So 15 years of Punch and Judy bickering between Liam and Noel Gallagher ended with the inevitable: Oasis reformed for a United Kingdom and Ireland Tour – and a huge payday (money makes the world go round, especially when Noel is reportedly paying £20 million in divorce settlements). That was the cue for wild celebrations among that part of the British public still nostalgic for the simpler times of Euro 96 and the first Blair government. Britpop is coming home.
I’m not one of them, and here’s why: I firmly believe that Oasis are the most damaging pop-cultural force in recent British history. It’s easy to attack them for their musically regressive attitudes: after all, they didn’t just make “Stop The Clocks,” to quote the title of their 2006 best-of, they turned them back 30 years. But the real problem is that they’ve pushed societal attitudes back even further.
I’ll never forget attending the Q Awards in 2000 when Liam Gallagher repeatedly booed Robbie Williams for “Queer!” and Kylie Minogue for “Lesbian!” while the assembled music industry and media nervously giggled and hesitated to slaughter the goose that laid the golden eggs. It’s one of the ugliest scenes I’ve ever witnessed. And it wasn’t an isolated incident. In 2016, he called Russian football hooligans “batty boys” on Twitter, and in 2018 he used another homophobic slur, “bum chums,” against Noel, Johnny Marr and Paul Weller.
Noel has also repeatedly expressed prehistoric views, complaining about hip-hop artist Jay-Z headlining Glastonbury in 2008 (though he softened his stance when Stormzy headlined in 2019) and describing then-Labour leader Ed Miliband – yes, Ed Miliband – In 2015 as a “damned communist” and later Jeremy Corbyn in similar words.
In 2021, he appeared on the front page of the Sun calling Prince Harry a “bloody woke snowflake,” and in 2024, he complained that Glastonbury was too “woke.” (Tip: When someone uses the word “woke” as an insult, they immediately write another word on their forehead that also starts with “w.”) It’s no coincidence that Oasis are the band of choice for flag-shaggers and reform voters—it’s remarkable how often their fans have the butcher’s apron in their Twitter bios, just like Noel had drawn on his guitar.
Oasis champions in the media always gloss over these things, calling Noel a “legend” who “delivers good lyrics” and laughing at Liam’s “banter” by arguing that Oasis are “the people’s band” or “the voice of a generation” and that the Gallaghers express the views of the masses in the vernacular of the masses. If you dare to question this, you are inevitably accused of “snobbery” towards a band that has been dubiously anointed as the only authentic musical mouthpiece of the proletariat.
But the Gallaghers can’t outdo me in class. At the risk of writing a Glamorgan version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, the basic facts of my upbringing are this: single-parent family, perpetually broke, never had a car, never had a phone, the TV was constantly repossessed and I lived in seven different flats and houses before I left home. I’ve seen leafy Burnage and the house Liam and Noel grew up in and we’ve never lived anywhere that big. Nor can they outdo me in age: I’m a little younger than Noel and guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, a little older than Liam and the others. I’m of their class and their generation. But the inconvenient truth is that no class is a homogenous mass, and that’s true of any generation.
From the outset of their career, Oasis were presented as the true voice of council housing. But what about their less stereotypical but equally working-class contemporaries of the 1990s? Don’t they count? No band was more aware of class politics than Sheffield’s Pulp, but Pulp were arty, sang about outsiderdom, and dressed like Oxfam dandies rather than Arndale Centre city dwellers, so they were somehow seen as less ‘real’ than their Manchester counterparts. The Manic Street Preachers, on the other hand, are as working-class as you can get, but refused to conform to boys-boys-boys stereotypes, played with androgyny and homoeroticism, and wore their (state) education on their sleeve.
The Gallaghers’ backwards views on sexuality and politics shouldn’t really matter. We’re all familiar with the concept of separating the art from the artist, even if everyone has a different opinion on where to draw the line. But the art at least has to be good. Oasis, memorably described by the late Neil Kulkarni as the “English Rock Defence League,” offer nothing but a squishy, lumbering brontosaurus waddle, perfect for the fidgety adult gait their singer and fans love so much.
Lyrically, they’re bleak too: the promising, mischievous Elsa/Alka Seltzer rhyme of debut single Supersonic soon gave way to boring platitudes that might as well have been written by an AI. But the problem is the music. Oasis don’t make fast songs. Noel plays his guitar like he’s afraid it’s going to break, and Oasis’s funky, sexless plod is always carefully kept below the speed at which fluid dynamics would make you spill your beer. Is there anything more useless than a rock band that doesn’t rock?
