The Greatest Songs of the 2010s

This post is a continuation of something I wrote on SoundWordsSTL.com. There, I listed out my ten favorite #1 singles of the 2010s, and if for some reason you missed that post, here's a link to it. Anyway, I also wrote analyses of my 25th through 11th favorite songs, which I listed below. I also ranked my ten least favorite songs of the decade, which is below that. And beneath all of that, I have the comprehensive list of all 116 number-ones in the decade, from best to worst.

25. Grenade—Bruno Mars: “Grenade” was the third consecutive Bruno Mars-featured single to reach #1, and while he was already starting to establish himself as a bankable star, this was the first one on which he showed a potential energy to enable him to write enduring songs. Unlike the sheer sentimentality of “Just The Way You Are” or his chorus on B.o.B.’s “Nothin’ on You”, Bruno displays the full breadth of his impressive vocal range via his heartbreak. “Grenade” wasn’t his first good pop song, but it was his first good pop song that hinted at somebody with potential for greatness.

24. Sexy And I Know It—LMFAO: “Sexy And I Know It” was divisive in ways that I’m not sure it would have been later in the decade, but in 2011, America wasn’t quite ready to embrace the silly pleasures of this goofy duo. It’s amazing, in retrospect, that anyone took them seriously—they were named after a chat acronym, went by the member names RedFoo and SkyBlu, and included a verse consisting entirely of repeating the word “wiggle” while using the lyric “Girl look at that body—I work out!” as a hook. Of course it was a joke, but the thumping bass and synthesizers made the song earnestly infectious.

23. Rude Boy—Rihanna: There was a stretch in the late 2000s and early 2010s where Rihanna shot straight to the top of the pop chart seemingly thanks to our collective muscle memory, and her ode to Jamaican ska culture wasn’t merely found in the title—“Rude Boy” is an arena-fied version of distinctly Caribbean sounds. Admittedly, the slower verses and bridge are a bit undercooked, but perhaps it was unfair to expect her to maintain the rapid delivery of the chorus and pre-chorus for a full four minutes.

22. Truth Hurts—Lizzo: Assuming you were able to traverse the endless hyper-serious thinkpieces in 2019 ascribing broader significance to Lizzo, one got the pleasure of sitting back and enjoying really fun pop music. While Lizzo is far from a crooner, her turns of phrase and charisma bleed through in her casual, half-sung half-rapped delivery, and while the lyrics are hardly poetry, “Truth Hurts” has two or three of the most memorable lines of the decade.

21. Locked Out of Heaven—Bruno Mars: It became such a vital part of the Bruno Mars narrative that it’s easy to forget how out of left field “Locked Out of Heaven” was for him. The song was inspired by the reggae/new wave of The Police (while “Message in a Bottle” was the most oft-cited influence, I jump to “Masoko Tango”, but I’m also a Police nerd), but once the song emerges from the obvious in the intro and verses, the chorus comes in full force, and while the song never charted on the rock charts, the pounding drums in conjunction with Bruno’s confident vocal are as firmly entrenched in arena rock as any number-one hit of the decade.

20. Old Town Road—Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus: That this song went three months lingering in the lower reaches of genre charts and then, after a mini-controversy over the song’s genre categorization, became the longest-running number-one in the history of the Billboard pop charts is a testament to the viral nature of the song and of the era, but it’s also a testament to a genre that was a massive cultural force throughout the 2010s but didn’t manage to hit #1 until 2019—country rap. While the song’s omission from country charts isn’t without logic, the same could be said of many of the chart’s more hip-hop influenced tracks of recent years. And although Lil Nas X isn’t a great technical rapper or singer, whichever you want to call it, his charisma made him an easy artist to root for, and the song’s sampling of Nine Inch Nails’s ambient “34 Ghosts IV” is one of the more effective, creative samples of the era.

19. Blank Space—Taylor Swift: Following up the borderline novelty song that was “Shake It Off”, Taylor Swift ventured back into her increasingly sophisticated pop sensibilities with “Blank Space”. The song had electropop flourishes but the star of the show is Swift’s lyrics, which are among the strongest of the decade’s number-ones. Much of the Taylor Swift media discourse of the early part of the decade aged terribly (a bunch of dudes fixated way too much on a woman in her early twenties not finding a nice boy and settling down) and this sly dig at those who hounded her personal life seemed to stop such takes in their tracks.

18. Blurred Lines—Robin Thicke ft. T.I. and Pharrell Williams: Despite being one of the best-selling singles of all-time and spending nearly the entire summer of 2013 atop the pop charts, it’s nearly impossible to find people in 2019 willing to admit to the song’s virtues. While the lyrics were kind of clumsy (though far less overtly anti-consent than, say, the far less thoroughly canceled “Baby It’s Cold Outside”) and the T.I. rap verse is deeply unnecessary, the production is a throwback to the minimalist style Pharrell had taken to dominating pop radio a decade earlier. And if the Marvin Gaye estate was able to successfully sue the songwriters for plagiarism of “Got to Give It Up”, it is a minor miracle that Oasis weren’t sued for roughly half the songs they ever released, and I say this as somebody who loves Oasis.

17. Imma Be—Black Eyed Peas: “Imma Be” was a relatively minor hit for the band that dominated the pop charts in 2009, but it aged far better than the mega-hits “Boom Boom Pow” or “I Gotta Feeling”. While the first half of the song is already an improvement, with its sparse production a particular asset during Fergie’s verse, the second half is where the song goes from acceptable pop radio presence to something far more interesting—a synth and bass driven bit of bravado that cements “Imma Be” as among the weirdest chart-toppers of the decade and easily the track off “The E.N.D.” that most encapsulates the hyper-futuristic aesthetic to which the group was aiming.

16. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together—Taylor Swift: Swift’s first not-at-all-country pop song, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” combines idiosyncratically paced verses that evokes anger, but with the simple, anthemic chorus, it becomes readily apparent that Taylor Swift isn’t just pretending to break up (think John Waite’s “Missing You”)—she is confident and poised and angry not at the person with whom her relationship has ended, but at the implication that she isn’t confident and poised in the breakup itself. That the song still got some country radio airplay and was even nominated for a CMT Music Award was a matter of delayed reaction: from this point forward, there was no question that Taylor Swift was going to define her future recordings in exactly her terms.

15. Starboy—The Weeknd ft. Daft Punk: The Weeknd’s music was characterized by its dark R&B energy and Daft Punk’s music was characterized by fun danceability, and “Starboy” managed to combine the two. Ultimately, while the lyrics are still on the darker side, the song leans slightly more to the French electronic duo’s sound, and the piano and drum machines give the song a mechanical feel that plays off The Weeknd’s earnestness.

14. S&M—Rihanna ft. Britney Spears: A brief mea culpa—I never heard the Britney Spears remix until I started doing this list (it's fine, though I prefer the original). But the same thing makes either version effective—the thumping, hyper-electronic instrumentation and Rihanna’s “na na na come on” vocal hook that comprises its chorus. The song received some criticism for its, to put it lightly, straightforward lyrics, but that the song’s primary hook is so simple is all the evidence that should be necessary to conclude that if you were listening that closely to the lyrics, you were missing the appeal of the song, which was to be played loudly at clubs and not carefully pondered or considered.

13. Teenage Dream—Katy Perry: While her work up until this point had been characterized by hyper-juvenile songs aimed primarily at tweens, “Teenage Dream” was a quantum leap forward and remains Katy Perry’s best song. Despite the title literally referring to youth, the song is lyrically one of an adult’s reminiscence, and while it isn’t without its dance flourishes, it is also at heart a somewhat straightforward pop-rock song that could have easily passed as an acoustic guitar ballad had it come from somebody else’s discography.

12. Can’t Stop the Feeling!—Justin Timberlake: Following his teenybopper boy band days, Justin Timberlake reached popular and critical acclaim as a solo artist by traveling darker roads. And with “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”, Timberlake turned the car around and hit the accelerator like he was drag racing. But while the song is every bit as cheesy and corny as you would expect from a song on the soundtrack to a DreamWorks movie based on toys, it was also deliriously fun. Heavily inspired by Michael Jackson-style disco-pop, the song broke absolutely no new ground, but in an increasingly fractured music landscape, there’s also something heartening about a song whose popularity can bridge generational gaps.

11. thank u, next—Ariana Grande: Most pop songs about failed relationships take one of two stances: either the relationship’s end is a devastating, crushing blow which could never be overcome, or the other party is a horrible monster who must be hated. But in “thank u, next”, Ariana Grande takes a refreshing and frankly more realistic perspective. She speaks of her ex-boyfriends in neutral-to-favorable terms but never regrets dating them, because they made her the person she is today. And yet the song never jumps into saccharine territory—the vocals are understated but immaculate and the production is reserved in a way that gives the lyrics an additional layer of sincerity.

A journey for the resurrection of peace, love, and Death Metal

For the first seventeen years of their existence, Eagles of Death Metal were perpetually miscast. They should have seen that coming—as a garage rock band that relies heavily on tongue-in-cheek, exaggerated seventies rock stereotypes, their sound bears only minimal resemblance to the Eagles or to death metal. With their first album coming less than a year and a half after drummer Josh Homme reached mainstream success with his band Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal were inevitably labeled as a “side project” for Homme—the band’s true leader was always singer/guitarist Jesse Hughes, whose idiosyncratic mix of Canned Heat-inspired vocals, rockabilly guitar influences, and love of campy rock and roll conventions made him a compelling counterpoint to Homme, a tall, muscular, handsome stage presence. Homme as a frontman was functionally arena rock—Hughes as frontman was an oddball. It was this combination that has made Eagles of Death Metal a consistently exciting band. It also made them perhaps uniquely unqualified for the role that tragic circumstances thrust upon them.

Eagles of Death Metal have had moderate popular success—a few appearances in commercials and on soundtracks and a top 40 hit on the U.S. Alternative Charts in “Wannabe in L.A.” But the entire tone surrounding the band permanently changed on November 13, 2015, when the band’s headlining performance at Paris’s Bataclan theater was attacked by ISIL terrorists. The band members survived without injury; 90 others, including their merchandise manager, were killed. Suddenly, one of the least serious bands in the world, a band arguably most famous for their inside joke of a name, became a rallying cry.

The band was understandably shaken by the events—while Jesse Hughes defiantly declared less than two weeks later than he wanted EODM “to be the first band that plays the Bataclan when it opens back up”, this came during an interview during which the touring members and Homme (who was absent during the Paris attacks and only sporadically performs live with the band) openly and unabashedly wept. But it suddenly became imperative among the rock community that this band survive. Many artists covered the band’s part-French “I Love You All the Time”, with proceeds from sales going to victims of the attack. A campaign began to get their cover of Duran Duran’s “Save a Prayer” to #1 on the UK singles chart—while it fell short, the cover became the band’s biggest hit, and Duran Duran, who had performed the song live with EODM prior to the attacks, agreed to donate their royalties to charity. A band for whom a show at a 1,500 seat theater was typical was playing alongside U2 at a 17,000+ seat arena in Paris less than a month after the attacks.

In the wake of the Paris attacks, the music world wanted to rally around Eagles of Death Metal and they wanted the kind of reassuring stadium rock U2 provided. Both were still independently possible, but people wanted the two in one package. But U2 is the band that made “Where the Streets Have No Name” and “One”, while Eagles of Death Metal is the band who were touring an album titled Zipper Down whose cover featured a woman whose otherwise-exposed breasts were covered by pictures of the band’s two principal members.

Normally, there is plenty of room in the world of rock and roll for both of these types of bands. Post-Bataclan, there was demand for one. A dark but impossible to deny fact is that Eagles of Death Metal never had, and likely never will, generate more publicity than they did on what was at the same time the worst moment in the band’s history. Having a member who two years prior to the attacks fronted a band with the #1 album in the United States wasn’t enough to give EODM headlines. The number of people who researched the band upon hearing “I Only Want You” in Windows 8 advertisements or “Now I’m a Fool” after seeing Silver Linings Playbook paled in comparison to the number of people who heard about “this band that doesn’t actually sound like the Eagles nor death metal” through news coverage of a story much larger than the band itself.

Eagles of Death Metal began 2016 with a relaunch of their delayed European tour, now renamed the Nos Amis (“Our Friends”, in English) Tour. The band returned to Paris in February and the subsequent tour became the subject of an HBO documentary directed by Colin Hanks which was released in February 2017. But within a month of EODM’s by all accounts triumphant return to face-melting garage rock in Paris, the era of good feelings ended for the band.

Jesse Hughes had been open about his political leanings—conventionally conservative in some ways but in many ways guided by reactionary emotion—before Bataclan. As somebody who disagrees with Hughes on virtually every political issue on which he has ever espoused an opinion, this never bothered me much, largely because Eagles of Death Metal is almost aggressively not a political band. Like the bands from which they drew inspiration—mid-period Rolling Stones, early-period Aerosmith, every-period-until-the-day-they-die AC/DC—EODM wrote and performed songs about sex, drugs, rock and roll, and virtually nothing else. Some have likened Hughes to a young generation’s Ted Nugent, but unlike Nugent, Hughes hasn’t been known to get on his political soapbox during concerts. This certainly wasn’t a Rage Against the Machine situation, where a conservative politician like Paul Ryan being a fan of a band with such far left lyrical content seems contradictory. Artist and art are easily separated in this case.

But Hughes’s comments post-Bataclan ventured from potentially divisive to downright disturbing. His initial claim, which as it turned out was merely him dipping his toes into controversial waters, was that gun control had enabled the Bataclan attack and that had French citizens been permitted to bear arms, the attack could have been stopped. He then turned up the heat by claiming, without substantiation or any subsequent evidence that he or anyone else has presented, that he saw Muslims celebrating in the streets of Paris the night of the attack. In another interview, Hughes alleged that the attack was an inside job, claiming that security personnel who did not show up that night were aware of what was coming. Suddenly, Eagles of Death Metal went from unreservedly sympathetic victims to dangerous provocateurs—in light of the comments, the band was dropped from multiple French music festivals.

The comments forced me and other fans of Eagles of Death Metal to re-examine our feelings about the band. On one hand, what Jesse Hughes claimed was deeply irresponsible, throwing red meat at those looking to justify, if not weaponize, bigotry and hatred. On the other hand, why would I expect a guy with whom the entire extent of our relationship is “he makes some cool guitar riffs I like” to have particularly refined takes, especially given that he was being asked about hot-button issues as they related directly to the most traumatic night of his life? This wasn’t, I concluded, analogous to condemning R. Kelly, a problematic artist who 1. Is problematic through actions rather than words; 2. Has lyrical content that can be easily viewed differently given more context about his personal life; 3. Has absolutely no excuses for his behavior that hold a candle to “I saw 90 people die at an event that only occurred because of me”.

In the end, I simply began to view Hughes differently. In the first decade or so of Eagles of Death Metal, I viewed him as not dissimilar to how I viewed myself: a high school loner trying to channel his weirdness into a quirky package that could reach others of a similar persuasion. Following his comments, I began to view Hughes like an uncle who spends all day posting memes on Facebook about how liberals want to ban churches and replace them with shrines to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I find the message annoying on a good day and despicable on an average one, but I’m also rooting for him to see the light. I’ve seen his potential and I don’t want to see the brain worms of a historically stupid era of evidence-less conspiracy theories-as-serious discourse corrupt him.

In 2017, Eagles of Death Metal recorded their first post-Bataclan songs in-studio, kind of. The band contributed to two above-average pop-rock tracks on Kesha’s acclaimed comeback album Rainbow, “Let ‘Em Talk” and “Boogie Feet”. The end result, particularly in the case of the latter, sounded essentially like The Ting Tings, which was a positive enough outcome, but neither song was written by Hughes nor Josh Homme and arguably reflected Kesha’s take on what a collaboration with Eagles of Death Metal should sound like rather than anything the band itself would have in mind.

But in 2019, the band returned with its first semi-proper album since 2015 with a left-field collection of covers, EODM Presents Boots Electric Performing The Best Songs We Never Wrote. It is simultaneously the most Jesse Hughes-heavy album (“Boots Electric” is Hughes’s musical pseudonym) and the least promoted album—the collection was initially a limited release and received so little attention that it doesn’t even so much as have a Wikipedia page. And yet it became the album in 2019 that I most wanted to be good. The album, described by Hughes as therapeutic to record following a bout with depression following the Paris tragedy, was significant in its very existence and as a battle of sorts for the soul of Eagles of Death Metal. Were they the same, silly rock band of yesteryear or had the shooting cost the band its soul?

The album is clunky both in title and in its oddball mixture of songs. The first three tracks are, on their surface, an expected trio for a hard rock band’s covers album—KISS’s “God of Thunder”, Guns N’ Roses’ “It’s So Easy”, and the AC/DC double-punch “High Voltage/It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock’n’Roll)”. While the first cover is relatively straightforward, the next track, a cover of the second track off Appetite for Destruction, sounds like Richard Cheese impersonating B-52s impersonating GNR, with Hughes and female backing vocalists goofing their way through it all the way. The AC/DC medley combines sincerity with camp, with the songs being musically similar to the originals but with Hughes’s casual vocals highlighting the absurdity of AC/DC’s cartoonish machismo.

And then the album starts to venture a bit off the rails. “So Alive” becomes a glam anthem, after which they attempt a slowed-down rendition of the Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat”. Next comes a trio of massive pop hits—Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra”, George Michael’s “Careless Whisper”, and Mary J. Blige’s “Family Affair”. Perhaps most surprising is how relatively faithful to the original these are, aside from the pronounced female backing vocals in “Abracadabra” and the crunching guitar in place of saxophone in “Careless Whisper”. Meanwhile, while a cover of Mary J. Blige from a rock band may sound unusual, it is arguably the most straightforward cover on the album—Hughes even retains the “let’s get crunk ‘cause Mary’s back” lyric. Normally, I oppose covers this conventional on studio recordings because why not just listen to the original, but the shock value of this band doing this song is too jarring to resist.

And given the conclusions that one could extrapolate about Hughes as a regressive figure, there’s something refreshing about him covering an openly gay artist in Michael and a black female artist in Blige, both of whom he has cited in interviews as among his favorite artists. It is a refreshing reminder in a more general sense that most great musicians have wide and varied musical influences. While plenty of fans of EODM’s brand of straightforward rock can be dismissive of pop and R&B, the artists themselves tend to, at the minimum, respect the greats of the genres. And George Michael and Mary J. Blige qualify.

Admittedly, the album starts to lose some steam on the back half. With the exception of a cover of David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream” that sounds like it came out of the 1930s, there’s nothing especially memorable. But on the whole, this is a solid album. And most importantly, it is a redemptive album of sorts.

Not that he’s tried particularly hard to do so, but even if he did, Jesse Hughes is never going to escape his post-Bataclan comments. One might be tempted to criticize him for trying to go on about his life as though nothing happened, but by recording an album that fits squarely within the pre-Paris EODM ethos, he’s ignoring the attacks themselves, which he is allowed and arguably right to do, in addition to the backlash. This isn’t the greatest Eagles of Death Metal album—in fact, it’s arguably my least favorite. It’s a solid album, though it would be a real stretch to call it the best album of 2019. But it is also, beyond its musical value, pure catharsis. In a way that transcends its actual quality, it is probably my favorite album of the year.

Some, particularly non-fans, may have hoped EODM would emerge with a reflection on their horrifying experiences and some newfound sense of maturity, but this wouldn’t have been true to the band’s personality. This isn’t a band merely content with making big dumb rock—it is a band which revels in it. They aren’t U2. They aren’t trying to be.

On the day of the Paris attacks, Eagles of Death Metal’s most played song on Spotify was “Miss Alissa”, a non-single fan favorite off the band’s only proper album to not chart in the United States. This perfectly conveyed the band’s status as a band that existed for the purpose of those who liked them and wasn’t trying to be everything to everybody. Today, nearly four years later, their most played song on Spotify is still “Miss Alissa”. As with the band itself, sometimes it’s comforting to know that some things never change.

The 138 Greatest Oasis songs--numbers 138 through 26

In August 1994, twenty-five years ago this month, Oasis released the classic album Definitely Maybe, an album which frequently ranks among the greatest and most immediate debut albums ever released. Over their career, which spanned fifteen years and included seven studio albums, they released 138 different songs. So I ranked them. Numbers 138 through 26 are ranked here, and 25-1 can be found at SoundWordsSTL.com.

138. Little by Little (Heathen Chemistry): Far and away the worst Oasis single, “Little by Little” is the sound of a songwriter who lost his steam. Noel Gallagher entered the yacht stratosphere of wealth on the back of crowd-pleasing anthems, but “Little by Little” is a lethargic, dull, lazy attempt to recreate the greatest Oasis hits that winds up sounding more like the theme song of a CW teen drama. “Heathen Chemistry” is my least favorite Oasis album and it’s largely because of this clunker.

137. Merry Christmas Everybody (NME in Association with War Child Presents 1 Love): Oasis covered Slade’s perfectly fun “Merry Xmas Everybody” for this compilation album and have never sounded less interested in what they were doing. An easy fix would’ve been to have Liam Gallagher, who had previously covered Slade for the band, sing lead vocals, but instead we were subjected to Noel taking on a silly Christmas song with unusual earnestness.

136. If We Shadows (Be Here Now re-issue): This song was demoed before being scratched from “Be Here Now”, and while I understand why it sounds so half-baked, I can’t excuse it since this is the only version of the song that exists. And while the finished product does have the elements of a decently catchy chorus, listening to the song itself is more an exercise in Oasis completism than actually enjoying the song. That said, this version is just under five minutes and a “Be Here Now” studio version would’ve surely been at least seven and a half minutes long.

135. Heroes (“D’You Know What I Mean?” B-side): How do you go wrong covering David Bowie? By falling into all the traps and clichés of the “Be Here Now” sessions (except, shockingly, length—this version is nearly two minutes shorter than Bowie’s original). The guitars are distractingly loud in the mix, and while it’s perhaps not fair to blame Oasis for the fact that the Wallflowers version from less than a year later would become the definitive modern rock cover of “Heroes”, what little reason this song had to exist in the first place disappeared. Also, this is one of many Oasis B-sides that should’ve been sung by Liam but instead went to Noel, a fine singer with a nevertheless brief list of songs at which he is the superior Gallagher vocal option.

134. Magic Pie (Be Here Now): Allegedly, this was meant to be the light-hearted song on “Be Here Now”, so it says a lot about how self-serious that album got that the novelty tune was seven minutes and nineteen seconds long. The song isn’t without interesting guitar bits, but it’s also impossible to listen to the song in its entirety without groaning a few times (even if you’ve never heard this song before, the fact that its title is “Magic Pie”, a phrase which is used in the chorus, should give you some hint). “Be Here Now” is, by and large, a much better album that it’s given credit for—most of the songs are too long, but are generally pleasant tunes if those making the album had any self-control. “Magic Pie”, however, is irredeemable.

133. The Quiet Ones (“The Importance of Being Idle” B-side): No, I wasn’t just going to rank all of the Noel-sung songs in the basement of the list. This song is mercifully short—just 2:01—but it is very much a B-side for a reason. There is some moderately cool guitar wah-wah-ing briefly in this mostly acoustic number, but while Gem Archer offered a pretty high success rate when he wrote songs for Oasis, this one was his weakest effort.

132. Helter Skelter (“Who Feels Love?” B-side): It is inexplicable that this oft-covered Beatles classic has inspired such uninspired renditions. This (once again, Noel-sung) version isn’t bad but considering it is arguably the highest-energy Beatles song, being covered by one of the highest-energy bands of its era, it should be so much better. The psychedelic guitar outro is nice but the entire song up to that point is pointless.

131. Carry Us All (“Sunday Morning Call” B-side): Noel Gallagher has written more songs about lapsed Catholicism that one might expect, and while one might hope a song about religion (or non-religion) would have a certain anthemic feel to it, this one is strictly middle of the road. I don’t think Liam singing it makes it a great song, but I think it would likely elevate it somewhat. It’s not a bad song, but it is very much a B-side.

130. Roll It Over (Standing on the Shoulder of Giants): “Standing on the Shoulder of Giants” is the band’s darkest album, yet it concludes with the big, anthemic choruses of “Roll It Over”. The lyrics are a bit of a bleaker affair, and this keeps the song from really gaining steam. Bonus points for the guitar solo. Loss of bonus points for being over six minutes long despite lacking any semblance of a hook.

129. Idler’s Dream (“The Hindu Times” B-side): It doesn’t sound like an Oasis song at all—it is a true Noel Gallagher solo song (he sings and plays piano and there are no other instruments) and while this could have been a recipe for self-indulgence, it is a shockingly effective ballad. It would’ve been a disaster on an album (though still better than “Little by Little”), but it’s pleasant as a B-side curiosity.

128. Sad Song (Definitely Maybe vinyl edition): Inexplicably placed between the much harder rocking “Columbia” and “Supersonic” in its original incarnation, this song is exactly what you think it is based on the title. It has a pleasant enough verse melody, but nothing really stands out about it compared to the countless other acoustic numbers of its era.

127. Those Swollen Hand Blues (“Falling Down” B-side): Despite constant comparison to them, I never thought Oasis sounded particularly like the Beatles, by and large. Oasis, particularly at their best, were closer to T. Rex or The Who or The Kinks, but if somebody is going to compare you to the biggest band in the history of the world, you aren’t going to decline it. But on this song, technically the final Oasis song (it being the B-side on the final Oasis release), Noel Gallagher couldn’t be trying to sound like “Strawberry Fields Forever” more if he just did a cover of it. Bonus points for him not doing this.

126. Who Put the Weight of the World on My Shoulders? (“Goal!” soundtrack): You’d think putting an Oasis song on a soccer movie called “Goal!” would mean an uplifting anthem, but instead, Oasis went with (say it with me) a mostly acoustic Noel-sung number. My preferred Oasis tends to be harder-rocking, so I’m as surprised as anybody that my favorite part of this song is the presence of violins.

125. The Masterplan (“Wonderwall” B-side): This song is such a fan favorite that it was the name of a collection of the band’s most popular B-sides, and I get why people enjoy it—it’s a big crowd singalong. But while I have a soft spot for some Oasis ballads, I prefer to keep my ballads a little smaller. There are plenty of elements here of a song I rank much higher, but there are too many things I find grating (rhyming “doors” with “corridor”, the sped-up interpolation of “Octopus’s Garden”, the presence of an orchestra) for me to give it a full endorsement.

124. The Swamp Song (“Wonderwall” B-side): I’m not counting the excerpts from “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?”, but rather the full song that appears as a B-side (and later as part of “The Masterplan”). And the good news is that this song has a really cool, unsurprisingly “swamp”-y guitar riff. It forms the basis of a 4:19 instrumental which, unfortunately, never really diverts from the formula. It’s a bit of a forerunner to the “Be Here Now” excesses and it should be about three minutes shorter than it is.

123. (You’ve Got) The Heart of a Star (“Songbird” B-side): Sometimes, particularly on B-sides he sung himself, Noel Gallagher tried to sound like Burt Bacharach. A lot of times, it works terribly, and while this particular song ventures a little too close to corny territory, it’s one of Noel’s stronger vocal performances, and while I think Liam could’ve handled it just fine, I don’t know that he could’ve handled it better.

122. Hey Hey My My (Familiar to Millions): The instrumentation on this Neil Young cover is terrific—the guitars properly loud and the drums properly thunderous. But the vocals are passable at best (hey, Noel, you have one of the greatest rock and roll voices alive right there on stage with you) and the cover is so straightforward that it’s fair to wonder what purposes it serves to record it when listeners at home could just as easily play the original. That said, Oasis never recorded it in studio, so they get a minor pass, and also, if I were at Wembley Stadium, I’m positive I would’ve thought it rocked.

121. Sittin’ Here in Silence (On My Own) (“Let There Be Love” B-side): It feels a bit like an incomplete song (again, it’s a B-side), but there are points in it where Noel Gallagher sounds like he’s channeling solo John Lennon, which is a good direction to be heading on a song you don’t deem good enough for your album.

120. One Way Road (“Who Feels Love?” B-side): I’ll admit that I know some Oasis songs better than others and this was the song I most frequently had to consult to remember how it goes when ranking this list, which probably isn’t a great sign for its memorability. The chorus is actually shockingly catchy for a “Standing on the Shoulder of Giants”-era B-side but the verses are easily replaceable. There is a neat abbreviated guitar solo, which stands out compared to the acoustic tunes that comprise the majority of latter-day Oasis B-sides.

119. Come On Feel the Noise (“Don’t Look Back in Anger” B-side): The better Slade cover in the Oasis discography (though most Americans probably better know the Quiet Riot cover), this is superior because Liam Gallagher sings it, but the production is a bit overdone, and objectively, I’d take both the Slade and Quiet Riot versions over this one.

118. Take Me Away (“Supersonic” B-side): Had this song been anything more than a B-side, it could’ve been bad. There are eras where “Take Me Away” becomes a bloated, instrumental mess. But this simple acoustic ballad from the first Oasis single set the template of peak-era Oasis singles: excellent A-sides but B-sides which can hold their own.

117. The Cage (Heathen Chemistry): That it follows nearly 29 minutes of silence on the final track of a relatively neglected Oasis album maybe shows how much the band cared about this instrumental. There’s nothing wrong with “The Cage”, but I can’t pretend I often find myself compelled to fast forward to the correct point of “Better Man” to get to it.

116. Thank You for the Good Times (“Stop Crying Your Heart Out” B-side): I have an unfounded theory on the writing of this song. It was recorded during the “Heathen Chemsitry” sessions, an album which was a markedly more optimistic one than the preceding “Standing on the Shoulder of Giants”. Andy Bell, who had never written an Oasis song to that point, decided to try to fit that mood as obviously as possible. But the song turned out to be a forgettable, middle-of-the-road ode, seemingly, to Oasis itself, so it was relegated to B-side status. It was worth a shot.

115. Shout It Out Loud (“Stop Crying Your Heart Out” B-side): Imagine “Little By Little” but with a pretty cool guitar solo and without everything excruciatingly patronizing about it. It’s not an amazing Oasis song, granted, but it’s perfectly acceptable as a B-side.

114. Angel Child (“D’You Know What I mean?” B-side): I can’t pretend that the idea that a song called “Angel Child” exists doesn’t kind of bother me on principle but considering this was the same year Noel wrote and sang a song called “Magic Pie”, this is a minor grievance. Vocally, Noel’s dynamics are quite strong (I think Liam could’ve done well, perhaps better than Noel, but it would have necessarily been different) and while there is nothing instrumentally that merits much further discussion, it serves the singing fairly well.

113. The Fame (“All Around the World” B-side): A song that absolutely should have been sung by Liam, but by all accounts, he wasn’t exactly at his most energetic circa 1997, so maybe a Noel vocal was necessary. It would’ve been served by better production, but it’s unsurprising that a B-side in 1997 would be a bit undercooked since only the hardcore fans would ever hear it. At some point, though, I’m just happy to hear a Noel-sung B-side with some life in it.

112. Stay Young (“D’You Know What I Mean?” B-side): “Be Here Now” was maligned for constantly shooting the moon and trying to be an album entirely of enormous songs, and while it often fell short, the ideas were there. They shouldn’t have been seven-minute songs but there would be a germ of something there. “Stay Young” was the most popular B-side from the sessions, evidenced by its presence on “Be Here Now”, but it is so middle of the road that it was never going to truly stand out. It’s not a bad song, by any means, but it’s a song that sounds a fair bit like many of the songs written, recorded, and ultimately better executed on “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?”

111. (Get Off Your) High Horse Lady (Dig Out Your Soul): A fair amount of the final Oasis album has a curiously western-themed tinge to it, on top of apocalyptic themes (this sounds kind of stupid, but it might be my second-favorite Oasis album). But the one song that never really gets off the ground is this one. The first two verses are slow and plodding—not bad, but they feel like they’re building to something bigger. And then they just…don’t. It just kind of continues along the path it was going.

110. Part of the Queue (Don’t Believe the Truth): On the band’s penultimate album, it becomes obvious that there’s a splinter between Noel and the rest of the band—Liam only sings 1 ½ of the songs Noel wrote, while all but two total songs on the band’s first three albums fit that description. This tune—Noel sung and written—is a perfectly pleasant bit of British pop-rock, but it is easily the album’s most forgettable track and it suggests that Noel was running low on ideas.

109. Boy with the Blues (Dig Out Your Soul deluxe edition): Inexplicably, this afterthought from the final Oasis album wound up on the soundtrack of one of the most popular American TV shows of the millennium, “NCIS”. It is sung by Liam and sounds so distinctly written by Liam that the song could’ve passed for a Beady Eye song. I say this as somebody who liked Beady Eye.

108. Stop Crying Your Heart Out (Heathen Chemistry): One of Oasis’s most enduring singles in the UK (it peaked at #2, and a Leona Lewis cover peaked at #29 seven years later), it doesn’t quite reek of “Little by Little” desperation to have a huge anthem on the band’s fifth album, but it is certainly a lesser version of the band’s biggest hits. But hey, the band’s biggest hits are really good. I haven’t even talked about those yet.

107. I Hope, I Think, I Know (Be Here Now): Approximately one and a half minutes longer than it needs to be, which is restrained by “Be Here Now” standards. While this positions “I Hope, I Think, I Know” as a fairly uncontroversial entry on the band’s most controversial album, it never really strives for more than acceptability. Good Liam vocal, but I don’t think I’ve ever voluntarily listened to the song except when listening to “Be Here Now” as a whole. I don’t mind it, but this is a band that has a hundred songs I’ve convinced myself at some point or another was the greatest song ever written, so it falls a bit short.

106. Where Did It All Go Wrong? (Standing on the Shoulder of Giants): The second of Noel’s unofficial cocaine trilogy, between “Sunday Morning Call” and the already-mentioned “Roll It Over”, the song (like the others) offers an appropriately bleak look at drug abuse and is a poignant soundtrack to the misery of the Britpop comedown. Musically, it doesn’t offer much interesting, but it’s a worthy album cut and it comes with a surprisingly fierce Noel vocal performance (Noel has said Liam attempted and couldn’t quite pull this song off, and this is a rare occasion where I believe him).

105. A Quick Peep (Heathen Chemistry): A seventy-seven second instrumental that is too brief to be a classic but also too brief to be loathed. It has a solid groove and if you’re listening to songs off “Heathen Chemistry” anyway, it’s a satisfying excursion.

104. You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away (“Some Might Say” B-side): Like their “Heroes” cover, a relatively faithful cover that was eventually usurped as the modern rock staple cover (Eddie Vedder). I do wonder where Liam was for this one. Was it really that hard to convince Liam Gallagher to do a John Lennon impression for a couple minutes?

103. (Probably) All in the Mind (Heathen Chemistry): “Heathen Chemistry” was a format-changing album for Oasis in that only three songs followed the familiar “written by Noel, sung by Liam” format. Only one song reaches the top 102, so as you can probably guess, I’m okay with this. This song is a perfectly fine tune, but it doesn’t seem to know what it is. It’s mildly psychedelic and it’s mildly anthemic and it’s mildly straight-ahead pop-rock, but it’s none of these things nearly enough to be a classic in any regard.

102. Can Y’See It Now? (I Can See It Now!!) (Don’t Believe the Truth Japanese edition): This is such a ludicrous title to give a mostly instrumental track, and honestly, I respect that. It doesn’t quite live up to its early potential, which hearkens to the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?”, but if you can have a legally-clear Pixies knockoff that you feel free to waste on an album relatively few people around the world heard, that’s a sign you’re doing all right.

101. Just Getting Older (“The Hindu Times” B-side): Hearkening to the previous album cycle’s “Sunday Morning Call”, Noel sings a more direct elegy to his own self-destruction and while it’s a little too monotonous to be an elite Oasis song, it’s a freakin’ gut-punch, man. And it’s not even one of the top hundred songs by the band. They’re really great.

100. Alive (“Shakermaker” B-side): This is a good song. It’s solidly written, well-performed, and the vocals are…it’s not that they’re bad. They aren’t! But it’s very clear hearing it that it was not well-refined. It’s a demo. It would rank higher if Oasis cared more about it, but they didn’t, so I don’t.

99. Stand by Me (Be Here Now): While it was only kept from being a #1 single by “Candle in the Wind 1997”, this is more a reflection on how popular Oasis was in 1997 than the song being a great song. Like much of the album from which it came, it has distinct strengths (a lovely chorus and bridge) and distinct weaknesses (the profoundly stupid opening lyric “Made a meal and threw it up on Sunday…”, that it’s nearly six minutes long for some reason), but overall, it’s a solid track, even though I ranked all three of its B-sides ahead of it on this list.

98. Whatever (stand-alone single): Neil Innes (rightfully) sued Noel Gallagher for this song and now stands as a co-writer. The song is a bit long, coming before the band routinely had overly long songs, but unlike some of the band’s more pretentious divergences into string sections, this was an indispensable part of “Whatever”. For better or worse.

97. Full On (“Sunday Morning Call” B-side): Have you ever heard the “Standing on the Shoulder of Giants” song “Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is”? Well, if you have, you’ve basically heard “Full On”, a glorified demo of that song. But I like that song enough that it’s at least in my top 96 so “Full On” is relegated to also-ran status.

96. (As Long as They’ve Got) Cigarettes in Hell (“Go Let It Out” B-side): Given the title, a shockingly tender Noel ballad. I don’t smoke, so the presence of cigarettes in my eternal damnation is not exactly an enticement, but if Noel feels that way, I can’t help but respect his opinion.

95. Going Nowhere (“Stand By Me” B-side): Noel at his Bacharach-iest, this served as a preview of the kind of thing he would release with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds—soft ballads but with a largeness in their arrangement. It’s a bit strange that this aspirational tune didn’t wind up as a “Definitely Maybe” B-side and instead was recorded when Noel was a multi-millionaire, but it’s for the best that it came around eventually.

94. My Sister Lover (“Stand By Me” B-side): One of the better choruses of the “Be Here Now”-era, with Liam at his appropriate helm as lead vocalist but with Noel admirably singing backup. But one question will always remain about “My Sister Lover”—why is it nearly six minutes long? There is a really amazing 50-minute album sitting somewhere in the “Be Here Now” sessions, I promise you.

93. All Around the World (Be Here Now): Good intro. Good verses. Great chorus. And at the 2:43 mark, Liam is singing “nah nah nah nahs” and in another 45 seconds or so, Oasis is going to wrap up a stone cold classic. *Looks at time* There’s six minutes and thirty-six seconds left on this song? Of all of the Be Here Now songs hurt by the band’s self-indulgence, without question the song which was hurt the most was “All Around the World”.

92. All Around the World (Reprise) (Be Here Now): I’m not going to pretend this is a great song, but seeing that a song is 2:07 on this album is one of the happiest moments a music fan can experience. In the context of the 9:19 original song, it almost feels like a winking nod that the reprise exists, but it’s fine as a standalone song and it maintains (mostly) the riff that makes “All Around the World” a good idea in the first place.

91. Digsy’s Dinner (Definitely Maybe): Widely dismissed as a joke (because it is), you could easily make a case that it should’ve been replaced on the band’s otherwise unimpeachable debut album by one of the many classic B-sides the album produced. But at the same time, I don’t know that I want to risk it. And besides, despite the silly lyrics about lasagna, the pseudo-chorus “these could be the best day of our lives” is a band that, when trying to sound ridiculous, still managed to sound pretty good.

90. Let There Be Love (Don’t Believe the Truth): The final song on a mostly-great album, it is weighed down by one awful verse—the one Noel sings. It’s one of two Oasis songs the Gallagher brothers truly co-sing, and there’s something poignant about those, but the Noel verse is “Jay-Z on ‘Monster’” level egregious to my ears. But even though he’s singing a fairly typical song, Liam can sing this song with absolute conviction.

89. Mucky Fingers (Don’t Believe the Truth): For reasons I can’t quite understand, Noel apparently wanted this to be the lead single off the band’s sixth album (it wasn’t released as a single at all). But it’s a somewhat unique one in the Oasis catalogue—it’s easily the band’s most specific reference to the Velvet Underground (“I’m Waiting for the Man”), it’s arguably them at their most Bob Dylan-esque (there’s a lot of harmonica here), and it’s one of only a handful of Oasis songs to have really specific, obviously audible bass parts. I can see why somebody might hate this song and I can also see why somebody might like it way more than I do. The point is that this song is capable of making people feel something.

88. Fade In-Out (Be Here Now): You know how every time Ryan Fitzpatrick has started an NFL game at quarterback in the last decade and a half, the first thing announcers mention is that he went to Harvard? Or how Antonio Gates played basketball and not football in college? The Oasis equivalent is that, by law, when “Fade In-Out” comes up, you have to mention that Johnny Depp played slide guitar on it. Also, like most “Be Here Now” songs, it has really cool elements, such as the opening riff and the “I don’t see no shine” vocal riff in the chorus, but also is about two minutes too long.

87. Hello (What’s the Story Morning Glory): On principle, it’s really cool that an album, particularly an album that so clearly had its sights set on world domination, opened with a song called “Hello”, and even included the “it’s good to be back” refrain (even if that meant giving co-writing credit to the extraordinarily canceled Gary Glitter). I don’t think the song works particularly well outside the context of the album—I don’t know that I’ve ever really desired to listen to it independently—but as a declarative statement, it’s hard to top. As an aside, this is my lowest-ranked Oasis opening track, while I’ve already listed four of the seven album closers. This was a band that tended to come out of the gate going for it.

86. Pass Me Down the Wine (“The Importance of Being Idle” B-side): In an era of filler Oasis B-sides, “Pass Me Down the Wine” is a rare one which sounds like it might have belonged on “Don’t Believe the Truth”. Musically, there’s something a bit prototypically Liam about the songwriting: it is at once relaxed musically but with an anthemic feel to the lyrics. Certainly the kind of song that paved the way for Beady Eye.

85. Songbird (Heathen Chemistry): The first Oasis single written by somebody other than Noel Gallagher, the simple, two-minute Liam Gallagher love song is straightforward and charming, and compared to the overwrought ballads of “Heathen Chemistry”, it is a welcome change of pace. It was truly remarkable that Liam, with as rambunctious as his public persona was, proved to be so capable of sentimental songwriting.

84. Some Might Say (What’s the Story Morning Glory?): The first single off the band’s most popular album, “Some Might Say” is weighed down by the fact that it’s more or less a retread of “Cigarettes and Alcohol”. If the distinctly T. Rex vibes aren’t enough of a commonality, the song’s music video is just a rearrangement of “Cigarettes and Alcohol”. Noel has admitted to preferring the demo version, and I tend to agree—it’s one of the stronger lyrical songs on a mostly bad lyrical album. Not a bad song but I feel like I have to choose a side for T. Rex pastiches, and I’m siding against “Some Might Say”.

83. Street Fighting Man (“All Around the World” B-side): Sometimes, Oasis would do a cover that didn’t really make a whole lot of sense. And sometimes, they would cover the exact perfect song. And this time, Noel even let Liam sing his own take on the Rolling Stones classic. It’s predictably overlayered as a “Be Here Now”-era song, but that doesn’t make it any less endearing.

82. I Can See a Liar (Standing On the Shoulder of Giants): A straightforward rock and roll song from an era where Oasis didn’t have as many straightforward rock and roll songs as they should have. Although there is nothing particularly transcendent about this song, the vocals are solid and the guitar playing serves Liam’s energy. Had this song closed out “Standing On the Shoulder of Giants” rather than “Roll It Over”, I suspect it would’ve left a much better taste the mouths of most fans.

81. Little James (Standing On the Shoulder of Giants): Liam Gallagher was 27 when “Little James”, the first song he wrote for Oasis, was released, which is the same age Noel was when his first Oasis songs were released. While young Liam was dismissed as boorish and unintellectual compared to his older brother, he kept the songwriting pace. And while “Little James” may not hold a candle to some of Noel’s better age-27 compositions, it is a lovely little Beatlesque tribute to his stepson that is occasionally dismissed out of convenience for preconceived notions about the band’s songwriting, but is a solid Oasis track.

80. Flashbax (“All Around the World” B-side): It’s an anthem, but it’s not a “Be Here Now” anthem. The nostalgia trip is earnest throughout and its construction isn’t quite sparse, but also is far from overwrought. It also has, dare I say, the greatest whistle solo in Oasis history.

79. Waiting for the Rapture (Dig Out Your Soul): Noel’s true last run at utter plagiarism, this third track from the band’s final album has a transparent recreation of the opening riff from “Five to One” by The Doors. But it is a cool riff, and it sets the stage for a fierce, confident, swaggering burst of hard rock that was often missing from Noel-sung songs. “Dig Out Your Soul” has some of the most consistently aggressive guitar playing the band had in years and this song was a terrific demonstration of that.

78. Strange Thing (Definitely Maybe re-issue): The biggest weakness with “Strange Thing” is that it was a demo that toiled in obscurity for twenty years and thus didn’t get the production that the band’s other early songs got. But it includes some of Noel Gallagher’s most interesting guitar work—it bares a strong resemblance to that of noted Oasis influence John Squire on the Stone Roses album “Second Coming”, except that that album came out a year after “Strange Thing” was recorded. But I guess after years of ripping off others, Noel had to let that one slide.

77. I Believe in All (Dig Out Your Soul Japanese edition): There’s something heartwarming to my sensibilities about a Liam Gallagher-penned song that you can snap along to that cannot be easily ignored. It’s hard to describe it—they’re songs that aren’t especially modern but also they sound like 2008. Or maybe I just listened to a lot of Oasis in 2008, I don’t know.

76. To Be Where There’s Life (Dig Out Your Soul): Considering the force with which Noel Gallagher led Oasis throughout most of their existence, it’s a bit strange that on the final Oasis album, the final four songs are written by people other than Noel. The first of these four is the Gem Archer-penned “To Be Where There’s Life”, a slightly funky number with the most prominent bass intro in Oasis history. It always seemed like a weird waste to me that Andy Bell, a talented and established guitarist, joined a band that threw its bassist far into the background and forced him into a new instrument, so I enjoy that he got a chance to shine.

75. Born on a Different Cloud (Heathen Chemistry): While “Little James” and “Songbird” were nice little Liam Gallagher-written songs, and if you prefer them I won’t argue against you, “Born on a Different Cloud” was the first one that suggested Liam wasn’t just going to pen cute little love songs. “Born on a Different Cloud” is a swirling, psychedelic semi-epic with various different movements. While the “lonely soul, busy working overtime…” part gets a little uninspired, most of the song is rather interesting.

74. Hey Now! (What’s the Story Morning Glory?): It’s nearly six minutes long and it doesn’t need to be. The intro and verses don’t move me in any particular way—they aren’t bad but they’re firmly in album track territory. But when the guitar sound completely changes on its head and Liam Gallagher says, “I thought that I heard someone say now, there’s no time for running away now, hey now, hey now”, I am, for a few seconds, convinced I’m listening to the best Oasis song ever. I can’t stress enough how “a few seconds” this is, which is why it’s still in the bottom half of Oasis songs for me, but those few seconds are amazing.

73. Step Out (“Don’t Look Back in Anger” B-side): There is a lot about this song I like, but instead, I’m going to choose to focus on the two negatives about it, because they’re very big negatives. First, if Noel Gallagher was going to wholesale steal songs during his prime, couldn’t he maybe go with a long-forgotten hit or an album track, rather than a song everybody in the world knows? Well, he didn’t, and thus Stevie Wonder is a credited songwriter because of how much the chorus of “Step Out” resembles “Uptight “Everything’s Alright)”. Also, Noel, you’re a fine singer. You’re a better singer than I am. But you ain’t Liam, and Liam would’ve knocked this one out of the park.

72. I Will Believe (“Supersonic” B-side): Truthfully, I’m not a huge fan of live recordings—live music has an energy that can only be felt in person that helps to compensate for the lack of objective quality in the music. But this is what we have for this song, and it turns out pretty solid. The production doesn’t service Liam’s vocals as well as it could, but the vocals are hardly bad. This recording predates the other songs on this list, and it is a lovely hint of things to come.

71. Falling Down (Dig Out Your Soul): Noel Gallagher likes to “borrow” from the Beatles, and no song is more frequently borrowed than “Tomorrow Never Knows”. “Falling Down” is an obvious case of this, with the drums not being quite as frantic as Ringo’s legendary performance but encapsulating that sound. This song is a strong sign of what was to come with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, with Noel’s vocals bordering on soothing in the verses and with the songwriting being undeniably tight. Noel once observed that this being the final Oasis single was a good way to go out, and I can’t argue there.

70. Ain’t Got Nothin’ (Dig Out Your Soul): There are two types of Liam songs—the sensitive ones and the aggressive ones that lend to his reputation as a rock brawler. This is the latter. It’s just two minutes and fourteen seconds and thus there isn’t a wasted moment. The vocals, considering Liam wrote it, aren’t especially notable, but the drums/vocals alignment is tremendous.

69. Won’t Let You Down (“Lyla” B-side): “Don’t Believe the Truth” might have the most distinct sound of any Oasis album—it was the most overtly pop-oriented album the band ever recorded. And while “Won’t Let You Down” ultimately missed the cut for the album, it fits the mold. It is lyrically very simple and doesn’t have much substantial there, but the star of the song is, of course, singer/songwriter Liam, who gives one of his strongest vocal performances of the 2004-2005 sessions here.

68. Rockin’ Chair (“Roll With It” B-side): Although the standard choice for best cover version of an Oasis song is Ryan Adams’s rendition of “Wonderwall” (Noel Gallagher has said he prefers it to the original, an opinion I consider blasphemous), my choice is actually a version of “Rockin’ Chair”, an oft-overlooked B-side (though it did make it onto “The Masterplan”). It is easy to see why somebody would want to cover the song, a straightforward enough pop song characterized by some of Noel’s prettiest guitar playing. That a B-side could be covered just a few years later by Rod Stewart speaks to how enormous Oasis were at the peak of their powers.

67. It’s Better People (“Roll With It” B-side): A classic Liam written/sung song from the mid-2000s, except that it was written and sung by Noel in 1995. Just straightforward acoustic rock that sounds immediately classic. I’ve spent years trying to figure out what 1970s Harry Nilsson song this is ripping off but I’m still looking. And inexplicably, this was a B-side! And not even a “Masterplan” one!

66. Better Man (Heathen Chemistry): Two times in the run of three albums, Oasis titled the penultimate track on their album something ending in “Better Man” and then follow up that perfectly good song with a relatively brief, largely forgettable instrumental. But this is the one that borrows heavily from “Love Spreads” by the Stone Roses. This influence gives a sense of majesty to the track that, at the time, Oasis was reserving primarily for its ballads, not harder rocking songs such as this one.

65. Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is (Standing on the Shoulder of Giants): The litmus test song for “Standing on the Shoulder of Giants”—if you hate this song and its layers of pianos and guitars collapsing on top of each other, you probably hate the album. As such, the song largely mirrors my opinion of the album as a whole: the songwriting leaves a fair amount to be desired, but there is something about the vocals and the riffs that seem unlike what we’d heard from Oasis before or after. Some days, you just want to listen to “Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is”.

64. Don’t Look Back in Anger (What’s the Story Morning Glory?): Before you send me angry letters, I should remind you that I do have it in my top half of songs by my favorite band, which is really high praise! And there was once a time I wouldn’t have put it this high—while I’ve learned to accept Oasis’s more plagiaristic tendencies, the obviousness of the “Imagine” rip-off here makes it feel like I’m being challenged to call them out. Also, how do you evaluate a song whose best versions are the ones where entire audiences sing it instead of Noel Gallagher? But there’s also something inherently fun about singing along to the chorus, even if the lyrics are utter nonsense.

63. The Girl in the Dirty Shirt (Be Here Now): When you listen to as much Oasis as I do, you pick up on tendencies that most don’t (to quote a different Oasis song, you’ll see things they never see). And here is one: Oasis has quite a few songs with background ragtime-style piano. “The Girl in the Dirty Shirt” is mostly a guitar track, but I have a soft spot for the piano you can hear in the background throughout most of the song, and more prominently near the end (during the “now I can see” part). If you’re keeping track of how much longer the Be Here Now songs are than they should be, the answer for this song is precisely one minute.

62. Keep the Dream Alive (Don’t Believe the Truth): It goes a bit too long (a rarity for “Don’t Believe the Truth”) but Andy Bell’s optimistic (there is no other kind of Andy Bell) song fits perfectly in the album’s rollicking vibe. Liam Gallagher supplies terrific vocals, though given how well-constructed this song is, I think just about anybody could’ve pulled it off.

61. Cast No Shadow (What’s the Story Morning Glory): Something of a mix between two of the album’s better-known songs, “Wonderwall” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, “Cast No Shadow” combines the former’s acoustic pop sensibilities and deceptively great drumming with the latter’s sweeping chorus. While I’ve often criticized Noel Gallagher as a lead vocalist, at least relative to his brother, he is a rather exceptional backing vocalist, and his harmonies with Liam on “Cast No Shadow” are among the duo’s best.

60. Roll with It (What’s the Story Morning Glory): It has an outsized role in Oasis mythology because it was the song which competed with Blur’s “Country House” in a much-publicized chart battle in the U.K. (Noel has admitted the irony that both are lesser singles from the band and that “if this was ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ and ‘Girls & Boys’, fair enough”). While it may not quite enter stone cold classic Oasis territory, it was the most overtly poppy Oasis single to that point and as a pure earworm, the four minutes of repetitive guitar pop isn’t something I’m ever demanding anyone turn off.

59. Turn Up the Sun (Don’t Believe the Truth): The opening track on “Don’t Believe the Truth”, “Turn Up the Sun” screams stadium rock anthem like no Oasis song since “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?”. There is something truly magnetic when the guitars truly kick in at the 36-second mark. My only real grievance with the song is that it should have had another verse—since I want to cut some time from Andy Bell’s other song from the album, “Keep the Dream Alive”, I would like to donate that time to “Turn Up the Sun.”

58. My Big Mouth (Be Here Now): “Be Here Now” was at times excruciatingly self-unaware but at other times, Oasis seemed fully aware of everything. “My Big Mouth”, although arguably too dense in its guitar mixing, is a sheer rock and roll attack, easily heavier than anything from the band’s previous album and more hearkening to the sound of “Definitely Maybe”. Also, Noel Gallagher needed to write a song called “My Big Mouth” at the height of Oasis’s peak, during a time when, to quote the song itself, “you could fly a plane” through his big mouth. And, in a stunning upset, “My Big Mouth” is exactly the proper length.

57. Bonehead’s Bank Holiday (What’s the Story Morning Glory vinyl edition): If you were buying a vinyl edition of an album in 1995, you were a huge fan, and thus you were precisely the kind of person who would cherish “Bonehead’s Bank Holiday”. It is, admittedly, a fan’s only track—the most endearing element of the song is that a considerable portion of the track is the guys, notably the titular Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, shouting in the background. But once you get past the silliness of a song that the band never attempted to get off the ground, you have a well-executed pop track, with Noel Gallagher’s “You know I need a little break to get away” melody showing a germ of an actual song idea. It speaks to how on fire Oasis was at this time that they had that kind of start on a song that was easily album-quality, possibly single-quality, and they just kind of let it be the song where they spend the last month screaming randomly at each other. Bless them.

56. Half the World Away (“Whatever” B-side): A life-of-its-own B-side thanks to its inclusion as the theme song for the popular British sitcom “The Royle Family, “Half the World Away” was a near-true solo effort by Noel, with the only two other musicians on the track being rhythm guitarist Paul Arthurs (keyboards) and producer Owen Morris (bass). Drawing influence from 1960s orchestral pop, Noel went so far as to perform the song at a Burt Bacharach tribute concert with Bacharach himself performing on the live rendition.

55. Who Feels Love? (Standing on the Shoulder of Giants): Oasis went relatively conventional with the selection of their first single of the 21^st century, “Go Let It Out”, but with the second one, the band opted for the raga rock of “Who Feels Love?” If “Falling Down” was Noel’s attempt at channeling “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “Who Feels Love?” was his attempt to channel the George Harrison-penned “Within You Without You”. But this time, he at least had the courtesy to invite Liam to the party.

54. Soldier On (Dig Out Your Soul): For the final song on the final Oasis album, rather than going the obvious route of a triumphant Noel anthem, the band went with the relatively plodding Liam-penned “Soldier On”. While the best and worst songs lyrically tend to be Noel’s, Liam’s tunes tend to have a lower standard deviation from the mean, but when you have his lead vocals on top of his backing vocals, even a relatively ordinary lyric like “Who’s to say that you were right and I was wrong?” can feel profound.

53. It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!) (Be Here Now): There was a lot of potential for awfulness here. After three years of nonstop name-checking Beatles songs in their lyrics, they straight up used one as a song title. There are not one but two exclamation points. It’s the final proper song on an album where almost every song is too long. And yet it works. It’s a true rocker in a world of ballads and it has arguably the strongest chorus on the album.

52. The Nature of Reality (Dig Out Your Soul): Andy Bell’s songs were generally pleasant and upbeat and, despite Noel Gallagher remaining very much in the band, the most Noel-esque songs latter-day Oasis were producing. And “The Nature of Reality” was very much not this. Musically, it is one of the more brash songs on the band’s most brash album in nearly a decade and a half, with the guitar riff owing more to Pantera than to their typical Britpop influences. I’m not even sure that this was a good song, or even an adequate song, but I listen to it a lot more than even its relatively lofty placement on this list might suggest.

51. Married With Children (Definitely Maybe): The obvious move would have been concluding “Definitely Maybe” with “Slide Away”, a more epic manifestation of the optimistic modern rock that the album was attempting. But in a brilliant subversion of expectations, Oasis instead opted for “Married With Children”, a semi-acoustic breakup song that Noel Gallagher has ably handled in live performances but which correctly was performed on the album by Liam. That a band, on its debut album, would have the confidence to pull such a sharp 180 was emblematic of the brashness of the band. It was the album’s least punk-rock song musically but the album’s most punk-rock moment spiritually.

50. Slide Away (Definitely Maybe): Oasis had their share of confident boasts and they had their share of love songs, and on “Slide Away”, they combine the two . When, in the chorus, Liam asserts that “Now that you’re mine, we’ll find a way”, he is confident because he has to be. While Oasis had much prettier love songs, they never had one that could simultaneously be a righteous dose of hard rock quite like “Slide Away” could.

49. The Importance of Being Idle (Don’t Believe the Truth): One of the stranger choices for being an Oasis single, Noel’s Kinks-inspired pop song is neither the band’s blistering hard rock nor gallant balladry, and its lyrics, an ode to laziness, are some of the band’s more humorous. If I were Oasis’s A&R man, I’d have surely suggested it was a great album cut and nothing more, but it hit #1 in the U.K., so it’s for the best that nobody heed my advice on such matters.

48. She’s Electric (What’s the Story Morning Glory?): Easily the best of the band’s novelty song-per-album run in the 1990s (following “Digsy’s Dinner” and preceding “Magic Pie”), I’ve heard this song described as sounding like it should be on the soundtrack of “Toy Story” and that it should be on the soundtrack of a Hugh Grant romcom. I agree with both assessments. How could anyone not be deliriously happy listening to this goofy little number?

47. Up in the Sky (Definitely Maybe): Of the first eight songs on “Definitely Maybe”, this is the one I like the least. It is…a really good album. Vaguely anti-authoritarian and vaguely similar melodically to “Rain” by the Beatles, the chorus is a little bit of a letdown compared to the almost punk-y verses, but that speaks more to the power of the latter than any shortcomings of the former.

46. Be Here Now (Be Here Now): After years of throwaway Beatles references (including a super obvious one in this song), “Be Here Now” seemingly takes on a new level of self-awareness by making reference to…Oasis. There’s a reference to, of all Oasis tunes, “Digsy’s Dinner”, and the “Come on, come on, come on, yeah, yeah yeah”-ing of the outro was used similarly on the song “Columbia”. “Be Here Now” doesn’t waste a second of its 5:12 run time, and although it is fundamentally a song about nothing in particular, Oasis were never about deeper meaning—they were about simply enjoying the time you’re listening to the song more than if you weren’t listening to the song.

45. She Is Love (Heathen Chemistry): As I’ve said in reference to previous entries, Liam Gallagher succeeds on tender songs by being direct and to the point. On “She Is Love”, Noel follows the Liam formula, and it works. Noel’s mostly acoustic guitar playing is the perfect complement to his direct vocals, while the post-chorus electric guitar bit adds necessary life to the mix. While “She Is Love” was a single, Oasis seemed to neglect it—they never released a music video for it and it was merely a split A-side with “Little By Little”, which is literally the worst Oasis song. I suspect that, given how much the songs were played live, Noel preferred “Little By Little”, a suspicion I will subsequently deny.

44. Don’t Go Away (Be Here Now): “Don’t Go Away” is the ballad on “Be Here Now” that really, truly works. At a relatively brisk 4:49, the song gets to the point fairly quickly, it’s perhaps Oasis’s most effective use of strings, the Noel-penned lyrics avoid the clumsiness that often consumes them on these types of songs, and Liam’s vocals are absolutely fantastic. It is heartbreaking while ambiguous enough that it can work in multiple contexts.

43. Love Like a Bomb (Don’t Believe the Truth): The quintessential “Don’t Believe the Truth” song, it is the only Oasis song co-written by multiple Oasis members (Liam Gallagher and Gem Archer). It has the requisite Liam tenderness and while the song never builds to that extreme of lengths, it’s hard not to get a little excited when the electric guitar truly kicks in in the final verse (played by Gem—Noel is allegedly absent from this particular track).

42. Lyla (Don’t Believe the Truth): The lead single from “Don’t Believe the Truth”, and inexplicably the first Oasis song I ever remember hearing and knowing was Oasis (it not only appeared on the soundtrack to FIFA 06, it debuted on it), Noel Gallagher (who wrote it, while Liam sang it) apparently didn’t care much for the song. He did, however, concede he may have undersold it upon performing it live, in which the positive qualities of the song really start to emanate—Zak Starkey’s drumming keeps the song in such order that once the chorus, simple as it is, kicks in, it’s hard not to want to scream along.

41. Lord Don’t Slow Me Down (stand-alone single): A joyful, swaggering number released between “Don’t Believe the Truth” and “Dig Out Your Soul” and combining the best qualities of each album, and it even has multiple Zak Starkey drum mini-solos! The description of this song makes it feel like it has to be a top ten Oasis song, hands down, except for one major issue: Noel. Noel’s vocals aren’t bad, but there is no question that Liam’s version, which has emerged on the internet, is superior. Of all of the songs that Noel kept for himself, there may not be a more egregious example of the inferior vocal choice getting it.

40. Shakermaker (Definitely Maybe): Given the alternatives, it is a bit puzzling in retrospect that “Shakermaker”, the “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” meets psychedelic hard rock track, became the second Oasis single. But while it was arguably not the optimal choice, most bands would kill to have a song as good as “Shakermaker”. More than Noel’s terrific guitar intro and more than the way Liam says “Shake along with me”, however, the real star of this song is the production. This is Oasis Loudness Wars production at its peak, and it made what could have been a forgettable, goofy track into powerful hard rock.

39. D’Yer Wanna Be a Spaceman? (“Shakermaker” B-side): A lighthearted ode to childhood innocence, Noel’s “D’Yer Wanna Be a Spaceman?” didn’t have the intensity to fit on “Definitely Maybe”, but its pop sensibilities were a precursor for the songs (and particularly the B-sides) of “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” And as goofy as a lyric like “If you wanna be a spaceman, it’s still not too late” may seem in comparison to some of the band’s heavier, working-class anger of the time, it is every bit as engrossing.

38. The Meaning of Soul (Don’t Believe the Truth): Although he never became an official member of Oasis, drummer Zak Starkey helped to elevate “Don’t Believe the Truth” to its status as the band’s big comeback album (both Oasis and the other band with which he was associated at the time, The Who, offered him a full-time role; he declined each). Although famously the son of Ringo Starr, Starkey’s drumming more resembled that of his mentor Keith Moon, and his persistence gives this simple, Liam-penned, one hundred and three second album cut, giving it a thunder that made it arguably the best live song of the album.

37. Fuckin’ in the Bushes (Standing on the Shoulder of Giants): It rose to international fame for its role on the soundtrack to the 2000 film “Snatch” and served as entrance music for Oasis at the time (though the band never actually performed the song live), and the mostly-instrumental “Fuckin’ in the Bushes” was a dramatic 180 degree turn for Oasis. As the first song on the album which followed the anthem-heavy “Be Here Now”, the song was noticeably funkier than their reputation, while the guitar riffs were the most Led Zeppelin-y in the band’s entire catalogue.

36. Round Are Way (“Wonderwall” B-side): Somehow omitted from “The Masterplan”, the ultra-happy “Round Are Way” doesn’t sound like Oasis, with its trumpets maintained throughout the delightfully sing-along verses and chorus and throughout the instrumental passages which comprise a near-majority of the song. But it sounds like fun and its light, slice of life lyrics reinforce this.

35. I’m Outta Time (Dig Out Your Soul): Considering how often Liam Gallagher is perceived as lesser of a songwriter, and even as an intellectual, to Noel, you would think that Liam would be accused of plagiarism at least as often as his brother, but he never really was. And “I’m Outta Time” manages to sound like a John Lennon song (besides the actual John Lennon vocal sample, an aspect I never particularly liked but didn’t consider a deal-breaker) without sounding like a specific John Lennon song. Somber without being melodramatic, the song is also a highlight of Liam’s ability to hit high notes.

34. Hung in a Bad Place (Heathen Chemistry): It eventually ventured off into some frankly mediocre territory, but the first three songs off “Heathen Chemistry” are unimpeachable, and the final of these tracks, “Hung in a Bad Place”, is straight rock and roll from a band that had so often eschewed straight rock and roll at the time. The first Oasis song written by Gem Archer, “Hung in a Bad Place” is simply a well-oiled machine doing its thing—the guitar solo is loose and fun, the drums are pounding, the greatest rock frontman of his generation is doing his thing, and there’s even noticeable basslines (this sounds like nothing, but bass often got lost in the shuffle for Oasis).

33. Talk Tonight (“Some Might Say” B-side): As notorious as Oasis were for rock and roll debauchery, they were ultimately an introspective lot, and Noel Gallagher’s near-truly solo song, a heartbreaking ode to a fan/friend, is a love song in a true, aromantic sense (a scanning of the lyrics might imply that Noel was suicidal; the true story is that he was just considering quitting Oasis, and the friend who “saved (his) life” talked him out of it). It also has the honor of being perhaps the most American song by the very famously British band—the band fight happened in Los Angeles, the fan/friend encounter happened in San Francisco, and it was recorded in Austin.

32. Sunday Morning Call (Standing on the Shoulder of Giants): It’s probably Noel’s least favorite Oasis single—it was buried as a bonus track on the band’s “Time Flies” compilation of all of the band’s singles (ironically, Liam has spoken highly of the track, on which he does not perform). But the song, despite the decided weakness of a fairly inconsequential, uninteresting chorus, “Sunday Morning Call” has, I would argue, two Oasis “bests”. It is the best Oasis “story” music video, an extensive homage to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. More significantly, for the purposes of this list, “Sunday Morning Call” has the best guitar solo of Noel Gallagher’s career, one which justifies the methodical buildup of the song at large.

31. Champagne Supernova (What’s the Story Morning Glory?): Now for the song with the best overall guitar solo (though this one was played by Paul Weller). “Champagne Supernova” soars throughout, clocking in at least seven-and-a-half completely unwasted minutes. It may not be the best song on the band’s most popular album (though it might be!), but it is certainly the most “Morning Glory” song—it is big and bold and was seemingly written for the band’s 1996 Knebworth shows in front of half a million people. The lyrics are, of course, complete nonsense, but you won’t notice it the first time you listen, and once you’ve let “slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball” enter your life more as a catchphrase than any kind of profound statement, you won’t mind it.

30. Cloudburst (“Live Forever” B-side): “Cloudburst” wasn’t the first great Oasis B-side, but it was the first one that hinted at a band that could write, perform, and professionally refine great songs and have such an abundance that they could throw one onto the back end of a physical single in 1994, by the time physical singles were nearing obsolescence. A hard rock song with shades of the dance-oriented Madchester sound, this is a song that would’ve felt right at home on “Definitely Maybe”.

29. Morning Glory (What’s the Story Morning Glory?): Simultaneously a throwback to the raw rock edge of “Definitely Maybe” and a precursor to the guitar-dense stew of “Be Here Now”, the pseudo-title track includes the album’s best lyric (“all your dreams are made when you’re chained to the mirror and a razorblade”) and is a burst of energy that the album desperately needs. Without “Morning Glory”, the album just wouldn’t feel the same.

28. (I Got) The Fever (“Stand By Me” B-side): Oasis had some good “Be Here Now” B-sides, but by comparison to the first two albums, it was an inconsistent crop (mirroring consensus about the finished albums themselves). The one major exception was “(I Got) The Fever”, swirling with tons of guitar tracks and Alan White’s pounding drums. While “My Big Mouth” was an above-average “Be Here Now” track, the album would’ve been better off with “(I Got) The Fever”, which is basically the same song but with more vocally interesting verses.

27. My Generation (“Little By Little”/”She Is Love” B-side): It seems silly to rank such a faithful cover so highly on this list, but at the same time, does any artist/song make more sense than Oasis taking on The Who’s classic ode to youth and hoping you die before you get old? For all of the attention paid to Oasis’s songwriting, this rendition reiterates the simple truth that Oasis’s greatest asset as a band was being a truly captivating, charismatic group of performers? Oh, and they let Andy Bell do the bass solo!

26. The Turning (Dig Out Your Soul): Of all things, the second track from the band’s final album borrows from Cliff Richard, with an intro borrowing liberally from the drum beat in Richard’s “Devil Woman”. But the chorus, in which the guitar kicks into overdrive and Liam commandeers the track with lyrics about nothing short of a dang apocalypse. While the last minute-and-a-half or so doesn’t have quite the heaviness of the song’s beginning, this is merely time to catch your breath.

We've all said things we regret

When I was in grade school and into middle school, I would call things I didn't like gay. When I was in high school and into college, I would call things retarded. These were mistakes. I shouldn't have said these things.

My intention was never to cause any harm to the LGBT community, a group that even in my ignorance I never would have claimed to dislike, nor to the intellectually disabled, a group whose ability to overcome the structural barriers they face in society I have always admired. I would say these words because I heard other people say them and I wanted to mimick what I heard from others. But that isn't an excuse. I'm sorry. I wish I hadn't said those things. They did not, and do not, reflect how I feel. This does not excuse what I did, but I do hope that it helps to assure I don't do it again.

In 2007, former NBA point guard Tim Hardaway caused a firestorm when, in comments made about the recent coming out of former NBA center John Amaechi, he said, "I hate gay people...I am homophobic. I don't like it. I shouldn't be in the world or in the United States." Hardaway is a five-time NBA All-Star and a borderline Hall of Famer, but for many fans, this is his legacy.

In the immediate aftermath, Hardaway apologized, and it wasn't enough. He quickly became a league-wide pariah. Sometimes, an apology is enough to receive forgiveness, but this wasn't the case for Hardaway. But he didn't complain that he wasn't granted a free pass. He went to work. In 2009, Hardaway co-sponsored a fundraiser for the Trevor Project, a group which works to prevent suicide among LGBT youth. In 2011, he became involved in El Paso (where he played college basketball) politics, advocating for three city officials who were recalled after they pushed to restore domestic partnership benefits. When Jason Collins became the first openly gay active player in the history of the NBA, one of the first people to call him with his support was Tim Hardaway.

Is this enough? Has Tim Hardaway done enough to rehabilitate his image? Honestly, I don't know the answer. Several notable voices in the LGBT community, such as Outsports.com's Cyd Zeigler, say yes.

But whether Hardaway has done enough or not, I think there is value in establishing the idea that forgiveness is possible. I don't say this as a straight man who wants to easy fix for past and future intolerance. I say this as somebody who believes that redemption is possible. I don't want a world in which it would not be possible for Tim Hardaway to atone for his sins. It can (it should) be difficult. It can be borderline impossible. But the window of opportunity has led to somebody who could have easily withered into a closed life becoming somebody who strives to be better.

On Tuesday night, Paul Gackle, a Bay Area-based sports reporter, unearthed three problematic tweets written by St. Louis Blues rookie goaltender Jordan Binnington, on the eve of his Stanley Cup Playoffs debut against the Winnipeg Jets. The tweets went semi-viral, to the extent that any NHL story can go viral in early April. The Winnipeg Free Press covered the story here.

I do not believe that Paul Gackle was acting in good faith. I don't believe for a second that this was a sincere attempt to expose racism in the NHL. I believe this was an attempt by a fan (Gackle may be a journalist, but he is also a Winnipeg native) to cut his opponent down. I believe that he wanted to use the tweets as a prop to win favor with local fans, hence why he punctuated one of his quote-tweets with "He'd get torched for this if he played in the Bay Area" (completely unrelated: here is a story about how a current center for the Golden State Warriors believes Democrats ran a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington D.C. pizza parlor).

But Paul Gackle didn't invent these tweets. Jordan Binnington did ask about how people in burkas got through airport security. Regardless of the motives behind why these tweets were exposed, this truth remains.

I don't believe that Jordan Binnington's tweets warrant a suspension or even a fine. On the Josh Hader Scale of Bad Athlete Tweets, I do believe these tweets register relatively low. I believe these are tweets that could be easily forgotten by most people with some minimal amount of contrition. "I'm sorry I said what I said. I was trying to make jokes but in hindsight, I understand why they are unfunny and offensive, and they do not reflect who I am today."

But Binnington didn't apologize. When confronted about the tweets, he said he didn't want to talk about it and that it happened a long time ago and that he wanted to focus on hockey. And countless fans, many of whom had excoriated Josh Hader less than a year ago when his old tweets came to light, were quick to rush to his defense. The arguments were the same ones Milwaukee Brewers fans had used. They just came out of St. Louis.

Most of us don't have to answer for the stupid things we said when we were younger (although I think some have been a bit too quick to rush to referring to Binnington, who could legally drink in the United States when he made one of these three tweets, "a kid"). Binnington was arguably placed in an unfair situation. But rather than believing he shouldn't have to show contrition because of the uniqueness of his fame, I tend to err on the side that what he faced--being forced to atone for his mistakes--should be faced by all of us.

We've all said things we regret. The very least we can do is make it clear that we regret them.