Don't Believe The Truth
By
Stop Crying Your Heart Out
on
July 13, 2023
01: Turn Up The Sun
02: Mucky Fingers
03: Lyla
04: Love Like A Bomb
05 The Importance Of Being Idle
06: The Meaning Of Soul
07: Guess God Thinks I'm Able
08: Part Of The Queue
09: Keep The Dream Alive
10: A Bell Will Ring
11: Let There Be Love
Release Date: May 30th 2005
Highest UK Chart Position: Number 1
Oasis
Liam Gallagher – lead vocals, backing vocals, tambourine
Noel Gallagher – lead guitar, backing vocals, lead vocals on tracks 2, 5, 8, co-lead vocals on 11, producer (tracks 2, 3, 5), drums (track 11)
Andy Bell – bass guitar, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar
Gem Archer – rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, harmonica, backing vocals (track 6)
Additional personnel
Zak Starkey – drums, percussion (except track 2), handclaps
Dave Sardy – mixing (except track 2), producer (tracks 1, 4, 6–11), additional production (track 3)
Lenny Castro – percussion (track 8)
Martin Duffy – piano (track 4)
Terry Kirkbride – drums and percussion (track 2)
Henry Phillpotts – mixing assistant (track 2)
Paul 'Strangeboy' Stacey – mixing (track 2), piano and mellotron (track 11)
Design
Layout – Simon Halfon
Photography By – Lawrence Watson
Painting – Luke Dane
Don't Believe The Truth is the sixth studio album by Oasis, released on May 30th 2005. It reached number one in the UK Albums Chart with first week sales of just under 238,000. The album entered the US charts at number twelve. It was the highest any Oasis album had reached in the US charts since Be Here Now was released in 1997.
Every member of the band contributed to the writing of tracks for the album.
On a number of the tracks Andy Bell handled guitar, while Gem and Noel contributed bass to other songs. Don't Believe The Truth is the first Oasis record to feature the drumming of Zak Starkey, who replaced Oasis' longtime member Alan White.
Liam also had a larger impact on the album by his developing songwriting. Noel has said that this album is his favourite of Oasis' last four, because all members have contributed to it. This, he claims, has given it a different feel to a typically Noel-written Oasis album.
The band embarked on a massive world-wide tour and started off at the London Astoria for their Don't Believe The Truth Tour.
Recording
The recording process for Don't Believe The Truth was prolonged. The album was originally supposed to be released around summer/autumn 2004, with an initial 3-4 week session produced by Death In Vegas. The recording finally began after Alan White's departure in January 2004 at Sawmills Studios in Cornwall, the same place where Oasis had recorded their debut album Definitely Maybe. These sessions were completed but the band weren't happy with the results.
Noel has commented since on numerous occasions that there was no problem with the work done by Death In Vegas, but he felt the songs they were working on were simply not good enough to form a record, and felt a break was needed in which new material would have to be written. In Noel's words: "we were trying to polish a turd". Around 10 tracks were worked on with Death In Vegas of which, according to Noel, 6 were "not even good enough to make the b-sides". Four of the tracks which eventually appeared on the album were worked on with Death In Vegas, those songs being: Turn Up The Sun, Mucky Fingers, A Bell Will Ring and The Meaning Of Soul, although all of these had extra work done to them or were re-recorded before being released.
After a short break in which many new songs, including Let There Be Love, Lyla and Part Of The Queue were written, the band reconvened at their Wheeler End Studios with Noel as producer. The band were joined on these sessions by The Who's drummer Zak Starkey. In June 2004, Oasis debuted two new songs from these sessions, the Liam-written The Meaning of Soul and the Gem-written A Bell Will Ring at two live shows in Poole and at the Glastonbury Festival.
After hearing of the band's production problems from Oasis manager Marcus Russell, American producer Dave Sardy expressed interest in taking over production duties. Sardy was given tapes of existing recording sessions to mix, and after his work was praised by the band, he arrived in the UK to oversee new recording sessions at Olympic Studios in London.
These sessions didn't last long before he asked the band to travel to Los Angeles and re-record most of the album there, as he felt more comfortable working in a studio closer to home. With the band eventually agreeing to this, recording sessions began at Capitol Studios in October 2004 with the band spending around nine weeks there.
Release
The decision to have the leadoff single, Lyla, on the album was a controversial one, prompted by the label's feeling that there wasn't a suitable lead single among the tracks originally presented. As a result, the decision was taken to record Lyla, a song which Noel had written and demoed a year previously, but which wasn't recorded by the band during the previous recording sessions. It was decided that Dave Sardy would remix Noel's original demo with Liam recording a set of lead vocals and Zak adding a fresh drum track. Lyla reached number one on the UK Singles Chart and number nineteen on the U.S. Modern Rock Tracks chart.
After having initial reservations about the choice of the first single being taken out of the hands of the band, Noel, who initially wanted Mucky Fingers to be the first single, has now reluctantly conceded that the song has indeed "done the business".
In April 2005, four tracks from a promo disc leaked: The Meaning Of Soul, Mucky Fingers, Keep The Dream Alive, and Let There Be Love. The full album found its way onto the Internet on May 3rd 2005, when Apple Inc. accidentally put the album up early for sale on their iTunes Music Store service in Germany. While there was no official comment by Apple or by Oasis management, it was speculated that Apple simply got "May 30" confused with "May 03" or "May 3".