Wonderwall

About

“Wonderwall” is a 1995 Britpop song by the English alternative rock band Oasis. Due to the lasting popularity and easy chord progression of the song, it has been cited as one of the most frequently covered songs in the recent history of contemporary music, while equally mocked for its cliched nature and textbook status among novice guitarists.

Origin

Written and co-produced by Oasis’ frontman Noel Gallagher, “Wonderwall” was released on October 2nd, 1995,^[1] as the third single from the band’s sophomore album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory. While the song was initially met by Billboard success and critical acclaim, as years passed, the song eventually started to gain notoriety for its prevalence among young, beginner-level guitarists, who would frequently cover the song at parties and social gatherings to impress others.

Although it is unclear exactly when “Wonderwall” first became known as a cliché, such notoriety of the song was noted by the band’s lead singer-songwriter Noel Gallagher in an interview for the June 2002 issue of the Guitarist magazine, in which he recalled running across a sign in front of a guitar shop in Manchester that forbade people from playing the song.

Guitarist Magazine: You say you don’t know chords. But people call the E minor seventh with the two fingers at the third fret, the Oasis chord…

Noel: After Morning Glory came out, I was in Manchester and went into this guitar shop and there was a sign banning people from playing Wonderwall. When I walked in they all groaned, Fucking hell, man, do you realise how many times we’ve heard Champagne Supernova and Wonderwall over the last six months?

Spread

Scumbag Amateur Guitar Player

On March 14th, 2012, a photo of a smiling man with a guitar was captioned "I don’t know that one….here let me play “Wonderwall” again," on Weknowmemes.^[10] The photo was titled “Scumbag Amateur Guitar Player” in reference to the Scumbag Steve meme. The image appeared on the same day on 9gag^[12] and on September 17th, on FunnyJunk^[11].

London Olympics Closing Ceremony

Liam Gallagher, the lead singer of Oasis performed “Wonderwall” with his new band Beady Eye at the closing ceremony for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London on August 12th, 2012. The video was uploaded to the Olympic’s official YouTube channel^[5] the same day. As of March 2014, the video has over 1.4 million views.

One Direction Cover

On August 14th, 2012, YouTuber Lori B^[6] uploaded a video of the British boy band One Direction performing a cover of “WonderWall.” The cover has reported on by many sites such as Buzzfeed^[7], The Huffington Post,^[8] and Celebuzz.^[9] Within two years the video has gained over 8 million views.

Anyway, Here’s Wonderwall

On December 10th, 2013, YouTuber Julia Banks uploaded a video to her channel^[2] titled “Anyways Here’s Wonderwall,” which featured her introducing her ukulele cover of the song with that phrase, before launching into a parody that altered the song’s first line to “Today is gonna be the day that you’re gonna shut the fuck up about Christmas.” As of March 2014, the video has over 5,000 views.

The phrase became a popular way to caption photos of people with guitars and other string instruments on Tumblr^[4], even spreading to other sites like entertainment site IGN^[3], where a photo of a character from The Walking Dead holding a guitar was captioned with the phrase.