My intro to this next number one amounts to four simple words: Thank God for Oasis.

The Hindu Times, by Oasis (their 6^th of eight #1s)

1 week, from 21^st – 28^th April 2002

Not just for cleansing the palate after the Pop Idol syrup-fests that had hogged the charts for several weeks previous, but for returning guitars to the top spot after what has probably been their longest hiatus. Not counting George Harrison’s posthumous comeback, I think this is the first rock #1 since, gulp, Limp Bizkit in January 2001.

Yes, this isn’t one of their classics. But I also think ‘The Hindu Times’, and anything Oasis released post-1998, gets unfairly maligned. They were great at side one, track one songs like this (and ‘Hello’, and ‘Turn up the Sun’, and ‘Fuckin’ the Bushes’), songs the sole purpose of which is to reassure the listener that, yes, they are listening to Oasis.

And I love it when Oasis are being Oasis. If you aren’t a fan then you might struggle with a song so droning, so snarly, so unrepentantly simple, but that’s your loss. If you can’t appreciate the way Liam drags out the you’re my sunshine you’re my rain… line in the chorus, presumably a knowing nod to ‘Live Forever’, then Oasis simply aren’t for you.

Experimentation feels like a dirty word in an Oasis context, one that soft southerners might use. But there is a bit of that going on. The ‘sitar’ riff, the droning, the gigantic wall of sound feel. It’s as big and beefy as they’d sounded since ‘Definitely Maybe’, and it’s not completely crazy to suggest that a higher tempo ‘Hindu Times’ wouldn’t sound out of place on their debut album. Despite the sitar sound, and the title, Noel had not been spending time with the Maharishi like his ‘60s idols; he saw the title as a slogan on a t-shirt.

With this single, and the subsequent ‘Heathen Chemistry’ album, Oasis debuted two new members in Gem Archer and Andy Bell (not the Erasure Andy Bell, though that would have been a direction I’d love to have heard Oasis go in…) Archer and Bell remained in the band until their split in 2009, and have returned for the reunion tour. The album is okay – sixteen-year-old me thought it was amazing – but second single ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ is probably the one 21^st century Oasis single that people are happy to compare with their nineties output. For me, though, I’d go with the lovely ‘Songbird’, the album’s fourth single and the first to be written by Liam. I was very disappointed to see that the only post-1998 song they were playing on their recent tour was ‘Little by Little’, which I’ve always thought a dull plodder.

Despite rock music being back, baby, it won’t be hanging around for long. No Oasis #1 ever spent more than a week on top, and the next identifiably ‘rock’ chart-topper is more than a year away… Luckily though, we’re about to embark on a run of pretty decent, non-rocking number ones, starting with a ‘00s girl group classic.