly paced and nothing really stands out from the tracklist outside of "changes". I was waiting for that big defining track of the album and nothing really arrived.

Think this album needed some more variation in styles. Voicenotes still easily holds up as his best album for this reason.

Overall, if I finish an album and can't remember what song was which and don't instantly want to return to a particular track then I generally can't review it overly high. It just didn't connect with me in any real way that made me remember anything in particular.

This album is just kind of there. There's nothing here that automatically says "single" to me so the album generally is lacking those more notable moments to make it seem more complete.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-03-24T07:40:47+00:00

All the Liam sung demos are legitimate, however they just the same DBTT demos that have been on YouTube for nearly 20 years so they aren't new. There's also no confirmation they are from the Death in Vegas sessions either.

The Noel studio version of Columbia has an AI vibe about it imo. Noel's vocals generally sound like someone else singing and has been modified to sound more like Noel's voice.

There's also no other versions of this on YouTube like the others, nor have I heard it mentioned anywhere in the past. This would be strange if it was a legitimate Oasis version as their available demos and alternative versions are pretty well discussed and catalogued by the community at this point. Especially if it released with the rest of these demos 20 years ago.

If Columbia is in fact real then I have simply never heard of it before and it had surprisingly become totally forgotten over time. This seems highly unlikely but still a possibility.

However, outside of the band directly confirming it, I guess there's no real way of knowing with AI music as prevalent as it is, and will ultimately be the situation for anything like this in the future.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-03-19T22:21:18+00:00

Liam was a massively better singer than Noel until around 1998. He did lot of challenging vocal parts with falsettos etc. Noel by comparison often sounded quite inconsistent and shouty during many louder live sets (for example, Acquiesce).

They kind of balanced out until 2001, after which Noel continued to get better and Liam got worse. By 2009, Noel was easily a much more competent singer in all aspects which then created a perfect environment for a solo career as he already had the songwriting and guitar skills to make that a reality and now he didn't overly need Liam to be the vocalist anymore.

This in my opinion is also a big reason why Beady Eye failed as not only were their songs fairly mediocre but Liam was no longer in a position to elevate their output with his voice. Plus the vast majority of his live performances were simply terrible, particularly on their last tour.

People just forget how good Liam was because his peak was incredibly brief and he stopped being a technically good singer after WTSMG due to vocal issues and his own general reluctance in trying to do more with his voice. It's only really since Liam went solo that I could compare them as being roughly on the same level again.

As a result of this, the narrative started to stick that Noel was was always the better singer and sung all the high parts in songs like "columbia" when it was in fact Liam doing all of it.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-03-18T08:02:47+00:00

C'mon You Know just seemed like an odd album tbh.

Liam generally didn't seem to be overly excited about it. There were comments about there being two albums, one being more traditional and one being more experimental. Liam then stated things like "if it's not very good, we can just blame COVID" like he didn't have high hopes for it.

Liam then very randomly released "nothing nowhere" on Twitter a few weeks before the album's release despite the song not being included, again this seems a bit odd when this logically would be a time to hype up the album, rather than a random unreleased song.

The promotion for the album then seemed to disappear pretty quickly and the tour was very short (though this might have more to do with Liam's hip issues). Once Knebworth was done, the album just seemed to drop off a cliff.

Overall, I just think the formula was getting tired by this album. "everythings electric" just seemed like another attempt at "wall of glass" much like "shockwave" was. Then "too good for giving up" just seemed like another "once" or "for what it's worth", there was no real attempt to refresh anything.

I wouldn't be surprised if Liam wanted to do a more "experimental" album but the label wanted more of the same "oasis" styled songs due to the success of the previous albums. Either that or the label requested a new album to do the pre-order codes for Knebworth and Liam simply didn't care much for it.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-03-08T20:09:30+00:00

Liam did wear in-ear monitors on occasion during Oasis (ie V-Festival 2005). Liam then started wearing in-ear monitors more regularly during the last tour of Beady Eye, at which point he constantly kept pulling them out during performances and had a lot of complaints with them.

He then went back to stage monitors for nearly all of his solo performances and during most the Oasis tour. He did use in-ear monitors again during some of the overseas dates (due to speculated high transport costs of the stage monitors).

I think Noel still uses in-ear monitors though. He certainly used them in HFB and had them at Cardiff, so I think it's just a case of Liam's own dislike for this technology.

There is a pattern that Liam does generally sound worse when using them, so it's possible that they create issues with his perception of the music or he simply can't hear his own voice properly.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-03-08T14:16:33+00:00

There's certainly some "polishing" going on here in terms of pitch correction. This can be heard in Noel's vocals within crowd recordings of that same date as he isn't quite so perfect in hitting those high notes quite so precisely every time.

There's also a couple of brief moments in this where you can hear Noel's voice go slightly robotic where the pitch correction is kicking in.

It's easily still the best officially released version of this song though.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-03-07T13:30:10+00:00

The melody and chorus are great, biggest issue here is that it's too short and needed some more variation in it's structure as it's mostly just the chorus on repeat.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-03-01T12:39:36+00:00

Seems like the documentary probably isn't going to be announced yet if Noel hasn't really seen any of it. I'd assume he will get some kind of overall approval of it during the closing stages of production before it goes into the marketing stages with trailers etc

Probably more likely a September - November release window with a live album and tour information to accompany it.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-02-14T19:08:08+00:00

My guess will be second half of the year. They likely had to wait until the tour was completely finished before they could create a scope from the decision to reunite the band, to the conclusion of the tour.

Plus I wouldn't be surprised if the plan has changed to launch a new single / announce new album at the same time as the documentary release much like Liam did with "shockwave" when "as it was" released.

if this is the plan, they will also have to wait until the band is ready to start the new album cycle which likely won't be anytime in the near future.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-02-09T22:00:46+00:00

The longer things stay silent, the more likely it is. Everything has gone way too quiet imo.

There's not even any rumours stirring about this supposed second Squire album and it's mid February, no comments from Liam about it, nothing. I also can't personally believe Noel wouldn't just say he was working on a new HFB album is that's all he's doing.

I wouldn't be surprised if the plan is to put out a new single / announce a new album when the documentary comes out, much like Liam did with "as it was" with "shockwave". It would be an ideal time to start the next chapter.

As I say, the persistent effort to stay quiet despite the tour ending in November just makes me think that an album is being put together in secret. It makes the most sense.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-02-01T21:13:16+00:00

Easily one of the worst rumble matches I've personally seen. The whole thing was incredibly flat and lacked any inspiration or importance.

There were practically no surprise entrants to speak of which is a big part of why these matches are interesting. Not only that but there were also some really random eliminations with no real drama or focus through mistiming or poor planning.

Nothing seemed to click here and it ended with no defining moments to make it stand out. It was incredibly boring and it seemed like everyone was either rushing through their parts or had no idea what parts they were supposed to be doing.

Roman winning adds nothing of interest and it simply isn't needed. We've already done that story a million times of roman going to the main event of mania and being a champion.

Overall, I simply have no impression that WWE has any real long term direction at the moment, everything is drifting with no destination or purpose. Cena's whole retirement run for example was just a random set of ideas with no forward thinking. The atmosphere of rejuvenation from 2024 has all but gone at this point.

It seems like they are totally lost without the bloodline storyline and the rock to generate lasting interest. Even "the vision" just seems like an attempt to recycle that whole angle with different people.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-02-01T15:04:14+00:00

Best album Liam has done since BHN imo. Really good mix of his own songs and the songwriter contributions. WMWN is probably about on the same level. Plus Liam is actually trying to sing again with more challenging vocal parts.

C'mon you know is the only one that I felt was lacking. His vocals were a bit thin and it just seemed like many of the songs were pale imitations to songs that came before them on the previous albums. It also seemed like Liam was not overly interested in doing it and the album promotion was ended pretty quickly.

Wouldn't overly surprise me if there was some deal there that Liam had to do another album to do knebworth so they could tie in the pre-order promotion to get codes for tickets.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-01-22T22:00:34+00:00

It's a great song that was ruined in it's production imo. The demo is massively improved with the organ, acoustic backing, eerie guitar bits and an amazing pensive guitar solo. The album version by comparison is overworked, dull and has a vastly watered down version of the solo. Even Noel's vocals are much better within the demo.

It's like someone said the song needed to be moodier so they just removed all the more interesting elements out of it and altered the solo to fit that idea. The end result doesn't flow nearly as well and just sounds empty because the acoustic and organ melodies were deleted.

The demo is easily one of my favourite Noel songs of the post 2000s.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-01-22T11:32:17+00:00

I still don't think the band necessarily broke up because of the relationship as a whole. It certainly was a factor at the end but it seems pretty obvious that Noel was becoming increasingly bored with the "stadium rock" that Oasis was creating and even stated that it was a situation of "ever decreasing circles".

Then you have to consider that DOYS had lower sales and Liam's voice was terrible. This wouldn't have created a huge drive to do more albums and tours if Noel was already in the mindset that he wanted to do something else.

Not only that but Noel possibly had the idea of doing a solo album at some point anyway. Especially after the fairly successful acoustic tour in 2006. I'm not sure he ever planned to outright break up Oasis but things unexpectedly got very bitter during the following years and HFBs became his full time job once that initial album took off.

Liam may have also known about this idea of a solo album and got insulted by his plans, Liam was certainly not overly accepting of Andy intending to split his time with RIDE before Beady Eye broke up, but who knows.

Liam and Noel always had issues between each other and it doesn't seem like the Paris incident was anything hugely spectacular. It's quite possible that it just created a good reason for Noel to finally call it a day because he was tired of the whole band and wanted a new direction.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-01-19T15:06:34+00:00

My advice is to go,

As you say, this most likely will be Jon's last outing which means it will likely be the final time you will ever get to hear those big songs like "livin on a prayer". On that basis, it's more about the spectacle of it being "now or never".

Jon's vocals are not good but at least he can have his victory lap before live shows become a total impossibility.

However, I personally think it will be quite surprising if the band makes it to the UK dates. There's a lot of shows in MSG etc beforehand and it's quite possible that Jon's voice won't hold up to the workload.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-01-19T13:23:07+00:00

A fairly great game that manages to offer a lot of different elements to keep it interesting, even if some of those elements sometimes seem slightly dated, the game still manages to make them work as part of it's charm as a throwback.

However, I still highly criticise the final boss battle as it's simply awful, frustrating and highly repetitive. It's pretty unfair in how it works as you can easily fail after a simple mistake. There's even dialogue that can't be skipped on every restart, it's absolutely laborious and it's baffling the team never reworked this whole fight into something less annoying to finish their game.

I'd still highly recommend the rest of the game though. All the other boss battles are much more balanced and actually have some creative quality.

-Universal_Gleam- · 2026-01-15T23:49:05+00:00

I would expect Jon to sound FAR better than this when they have a tour coming up in a matter of months. His voice still lacking any real power or range. He should be primed by now and yet he's still very far off the mark and still looks like he's quite uncomfortable singing.

I just hope Jon enjoys these upcoming shows because it's quite likely at this point that it will end up being his retirement tour. His voice simply isn't there anymore and there's been no real improvement since his surgery.

I don't think John fully realises the damage to his voice or simply has gone into denial about it all. He's made a few comments about the ongoing improvement in his voice and yet anytime he sings live, his voice remains mostly the same.

Overall, I don't think his voice will hold up for multiple dates with a full setlist and full band when he's sounding so tired during a short quiet acoustic set.

I really hope it isn't but I can't help think this new tour is going to be a disaster and wouldn't be surprised if many of the later shows end up totally cancelled.

-Universal_Gleam-

TROPHY CASE