Click to listen to 'Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds'

"(I Wanna Live in a Dream in My) Record Machine," announces a song title on Noel Gallagher's first post-Oasis LP. Wrapped in guitars, strings, brass and reverb like a psychedelic Union Jack, he's in full flashback mode. Arrangements conjure Sgt. Pepper and T. Rex; each song fades Pink Floyd- style into the next. That's no complaint: Cooking down the Beatles' LSD pop into MDMA head-rushes like Oasis did, he does his old band proud. "Shout it out for me!" he declares in "Dream On," making you want to do just that.

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“The A Team”

This debut track from the then-20-year-old British singer-songwriter has a dark story behind it. Sheeran says he culls songwriting inspiration from "viewing other people's situations," which, for the heroine in "The A Team," involves drug addiction and prostitution that began as a teen. Sheeran paints the woman's trials with haunting imagery such as "But lately her face seems/Slowly sinking, wasting/Crumbling like pastries." "I did a gig at a homeless shelter, [and the song] is about one of the women there. It's her story," he said.