The wait is over. Oasis are back for you to blame for everything again. Since the announcement of their reunion tour next year, Oasis have been castigated for everything from bad haircuts and “football crowds” of middle aged fans in parkas and bucket hats who walk funny, to boorishness, sexism, the demise of 90s music culture, and spreading laddism like a virus. Wilder claims hold them responsible for the dumbing down of society, the degradation of western civilisation, and facilitating nationalism, Brexit, and more.
However much some protest to the contrary, the snobbery (and often outrageous classism) on display has been … interesting. Has anyone called it “Snobworth” yet? Yet all these years on, is it time to properly unpick the meaning of Oasis, then and now? Also to ask, how will the 90s Mancunian working-class rock behemoths affect 21st century culture? As just another heritage act trudging around the nostalgia circuit – or will it be a lot more interesting than that?
Last week marked the 30th anniversary of Oasis’s lauded debut album, Definitely Maybe. It’s 29 years since the Oasis/Blur chart battle, which Blur won with Country House; 28 years since Oasis played to the 250,000-strong crowd at Knebworth; 15 years since Oasis split up after a series of characteristically volcanic rows between the Gallagher brothers, Noel and Liam. Since then, there have been marriages, children, divorces, and solo projects, including Noel’s High Flying Birds. Liam in solo form is proving highly popular with Gen Z, as indeed are Oasis, more of which anon.
Before becoming available to the general public, Oasis reunion tickets went on sale via a ballot (including quiz questions testing fan-knowledge), with online skirmishes between older and younger fans about who is more deserving, and some tickets instantly relisted for up to £6,000. Although rumours of Oasis playing Glastonbury have been quashed, the tour stands to generate an estimated £400m; considerably more if European dates are added. It’s reported to mean a £50m payday for each of the Gallaghers (some suggest this is Noel’s primary motivation after a costly divorce from his second wife of 12 years, Sara MacDonald).
While others from the Oasis ecosystem (Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs; Gem Archer) look likely to be involved, it’s indisputably the Gallagher Show. Noel, 57, and Liam, 51, are – have always been – the circus coming to town. Even after the split, there was the decades-spanning feud: the brothers erupting in relentless almost biblical quasi-fratricidal rows – establishing themselves as the Cain and Abel of Britpop. As they embark on the most controversial band reunion since the Sex Pistols’ 1996 Filthy Lucre tour, bookies are already taking bets on them not making it to the 2025 shows.
Placed in a wider cultural context, the 90s are having a moment, just as the 80s had a moment, the Noughties will have a moment, and so on. Still, other big regenerating 90s acts (Blur; Pulp) didn’t get this response. There may have been negativity (some people just don’t rate band reunions), but, in the main, it’s been generational warm fuzzies and nostalgia-drenched singalongs.
Only Oasis have provoked such polarised (love/hate) reactions, including retrospective condemnation of their domination of 90s music culture. For some, Oasis were beyond a band, they were tantamount to Big Parka, presiding over a climate of stifled creativity, conservatism, and such socio-political atrophy it facilitated flag-waving nationalism. It’s this sort of charge that makes me think, woah, let’s slow down. There’s nothing wrong with being partisan, even a cultural snob: for music journalists, it’s the actual job, and it’s only right everyone else gets to join in. But this feels different: sharper, nastier, uglier. At moments, it’s felt genuinely shocking: like undiluted class hatred.
For someone like me, who wrote about music in the 90s, it’s fascinating. So pervasive and crucial at the time, Britpop is now like a sexually transmitted disease – everyone was in the bed but no one admits to being infected by it. The Oasis/Blur chart battle was effectively a musical version of the British class system. Blur (southern; middle class); Oasis (northern; working class). Around that time, as a firm Oasis backer, I interviewed Blur bassist Alex James (a far nicer and cleverer man than he’s often given credit for), and he likened the battle to football. In retrospect, it’s one of the few times “Oasis” and “football” have been put together without it sounding snide.
It’s impossible to assess the response to the Oasis reunion without including the mass denigration of those “football crowds” of fans. Even dismissing the attacks on the Gallaghers (at £50m each, they can take it), you’d struggle to recall a fan base more vilified. Still today, Oasis fans are likened to near-troglodytes (as opposed to evolved humans with righteous music taste). In such huge numbers, there are bound to be a few wrong ‘uns, but do we scan the audiences of U2 or Taylor Swift for clothing, attitudes and sporting preferences we don’t align with?
What did Oasis fans do to warrant such judgment and venom – sing Wonderwall too loud? What’s wrong with “football crowds” – why are they automatically presumed to be thugs, even in 2024? As for Oasis, it’s now routine for them to be damned as low-brow Little Englanders posturing with union jack guitars. Talentless Beatles copyists and Slade-alikes who “got lucky”. ‘Lucky” how? By having songs people like?
Some charges against Oasis, such as homophobia, however “casual” and playground-level idiotic, could not, and should not, be waved away. Eyewitness accounts from the 2000 Q Awards ceremony report Liam yelling “queer” and “lesbian” at Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue respectively. In 2018, Liam called Noel, Jam and Style Council frontman Paul Weller and Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr “bum chums”. A couple of years earlier, Liam (again) called Russian football hooligans “batty boys” (he apologised). No caveats. No excuses. There’s no such thing as casual homophobia. This kind of thing is poisonous and dangerous, signalling that such views are acceptable.
The nationalistic flag-waving charges are recurring and baffling. I always considered the union jacks to be a mod thing, relating to the Who/Quadrophenia, the Jam and Weller (who Noel admires and is friendly with). A nod to British musical heritage, sometimes verging on wallowing, but galaxies away from nationalism. Oasis don’t even seem patriotic (about Manchester, maybe?). In the unseemly rush to brand them and their ethos nationalistic, people appear to have forgotten that the Gallaghers are of Irish descent.
It’s also conveniently “misremembered” where Oasis “come from” creatively. Not just Manchester, but also “Madchester” and acid house, a groovy, inclusive, 80s/90s ecstasy-blitzed dance-rock-pop fusion scene, all whirling around the Factory Records nightclub, the Hacienda. A gigantic melting pot of influences and genres (house, funk, soul, hip-hop), it produced acts such as the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and the Inspiral Carpets. When I interviewed the latter, Noel was working as a roadie for them.
Oasis went on to initially sign to Creation Records which pursued an eclectic avant garde agenda. Thus, when Noel complained about Jay-Z headlining Glastonbury in 2008, and how the festival should only be about guitar music, it was cringeworthy, but it was also surprising, counterintuitive to what was, in fact, Gallagher’s richly diverse musical genesis.
What else could be dragged from the veritable landfill of Oasis-centred gripes and examined? How they narrowed British music culture, furring up the arteries with their “Beatles sound” (wasn’t this more of an industry problem: unimaginative record company executives looking for the “next Oasis”, rather than the next great act?). Their boorishness, braggadocio, loutishness. Back in their 90s pomp, Oasis were a band renowned for exceptionally heavy alcohol and drug use. Is it really such a pearl-clutching shock that they acted like it?
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As for Oasis, and Noel in particular, being a malign influence on the political leanings of the working classes, is this feasible? On the contrary, it could be viewed as interesting that such a politically illiterate band ended up in that Tony Blair/New Labour/No 10 party moment, defining the era along with New Labour and Princess Diana’s death. Since then, Noel has spoken out against Jeremy Corbyn (“fucking student debater”) and Nigel Farage (“an unremarkable little man”), but he’s also disparaged those who hated the Brexit vote (“fascist”), and slammed Keir Starmer (an old Orange Juice fan), who of course has been asked about the Oasis reunion as a matter of great national importance.
Noel is such an indiscriminate lawn sprinkler of insults, his persuasions are, if anything, difficult to gauge. It’s equally likely he’s just mouthing off in the moment and couldn’t care less about influencing people one way or another. Regarding such mouthing off, there have even been complaints about Noel and Liam holding forth in interviews. Seriously? The Gallaghers are among a diminishing coterie of high profile artists who don’t communicate like media-trained AI bots, and this is somehow framed as a negative? Likewise, in an era in which the working classes have effectively been priced out of the arts, is the Oasis reunion truly the biggest problem British culture has right now?
It’s things like this that make me wonder if some detractors wouldn’t feel better if they just came clean and admitted it: they don’t like Oasis, or their fans, not because they’re working class, but because they’re the wrong kind of working class. As in, the problematic, gobby, ungrateful working class, who don’t take kindly to being pigeon-holed and patronised.
Photograph: by Rebecca Naden/PA
A more interesting line of inquiry could be: why do people love Oasis so much? Of all the bands, why them? Is it that they represent a large chunk of the working class, but never give the impression they have any desire to escape from it? One thing Oasis never did is sneer at their fans, or (wealth aside), pretend to be any different from them.
There could also be the darker bond of the Gallaghers’ unstable background, with an abusive father, until their mother, Peggy, got them out of there. The working classes don’t own the monopoly on unhappy childhoods or domestic violence, but some of their fans might appreciate the grit and nerve it took for the Gallaghers to fight their way through and make a success of their lives. As corny as it may sound to some, this is where tight musical bonding comes from.
As it is, Oasis, the 90s supergroup, return to a changed 21st-century entertainment landscape (streaming; the diminishment of once all-important chart positions; lingering post-pandemic industry torpor; Brexit-inspired Euro-paperwork). The Gallaghers are familiar enough with it (they have after all continued touring and working), but it’s changed immeasurably nonetheless. Even the concept of a “rock’n’roll star“ has changed. Now it’s Taylor Swift, striding around international stadiums, ever-vigorous, hungry and alert in her tasselled bodysuits. It’s Swift, not the fiftysomething Gallaghers’ cocaine-dusted legend, who is the “shock and awe” of popular music now.
Which brings us to what is perhaps the biggest Oasis late twist of all. Not the reunion tour, but who will be there: the newly minted young fans. Just as swathes of Gen Z have taken to Liam, they have also warmed to Oasis. There are hordes of young people enjoying the Gallaghers’ patented guitar music and casual styling. TikTok groups devoted to the anthemic likes of Live Forever, Supersonic, Don’t Look Back In Anger, and Champagne Supernova.
It seems there are going to be vast numbers of audience members at the shows who were born way after the release of Definitely Maybe. Genuinely young people who couldn’t give a fig what appalling thing Noel said in 1998. Who aren’t remotely interested in the Britpop turf wars of yore. Who might find the class-based rows rather quaint, and perhaps just a bit boring.
An audience, what’s more, who cannot be derided and dismissed in terms of parka-sporting, bucket-hatted, knuckle-dragging politically dubious “football crowds”. How is this new youth-ownership of the Oasis flame going to be explained away by the haters, and where might it end? It seems Oasis 2:0 is coming, whether some people like it not.