The Oasis reunion was a nostalgia bomb in the best possible way

Despite the frenzy of excitement for tickets last summer when it was announced the Gallaghers' story would resume, there was also some cynicism, including speculation that the press shot had been photoshopped, and it really was all about the money. But such discourse dominates the brand of Oasis.

There’s a whole generation that has heard but not seen the Oasis experience and arguably, their absence created a vacuum which hasn’t been filled since they split in Paris sixteen years ago - namely a band that wrote cross-generational anthems fronted by a singer in possession of a fearsome charisma. If they’d reunited as ‘Liam and Noel’, or ‘The Gallaghers’, would they be playing seven nights at Wembley Stadium?

Possibly not, because this is about the brand that is Oasis, with all of the associated assets - rebelliousness, anthems, an obsession with the heights reached by The Beatles, The Smiths and The Sex Pistols, which would position them in the lineage of the great British bands.

If 2024 was Brat Summer, then Oasis own the summer of 2025. Even with Coldplay playing more nights at Wembley Stadium – 10 to Oasis’s 7 – the feelgood factor makes this a more significant pop culture moment, and when it ends tonight, the crowd continue singing the songs on the walk to the train station.

There’s even questions about Oasis when I get on the packed train home: a Japanese tourist asks me why the train has suddenly filled up and are all the new passengers Oasis fans. He’d been in Manchester the previous week and tells me it was strange to see everyone in the city wearing Oasis t-shirts, and that he and his friends wanted to get tickets for tonight, but they were too expensive. He then asks, “Did they play Wonderwall?”

Of course they played it, I tell him. Hearing these songs tonight is to be struck by their enduring cultural significance, the ‘brand’ that is Oasis, and how significantly the meaning of both have changed since their imperial phase. In their pomp, Oasis, alongside Blur, were courted relentlessly by Tony Blair’s soon to be elected Labour party, dovetailing the world of politics into a voter friendly Cool Brittania package. When Noel Gallagher accepted the Brit award for What’s the Story (Morning Glory), he urged the public to vote Labour, and when Blair sailed into Downing Street, he was invited to schmooze with the new Prime Minister.

Tonight, there are no eulogies to Keir Starmer, and I’m guessing the new PM isn’t here, what with the furore over his free tickets to see Taylor Swift, coupled with his Chancellor Rachel Reeves accepting a plus one to see Sabrina Carpenter. But some things remain the same, such as the fascination Oasis inspire among celebrities, Tom Cruise is in the audience tonight, and Dua Lipa attends on the Saturday.

What has changed though is the onstage etiquette. Unless you count a gentle ribbing from both Gallaghers about the lack of success of London’s football clubs, the gnarly side is dialled right down. The sense of Oasis as a cultural force in a live context has shifted from rebelliousness to a well-earned and very blissful nostalgia - this is feelgood, this is celebratory, a party rather than a wake. Seeing them play live the first time around, each night featured some form of frisson, an unpredictability that would make for either a great or a terrible performance.

Tonight is different, but sweetly so: the performances are rock solid, even if the sound quality – which should be a blitzkrieg of attack with the presence of three guitarists in Noel, Gem Archer, and Bonehead – isn’t great, but with the audience singing all of the words that fades into insignificance. Instead of the youthful rebellion which would see Liam flicking cigarette ash on Mick Jagger’s head at an awards ceremony, there’s a maturity, and even a love about what they’re undertaking.

This is especially so with Liam, the comeback kid who launched a solo career that no one expected to be so successful but who could sell out this venue on his own. The younger Gallagher has been portrayed as the wide-eyed innocent to his older brothers’ strategic, street-smart hustler, but his power as a force-of-nature frontman is unquestionable. He’s also very funny, with his one liners between songs adding stand-up comedy to the mix.

Yet despite all the feelgood factor, there’s undeniably a lot of money to be made, and not all of it by the band. The merch stands on Wembley Way are selling reversible bucket hats for a tidy £35, and seemingly everyone in the audience has bought one. But social media has emerged to be part of the music industry’s commerce with fraudulent ticket sales, where Instagram accounts are being hacked for ticket scams.

When I take my seat and look around the crowd, there are lots of middle-aged men reliving their youth, but there’s also lots of young people and an abundance of families, fans who grew up with Oasis bringing their children to see what it’s all about, and to pass on the torch of the music that soundtracked their youth.

Before they come on to a soundtrack of “Fuckin’ in the Bushes” there’s film footage of the excitement on social media that came with their rapprochement. Brand Oasis’s knack for self-mythologising is still intact, and that’s important, because that’s what rock and roll bands should do, certainly rock and roll bands like Oasis, who were built on unwavering self-belief and a working-class aspiration to escape from the treadmill of school, work, and retirement.

Accordingly, the setlist is wonderfully nostalgic, but it isn’t perfect. With a formidable back catalogue there will always be a debate about what should and shouldn’t have made the cut, yet opening with “Hello”, despite the wit of the line that “It’s good to be back” brings to the start, the link to a paedophile jars the moment.

And as we’re playing setlist bingo, for my money, there are some glaring omissions: “Columbia”, the opener at their historic moment at Knebworth, “Up in the Sky”, the B-sides “Round Are Way”, “(It's Good) To Be Free”, “Underneath the Sky”, as well as some deeper cuts - if you can call the singles "The Shock of the Lighting” and “I'm Outta Time” from their last record, Dig Out Your Soul, deep cuts. Any of them could have replaced “Little by Little”, “Cast No Shadow”, “D’You Know What I Mean?”, or “Hello” and the set would have been all killer, no filler.

When they arrive onstage, Liam and Noel arm in arm, whether or not the bonhomie is genuine, it’s genuinely touching. Liam, wearing a parka and an enormous beanie hat, which he sports for the duration, looks more like Sherlock Holmes in a deerstalker than a survivor of the Britpop years. As they swap verses on “Acquiesce” the story at the heart of Oasis, their almost Stockholm Syndrome relationship, comes to life, where no matter how bad the bad times are, when it’s this blissful, there’s nothing quite like it.

The set is predominantly drawn from their first two albums, and on “Bring it on Down”, drummer Joey Waronker adds the musical chops a stadium show needs, a world away from their first drummer Tony McCarroll’s rudimentary percussion. And despite Liam’s glorious snarl of the line “You're the outcast, you're the underclass / But you don't care / because you're living fast”, it doesn’t quite parse with the band that they are now, friendlier, wiser, and most certainly not outsiders.

Another part of the Oasis brand is appropriating other’s songs into their own canon, and not just those of The Beatles. On “Fade Away” the melody of “Freedom” by Wham! is shamelessly pilfered, and one has to admire the audacity of layering keystone moments pop music’s history into their own story. At this point, a mum in front of me gets so excited that she takes a selfie of her teenage son wearing her Oasis bucket hat, another passing-down of generational culture, which raises another question, which is, where are Oasis’s heirs?

Perhaps it’s that the next generation of guitar bands haven’t worked out their place in the cultural pecking order since the demise of Britpop, and that mainstream pop culture isn’t built for that type of band anymore. There isn’t a weekly TV music show like Top of the Pops to aspire to, or reach the mainstream through, and as the broader cultural landscape has become more fragmented, a band of the cultural cache of Oasis is unlikely flourish any time soon.

We then get to the Noel section of the show, where Liam leaves the stage for three songs – because with reunions come compromises – and initially it feels like playing a cup final without your world class centre forward. But “Half The World Away is lovely, and the snark that Oasis excelled at is still there when it’s introduced with the line, “This next one’s for the Royal Family. The real Royle Family.”

As the daylight fades and they play “Stand By Me”, the stadium finds another gear, with its dynamic a part of the Oasis brand that won’t date – unashamedly anthemic, the story of the everyperson, where the universality and tenderness of the lyric debunks the braggadocio of old. “Slide Away” pulls off the exact same trick. Introduced by Liam as “The Lovebirds”, its storytelling of the everyday is their trump card, and where they really land the haymakers.

As the encores start, the mum who took a picture of her son wearing a bucket hat is now three sheets to the wind and tries to dance with everyone around her. The closing triptych of “Don’t Look Back In Anger”, “Wonderwall”, and “Champagne Supernova” are nigh on flawless stadium-fillers, each a slowly building ballad that play to Oasis’s core strength of communality, and before they take their leave Liam simply says, “It’s good to be back.”

The question of how long they’ll be back is moot, but tonight was all about getting lost in and being immersed within their history, rather than thinking about what the future will hold, and that, after all, is nostalgia at its best. So of course, it ends with fireworks, where they play to the stadium rules, but following such a performance, it feels celebratory rather than clichéd. I send a video of the firework show to my friend, and she messages back, summing up the evening in a sentence, “So, they did put a champagne supernova in the sky.”

And that they did. This is a different Oasis, and to come back to the question of why right here, right now?, ultimately, it’s because the Brothers Gallagher need each other as much as their audience needs them. Tonight was all about the enduring power of songs, a happy ending to a story of ups and downs, of partings and reconciliations, for both the artist and the audience.

Setlist
“Hello”
“Acquiesce”
“Morning Glory”
“Some Might Say”
“Bring It On Down”
“Cigarettes & Alcohol”
“Fade Away”
“Supersonic”
“Roll With It”
“Talk Tonight”
“Half The World Away”
“Little By Little”
“D’You Know What I Mean?”
“Stand By Me”
“Cast No Shadow”
“Slide Away”
“Whatever”
“Live Forever”
“Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”
“The Masterplan”
“Don’t Look Back In Anger”
“Wonderwall”
"Champagne Supernova”