When I found out I was going to see Oasis at Wembley, it felt like winning a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory – only to remember I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth.
Growing up in the U.S., Oasis were ‘those guys who sang Wonderwall,’ a song so overplayed and parodied it barely registered as music anymore. I honestly thought they were a one-hit wonder – a British meme band people pretended to like for the bit.
So when I moved to the UK and realised that Oasis aren’t just a band here, but a cultural institution, I was baffled.
How could something so massive not have translated to the States, when we’re famously greedy for British exports? We’ll take your Shakespeare, your Love Island, your Paddington, but somehow not your Gallagher brothers?
Every time I tried to listen to Oasis, it felt like walking into a house of worship for a religion I didn’t belong to. The symbols were familiar, the rituals recognisable, but the meaning escaped me.
I always concluded the same thing: Oasis is so rooted in its Britishness that it struggles to stand alone outside that context, and unlike the Arctic Monkeys or other UK exports, the music itself isn’t quite strong enough to overcome that cultural specificity.
But if Oasis is a religion, then Friday night at Wembley was my spiritual awakening.
It began with Liam and Noel Gallagher walking on stage hand-in-hand, a moment that sent the crowd into such a frenzy I genuinely thought I was witnessing a world-historical reconciliation – ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,‘ but with more bucket hats.
Behind them, a montage of media headlines played, charting the road to their reunion. As I tried to read them, I noticed with genuine shock that the men around me – mostly in their forties – were openly weeping.
I felt like an imposter. Like a lifelong Buddhist receiving a blessing from the Pope: Was this moment wasted on me?
Liam – bucket hat pulled so low he could’ve wandered through the crowd unnoticed – was relentlessly on-brand: tambourine in his mouth, mid-song gestures for someone to fetch him a drink, radiating pure cheeky swagger.
But it wasn’t the chaotic bravado that’s landed him in trouble before. It felt authentic, playful, and even self-aware.
His voice was strong, precise, and melodic. I’d never found him impressive on record, but in that moment, I got that this is how he’s meant to be heard: backed by a tidal wave of fans scream-singing every word back at him.
(Picture: William Lailey / SWNS)
Astonishingly, all but three of the 23 songs played came from a blistering 18-month period between 1994 and 1995, making the evening a concentrated portrait of a hyper-specific time.
Noel’s solo section was unexpectedly moving. The Masterplan and Little by Little reminded everyone who the melodic architect really is, while Half the World Away, dedicated to The Royle Family (‘not that royal family, the real f***ing Royle Family,’ he clarified), lit up the stadium in a sea of swaying phone lights.
Liam returned for Live Forever, dedicated to the late Ozzy Osbourne, whose face was projected on the screens in an unexpectedly touching acknowledgement of the shoulders Oasis stood on to reach such great heights.
The crowd – who started at energy level 10 and ended somewhere around unhinged – was the friendliest I’ve ever encountered at a show. There was a jittery, reverent alertness to them, the energy of people who had spent too much money, waited too many months, and weren’t going to miss a single second.
In front of me, a group of forty-something men who proudly told me they’d known each other since secondary school in Leeds had reunited from all corners of the UK after fighting tooth and nail for tickets. They cried. They hugged. They threw beer.
One of them, too drunk to stand still, barely faced the stage. Arms flung over his head, head tilted back, facing away from the music, he grinned like a man reborn. It was as if to say: I don’t need to see it, I just need to feel it.
And he did.
But did I?
Oasis’s music is inseparable from the moment it emerged: mid-’90s Britain, all swagger and denim and cigarettes in the rain. If you were a teenager then, I doubt you can see them objectively, and if you weren’t there, I’m not sure you ever truly get it. I accept that.
They captured a version of Britain when things felt possible: Cool Britannia, Blair before the disillusionment, Britpop dominating the charts, football in renaissance, and an economy that still promised upward mobility. They were Beatlesy, but stripped of the naivety. Less dreamy, more laddish.
They felt like the natural continuation of something proudly, specifically British in a moment when globalization was eroding cultural edges.
Still, most of their music sounds… fine to me. Competent. Catchy. But not great.
Then again, I love plenty of music that sounds unremarkable to others. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. And if I can’t see past my own biases, I certainly can’t fault anyone else for theirs.
At one point, the man next to me noticed I was taking notes and asked what I was doing. When I explained I was reviewing the show, he appointed himself Oasis’s unofficial spokesperson.
‘This one’s a B-side,’ he said semi-defensively during Acquiesce, ‘but it’s for the real fans. It might be hard to understand… maybe even boring to you but…’
I reassured him I was having an excellent time, which was true. But more than that, it felt borderline disrespectful not to have a great time while witnessing a night many people would remember as one of the best of their lives.
So I gave in. I leaned into the energy. And before long, I was on the shoulders of a father of three from Newcastle – whose name was either Tom or Greg – scream-singing Rock ’n’ Roll Star like I, too, was from Northumberland and had shared my first kiss to it in 1996.
As I began to understand – physically, emotionally, viscerally – the big deal about this band, things only ramped up. Liam called Wonderwall a ‘wretched song’ but sang it anyway. The communal roar that followed felt like the ghosts of 90,000 people’s youths materialising for four minutes and sixteen seconds.
Tom or Greg cried without embarrassment, clinging to the neck of his lifelong friend (‘This bloke right here, since we was ten!’) who beamed so hard I thought his face might split. Then came Champagne Supernova, fireworks exploding over Wembley.
Liam closed the night with: ‘Nice one for making this happen. It’s good to be f***ing back.’ Somehow, in the context, it felt like a Shakespearan monologue.
I left Wembley exhausted, elated, and – somehow – converted.
Still, if you weren’t a teenager in 1996, I’m not sure you can ever fully understand what Oasis means to their fans. They’re too embedded in a specific moment, a particular British mythology that doesn’t translate easily.
But on Friday night, I brushed up against it and realised it’s not that Oasis’s deep entanglement with British culture holds them back from being one of the world’s greatest rock bands – it’s precisely what makes them so special.
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