Second solo No. 1 after As You Were
In September 2019 Warner released Liam Gallagher’s second solo album Why Me? Why Not., cut with Greg Kurstin, Andrew Wyatt and Simon Aldred between London and Los Angeles. Sessions ran from spring 2018 into April 2019 at Abbey Road and RAK in London, plus Bonnie Hill, Echo and Republic in L.A. The brief was not a Beady Eye reunion. After the chart run of As You Were, Gallagher wanted co-writes that locked his nasal lead into bigger choruses without sanding off the swagger.
Shockwave opens with a choppy guitar figure and a Kurstin rhythm bed before the vocal lands hard on the hook. One of Us names the Oasis split without naming Noel; the lyric sits over Wyatt’s mid-tempo groove. Once is the acoustic ballad built for phones in the air, Lennon-adjacent chords and a chorus about only getting to do it once. Now That I’ve Found You, with Simon Aldred, keeps the tempo brighter and the guitars dry. The title track and Halo, Meadow, The River, and Gone fill out a program of short rock songs rather than a concept suite.
The François Rousselet clip for Shockwave put Gallagher in Deep South imagery (much of it filmed in Budapest): burning buildings, train tracks, protest crowds holding lyric boards. Live, the album tracks slotted next to Oasis standards without apology. Vinyl demand was part of the story from day one; Official Charts later flagged the LP as the fastest-selling vinyl album of 2019 in the UK opening week.
Two in two years — now that’s what I call biblical.
(Liam Gallagher to Official Charts, on Why Me? Why Not. hitting UK No.1)
The album opened at UK No.1 with about 68,000 chart units, including roughly 17,000 vinyl copies. It was Gallagher’s second solo chart-topper after As You Were, and another line on a tally that already included eight Oasis No.1 albums. European and US rock charts followed at a lower volume, but the UK week was the proof point he wanted after years of legal noise and tabloid noise.
What holds is the voice in a clean rock mix: Kurstin’s polish, Wyatt’s mid-tempo craft, Aldred’s lift on the brighter singles. Why Me? Why Not. is the record where solo Liam stopped sounding like a comeback and started sounding like a second act with chart receipts. The Deluxe Edition later padded the package; the core eleven songs already did the job.
