Through their nostalgic tour, Oasis is rekindling the swaggering optimism of the '90s

CNN

4 days ago

Music
UKFacebookTweetLink
Follow
'It's been a long time,' said Liam Gallagher, greeting 90,000 fans inside Wembley Stadium on Wednesday night. 'Thanks for sticking with us, we must be hard work. Try being in the band!'
The Oasis singer has been a man of few words lately, unless they're lyrics penned by older brother Noel. They have done no joint interviews and have let the songs do the talking. It's a formula that appears to be working for the band as it navigates a sold out, 41-show, five-continent reunion tour that began this month.
Liam's aside on Wednesday was as close as we got to an acknowledgement of the Gallaghers' past contretemps; the rift that saw the band split, seemingly for good, in 2009. Arriving on stage holding each other's arms aloft, and departing two hours later with a brief hug, the brothers presented a united front to a crowd who treated the occasion as nothing short of a second coming. In many ways, it was. After 16 years, Oasis is finally, gloriously, back.
Childhood is full of thresholds, when memory grips on to history: first football World Cup, first Summer Olympics, first album. For me, that album was '(What's the Story?) Morning Glory,' the 1995 sophomore effort from Oasis. 'Definitely Maybe,' their 1994 debut, was fuzzy; that record's singles 'Supersonic,' 'Live Forever' et al. were before my time. But 'Morning Glory' arrived with a jolt that lit up the gray matter. 'Champagne Supernova,' 'Some Might Say,' 'Wonderwall'… This was culture – history – lived.
My dad's cassette was run ragged on the car stereo, the lyrics to single 'Roll with It' routinely mangled by this child of a Liverpudlian – one who had to admit that those Mancunians from over the way were actually quite good. Many others agreed. '(What's the Story?) Morning Glory' sold nearly 350,000 copies in its first week, more than 22 million worldwide to date, and is now regarded as one of the greatest rock albums ever produced.
For countless people in the UK and beyond, the album scored their weeks, months, even years (whether they wanted it to or not). Three decades on, the memories of its ubiquity remain, the lyrics on the tip of tongues. All it took was two surly brothers to get on stage for the words to come spilling out again.
Opener 'Hello,' with its refrain 'It's good to be back,' set the tone. Big, brash, played slightly up-tempo. This was Oasis greeting fans old and young, and showing some uncharacteristic humility, too. They followed with 'Acquiesce,' which also spoke to their reconciliation: 'Because we need each other / We believe in one another,' sang Noel on the beloved b-side, a rare track where the brothers share lead vocals.
There was no letup as the band rolled back the years, smashing through hit after hit. The Poznań celebration – adopted by the Gallaghers' Manchester City football club, and the band's fans in turn – was on display for 'Cigarettes and Alcohol.' But just as raucous was the reception for ballads like 'Half the World Away' and 'Little by Little' – truly anthemic in this setting. 'It's that song again,' teased Liam, introducing 'Wonderwall.' He needn't have sang a note, such was the cacophony in the stadium.
A euphoric crowd looked back not in anger but with misty-eyed nostalgia. These are the prelapsarian delights of watching Oasis in 2025. A band, but also a portal into our recent and even not-so-recent past.
By the time Oasis had finished touring '(What's the Story?) Morning Glory' in September 1996, the UK's Conservative government was running on fumes, paving the way for Tony Blair and a New Labour landslide in September 1997. The nation was flush with optimism, led by a government touting Cool Britannia that invited Noel and other artists to drinks at Downing Street ('I was convinced that I was going to get a knighthood,' he later told a reporter). Britain was swaggering on the global stage once more, fronted by a new pantheon of pop culture gods. Hell, the world was even going to fix climate change.
Time and geopolitics slowly eroded Britain's optimism. Inevitably, musically, politically, it was a tale of diminishing returns as the aughts wore on. Behind the scenes, any infighting from the Gallaghers paled in comparison to what was going on in Downing Street.
In the summer of 2009, Oasis abruptly split, and the following spring Labour lost power to a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. It would take 14 years for Labour to return to government (via another landslide) in July 2024. Then, a month later, Oasis announced it was reuniting. It was the type of coincidence that had one commentator asking if the band's return was a government psyop.
Jokes aside, there's a symbolism attached to this summer's UK gigs that has proven hard to shake. Were millions of fans vying for concert tickets, or something more?
'The 1990s now is revered as probably the last great decade when we were free, because the internet had not enslaved us all and driven the world's neurosis to the point of f—king paralysis,' Noel told GQ in 2021.
Not much has happened since then to disprove him.
Like them or not, Oasis has become something of a metonym for a time past; an impression only burnished by their absence. Since they were last around, the UK has experienced a global financial meltdown, years of austerity, Brexit and a pandemic – a lot of things a lot of people would like to forget for a night. Catering to our nostalgia (or anemoia in the case of younger fans), this summer Oasis have so far played an unchanged setlist culled almost exclusively from their '90s albums, transporting us back to the age of pagers and VHSs. Where 'sitting here by the phone' was a lyric that conjured a specific image, and we were blissfully ignorant that the water lapping at the shores in 'Champagne Supernova' was full of microplastics.
Inside Wembley, time concertinaed in on itself. A sea of bucket hats, that quintessential '90s headwear, stretched out from the stage. Beer-soaked Adidas Gazelles jostled for space in the standing area. At the bar, two men wearing t-shirts from Oasis' legendary Knebworth shows – one vintage, the other too crisp and white to be from the summer of 1996. All that, and hearing Liam belt out 'Live Forever,' was almost enough to make the intervening years melt away… Almost.
That's more than can be asked of any band. But for a brief moment at least, the spirit of the '90s was back. And the scene, well, it was f—king biblical.
Oasis plays additional shows in London over the weekend before the sold out tour visits Scotland, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Argentina and Chile, concluding in Brazil in November.