A few months after the highest-selling number one single of all time, a slightly different chart record falls. Oasis were planning to release the penultimate track from ‘Be Here Now’ as that album’s final single, a track that ran to well over nine minutes (long even by that bloated album’s standards). Surely, people assumed, there would be a single edit? But of course not. For this was Oasis, the biggest, boldest band in the land, and nobody could tell them what to do.

All Around the World, by Oasis (their 4^th of eight #1s)

1 week, from 18^th – 25^th January 1998

In fact, the single version of ‘All Around the World’ drags things out even further than the album version, meaning that it runs to a staggering nine minutes thirty-eight seconds. You wonder why they didn’t just keep it going to the ten-minute mark… Still, it stands as the longest number one single ever, almost two minutes ahead of Meat Loaf in second place. But what gets overlooked in all the chat about how long it is, and how OTT ‘Be Here Now’ is, is the fact that this is a pretty good song.

It’s one of the album’s clearer, more instant moments. It’s a simple enough concept, with slightly jazzy, slightly Beatlesy (duh!) chord progressions. The simple concept is built upon, with layers of overdub and na-na-na-ing, until it grows into a thumping gospel track, with Liam chanting his mantra: I know what I know, It’s gonna be okay… We all know now that by 1998 Oasis were a coked-up mess; but this is Oasis at their coked-up best. I’ve always thought it very underrated.

Perhaps ‘All Around the World’ stands out as different to the rest of ‘Be Here Now’ because it was actually one of Noel’s earliest song writing efforts, with live performances dating back to 1992. I don’t imagine those early versions of the song sounded as gigantic as this, but it does have that early-Oasis theme of everyone getting along, making better days. Plus it has Liam chewing the life out of the word sheeeiiiiinnnneeee, which is a real Oasis 101.

Added to this early-nineties seed of a song were seven whole minutes of coda. Lots of key changes, lots of subtle rearranging of the na-na-nas. I particularly like the seismic shift around 5:30, before Liam comes back bellowing through a loudspeaker. Of course it’s too long – it’s a preposterous length for a pop song – and of course it’s self-indulgent. Plus, of course the Beatles’ references are way too obvious (‘Hey Jude’, for one, and ‘Yellow Submarine’ in the mesmerising animated video).

But as with ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’, and as with ‘Be Here Now’ on the whole, you do just have to sit back and admire the sheer bravado of releasing this beautiful, overblown nonsense, and then lament the passing of rock music that is this big. It’s a shame that a track of ‘All Around the World’s size is relatively forgotten among the Oasis back-catalogue, and that it sneaked a January number one when competition was scarce. By now, a backlash had begun against Oasis, as always happens when acts become that popular. It will be over two years before their next chart hit, as the band take a much needed breather after the wild ride of the Britpop years.