Why this is the perfect time for Oasis to reunite

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gridGet back together and stop messing around,” the 1975 singer Marty Healy suggestion oasis In a Canadian radio interview last year, he argued: “Can you imagine being in what was probably – and still is – the coolest band in the world and not being in it because you had a problem with your brother?” Glastonburyhave a good time.”

In fact, since the two parted ways in 2009, Now is the perfect time for Oasis to reunite. You see, Britpop has become a form of intergenerational wonder war. The most evolved of the Gen Z have developed a reflexive “OK Boomer!” cry whenever the older generation — wearing Lennon shades, teary eyes, trying on the seams of vintage Fred Perry shirts — starts talking about the 90s as the golden age of British pop culture. Forcing the average 2020 teenager to hear the NME stage lineup at Glastonbury Festival Sunday in 1994 again — Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Radiohead, and Echobelly!—they’ll probably roll their eyes.

If Britpop is endlessly praised as a champagne supernova Good times, just because many of us can say we’ve lived through them. The sad truth is that Britain has a long and frustrating history of missing out on pop culture revolutions. The stadium madness of Beatlemania mostly happened in America. For British Beatles fans – apart from theatre tours, the band played only one 15-minute stadium show at Wembley Swimming Pool at the 1966 NME Poll Winners’ Party – they were a heavily televised phenomenon. The various summers of love at the end of the Sixties were also an American thing, taking over Haight-Ashbury and Woodstock. In Britain, you had to be an early fan of Pink Floyd, one of the 40-odd groovers in the studio for the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love” satellite broadcast, or a Kensington Trust fund manager who had Jimi Hendrix sleeping on your sofa, to say you’d truly “lived” the Age of Aquarius.

In 1973, Bowie played Ziggy in front of a star-studded crowd of just 5,000 at the Hammersmith Odeon. Punk had only a brief presence in a handful of packed clubs and King’s Road boutiques. No one who was actually involved in the rave and acid house explosion of the late 80s could remember a second of it, let alone put a pin on a map to tell you where it happened. The UK’s stadium circuit remained underdeveloped until the 70s, and even rock greats like Led Zeppelin played regional theatres until their legendary Knebworth show in 1979. In fact, until The Stone Roses rallied their Manchester faithful at Spike Island in 1990, large-scale pop cultural exchanges in the UK were as rare as an honest government assessment of Brexit.

But during the Britpop era, they were in great numbers. Blur played Alexandra Palace in 1994 and Mile End Stadium the following year. Oasis played Maine Road and Knebworth. With opening slots packed with like-minded, groundbreaking indie bands – Supergrass, The Boo Radleys, The Charlatans, Manic Street Preachers, Cast – these gigs were more than just one band’s shows. They epitomized an era. Major UK festivals, such as Glastonbury and Reading, gave full days to Britpop bands. Pulp nearly stole the decade when they replaced The Stone Roses as headliners at the last minute at Glastonbury in 1995. All of this was covered extensively on Nineties youth culture TV shows, newspapers and the growing festival scene. Britpop was arguably the first British music movement that millions of British music fans really felt part of.

And it can be done again. Last year offered a generation of pop fans a unique chance to experience 1995 firsthand, as it was. In between a rare break from Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz event and bassist Alex James’ cheese business, Blur returned to Wembley in July 2023. That same month, Pulp played Finsbury Park for a major UK tour. Attend both shows and you can claim to be a child of Britpop’s rebirth, even if you’re young enough to think Lush is a cosmetics store and the words “Chris Evans” remind you of Captain America rather than Shaun Ryder delivering Olympic-level expletives on tea-time TV. For one glorious summer, we can pretend that rent is affordable again, having suffered only 30 years of (male) World Cup pain, and that there is no such thing as James Corden.

Of course, there is a key piece missing from the 1995 puzzle. The 15-year saga of Oasis’s reunion, like so many equally dramatic soap operas, has dragged on for far too long., During Liam Gallagher’s wasted years, he would often take to Twitter to plead, pester and goad his brother Noel into reforming their Britpop juggernaut. However, his pleas went unheard as Gallagher Sr.’s solo career took off with his band High Flying Birds.

The likelihood of a reunion further declined when Liam no longer needed the band after his solo career also took off. But he still claimed on Twitter that he would “support Oasis until my death”. Amid recent divorces – often the catalyst for high-profile reunions by artists who have previously said they would rather bite off their feet than play together again – Noel opened the door for the band to reunite. “You should never say never,” he told BBC Radio Manchester last year. However, he said, “it would have to come under a set of exceptional circumstances.”

Noel, is one once-in-a-lifetime event in the nineties indie rock scene enough? In fact, there has and always will be a perfect time for Oasis to regroup. The same cannot be said for the music itself. In any given year, devoted fans can see Liam and Noel perform Oasis’ greatest hits separately, with the occasional Bonehead thrown in. And no one’s life will feel complete until they’ve seen bassist Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan return to the international stage.

But this year, and this year only, Oasis’ reunion won’t be about nostalgia, but about the coming together of the times. As part of an impromptu national celebration of Britpop, Absolutely possible. This week marks Oasis’ 30th anniversary, and a 2024 reunion would be a landmark moment; one that would erase long-entrenched generational divides and modern cultural insularity.

While we can’t expect Blur, Oasis and Pulp to agree on the order of their sets for a re-creation of the 1994 Glastonbury Festival, the Liam-Noel reunion will at least give Gen Z its own Blur vs Oasis moment. Today’s teens can finally experience the hallowed Nineties thrills first-hand – old-school tribal rivalries, faction uniforms and the ubiquitous Phil Daniels – and conclude, as most of us did, that Pulp’s Different classes Regardless, this is the best Britpop record ever made. This year has been exceptional.