Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | link |
| Entertainment Weekly | (B) link |
| NME | link |
| Q | October 2000 |
| Robert Christgau | link |
| Rolling Stone | link |
The album at first received generally mixed reviews from the media, with a metacritic score of 60 out of 100. It was a darker album possibly reflecting the times, or perhaps reflecting the loss of two original members. Noel has said, "Even though it wasn't our finest hour, it's a good album born through tough times. I worked harder on that album than anything before and anything since." Noel was forced to play nearly all the instruments on the album.
It was more warmly received when Q Magazine gave Standing on the Shoulder of Giants 4/5 stars and the B-side to "Go Let It Out", "Let's All Make Believe", was featured in Q's top 500 lost tracks and said that if "Let's All Make Believe" were on the album "it probably would have carried the album to another star".
Although it received lukewarm reviews from the music press, both Liam and Noel Gallagher have praised certain aspects of the record. During a Radio 1 interview with Gary Crowley in 2002 Liam said "Some people reckon the album is shit, but I think it's a great album...it's just a bit different", whilst Noel Gallagher has stated that he regards "Go Let It Out" as "up there with some of the best things that I've done". He also stated in a 2005 interview with Rock Profiles that he thinks "Fuckin' in the Bushes", "Go Let It Out", "Gas Panic" and "Where Did It All Go Wrong?" are "real pieces of music".
Standing on the Shoulder of Giants spent 29 weeks on the UK album chart, the fewest for any Oasis studio album. It was the ninth biggest selling album of 2000 in the UK.
Standing on the Shoulder of Giants debuted at #24 on the Billboard 200 in the US, selling about 55,000 units in its first week, but sales slumped its second week and fell to #84 with a 64% sales drop. The album received a huge sales hike following the VH1 airing of the group's Behind the Music in April 2000, jumping from #194 to #113 on the Billboard 200 the week following the episode's airing. In March 2000, the IFPI certififed Oasis for selling one million units of the album in Europe.
Eleven years after its release, Noel Gallagher said he regretted releasing the album, saying he was not feeling inspired as a composer, particularly for going off his drug addiction with prescription drugs, "which is fucking worse because they come from a doctor". This was partly a motivation to relegate the songwriting to the other bandmembers in later albums, as Noel considered "I'd slowed down as a writer and didn't feel like I could keep writing 20 songs every two years."
Read more about this topic: Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants
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