A Gen Z Guide To The Oasis Reunion
So, here’s the breakdown–the brothers are back.
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Recently, British rock band Oasis announced that they would reunite after a 15 year hiatus. Like many rock bands in the past, there was a feud at the heart of the break up. Frontmen Noel and Liam Gallagher, brothers from Manchester, U.K., served as primary songwriter and lead singer of Oasis. Since the band’s 1991 inception, the group was largely credited with bringing back the Britpop genre to the music industry. A group of working class musicians, both Noel and Liam worked in construction and various other jobs prior to finding success as artists, giving their music a relatable quality for the masses.
Amidst their brotherly beef, the band secured an eternal spot in the cultural zeitgeist. Several of their biggest hits, notably “Wonderwall” and “Champagne Supernova”, have soundtracked a number of popular films and television shows. These include “One Tree Hill”, “The OC”, “Ted Lasso,” “Succession” and more. The band’s psychedelic sound managed to pay homage to their 1960s predecessors in a way that also managed to feel distinctly in keeping with the culture of the 1990s and 2000s.
The group drew thousands of excited concertgoers across their lengthy run. Now that the group announced a shocking reunion tour for 2025, even beginning to tease American tour dates, longtime fans are ready to go to battle for tickets. Some groups of older male fans on Twitter expressed frustration with Gen Z fans, particularly young women, beating them in the long contentious Ticketmaster line for a band that they did not experience at the height of their career. Noel Gallagher’s 24 year-old daughter Anaïs quickly clapped back, offering friendship bracelets to any other Gen Z women who plan to attend one of the band’s shows.
Gen Z women fans are not to be underestimated. Gen Z and millennials are a major factor in artists like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé’s respective careers. Their ability to connect with personal lyricism and form community over shared music taste and experiences remains a force to be reckoned with, and has essentially changed concertgoer culture forever.
The friendship bracelets to which Anaïs Gallagher referred originated on Swift’s Eras Tour, in which fans craft the unique music inspired beads in homage to her track “You’re On Your Own, Kid.” Younger artists aside, Gen Z has also led the charge in chart recognition for older artists. In 2022, Netflix’s “Stranger Things” used Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” in a pivotal scene. The scene alone launched the 1985 track up the Billboard charts, and earned Bush a spot in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.
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Upon the release of Amazon Prime Video’s 2023 “Daisy Jones & The Six”, which is loosely based upon Fleetwood Mac, the latter’s 1997 performance of “Rumours” bonus track “Silver Springs” found viral fame and a newfound understanding among a young audience. This in mind, Anaïs’ willingness to welcome her fellow Gen Z fans to her father’s concerts could prove a pivotal move in the Oasis comeback. An older musician’s music resonating with Gen Z is a testament to timeless and impactful songwriting.
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As a Gen Z journalist myself, here’s a guide to the feuds, the music, and everything in between.
The Battle of Britpop and Brothers
Oasis was beefing with each other, but was also involved with one of the most famous rock n’ roll feuds of the 1990s. Blur, a London based Britpop-rock band, emerged as the group’s rivals. As history will see it, the British love a good feud or an opportunity to take sides (think of the storied rivalry between a number of English football clubs). The competition between Oasis and Blur inspired both artists to push to be their best, but also divided couples, friend groups, and families. Across TikTok, many recount the 1990s Britpop battle now that Oasis is set to return.
Blur’s “Song 2” “Coffee and TV” and more also soared to chart success. They went on to soundtrack popular media as well, most famously the blockbuster “Cruel Intentions,” which launched the careers of Reese Witherspoon and Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer herself).
As for the brotherly brawl, the feud developed over time. At the root of the issue was creative control, with Noel being the primary songwriter and thus maintaining a greater share of royalties on the brothers’ shared work. There were also a number of bar brawls and onstage antics spanning across decades, culminating in a fight in which Noel hit Liam over the head with a cricket bat when the latter brought friends to the recording studio uninvited. The cricket bat was later authenticated and auctioned for a hefty price.
NPR recently reported a full breakdown of each individual public fight, ranging from onstage performances and tambourine altercations to live interviews. The most notorious interview fight was labeled “Wibbling Rivalry” and was conducted by NME. The social media age only added fuel to the fire, when in 2016 Liam Gallagher notoriously shared a photo of his brother with the caption “potato.” Meanwhile, Noel once called Liam "a man with a fork in a world of soup." A number of the band’s songs and the brothers’ solo music references their long standing divide, notably Noel’s “Talk Tonight” after a doomed show at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles.
Today Is Gonna Be The Day You Start Listening To Oasis
One of Oasis’ most recognizable songs is certainly the guitar heavy “Wonderwall” (any artsy man’s favorite song to play similar to the famous guitar scene in “Barbie”, as many Gen Z women would know.) “Champagne Supernova” offers a rock n’ roll grandeur with the perfect dose of melancholia and nostalgia, and “Live Forever” has an inherently cinematic optimism. Some slightly deeper cuts that fans new to Oasis may enjoy are “Rock n’ Roll Star” and “She’s Electric.”
The group’s overall sound was a big contrast to the grunge subgenre of rock music that dominated the American charts in the early 1990s prior to their international breakthrough, famously Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and more. Grunge, largely emerging from Seattle, Washington, was characterized by its metal inspired guitars and punk driven songwriting reflecting depression, anxiety, and other emotions that were previously left untouched in the lyrics of chart topping music.
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Oasis, on the other hand, revived and modernized a Britpop genre previously founded in the 1960s and 1970s by way of the Troggs, The Kinks, and most importantly, the Beatles. This moment in music history proved that multiple subgenres present within rock music created a more competitive and intriguing industry.
Despite the naysayers attempting to divide concertgoers to Oasis’ much anticipated 2025 reunion, their music will truly live forever as new generations come to appreciate their music.