‘It’s the feelgood story of the decade’: How Oasis brought this divided nation a rare moment of unity
As the Gallagher brothers prepare to conclude their history-making, feud-repairing UK reunion tour with two more nights at Wembley Stadium, Mark Beaumont speaks to Irvine Welsh, Suede and other experts about why the Oasis shows offered a rare moment of catharsis in these bleak times
Summer 2025: a season of discontent. Wars raged, mobs descended on hotels housing refugees, and far-right figureheads swigged their ordinary-bloke-cosplay pints while admiring their formidable polling. Yet, while the rest of the summer marched for Palestine, against immigrants or to sing sweary versions of “Hey Baby” at Donald Trump, Manchester perfected its duck-like swagger and went for a Wonderwalk.
“You came out into Piccadilly station and there’s huge murals, massive pictures of Liam and Noel everywhere you look,” says Hamish MacBain – co-author of recent Oasis book A Sound So Very Loud – who followed the signposted trail from the station to Heaton Park for the band’s first hometown gig in 16 years in July. “[I] went into WH Smiths to get a drink and ‘Columbia’ was blaring out. Every café had ‘soup and a roll with it’ or ‘Digsy’s Dinner’… All the way, every bar, every café, at 10 in the morning, was celebrating Oasis. It felt like the takeover of a city.”
On what’s been dubbed Gallagher Hill, overlooking Heaton Park, ticketless fans gathered in their thousands to sing along to the show; across the city, bars were crammed with roaring fans insisting that Sally wait. Out in the scrum of it, Inspiral Carpets’ Clint Boon was DJing to the crowds. “I’ve never seen [the city] like that ever,” he tells me. “It was a sea of people in bucket hats and the mood was like the end of World War II.”
As the UK leg of Oasis’s much-celebrated reunion tour reaches its climax at Wembley Stadium this weekend, there can be no better summation of how the shows – beside perhaps Glastonbury and the Lionesses’ historic Euros win – have been virtually the summer’s sole saviour. And Oasis hysteria wasn’t confined to Manchester. Across festival season, the bucket hat and Adidas combo made a major comeback, nightclubs rocked anew to “Supersonic” and “Some Might Say” and mini-festivals sprang up at every stop, with fans flocking from across the country to join in the Mardy Gras. This was more than just a tour; this was an explosive moment of national pride, relief, triumph and release lighting up an otherwise bleak, post-pandemic age.
“It’s what we’ve needed,” says author Irvine Welsh, who saw the band play in Edinburgh in August and loved it so much he intends to fly to Argentina to catch more shows later this year. “Since lockdown, we’ve needed big collective events to get people back out onto the streets – it’s great to see that kind of positivity. You look at why people come out on the street en masse now and it’s always things that are generated by fear, protest, or insecurity and hate. It’s so good to have people coming out to big events that are just joyous.”
That a fervent scrum of 14 million people applied online for tickets only helped intensify both anticipation for the tour and, inside the stadiums, the unprecedented scenes of communal celebration among the lucky few. “The vibe was insane,” says Tim Wheeler of Ash, who saw one of the band’s seven Wembley gigs. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show where the crowd has carried the whole thing. [It was] all generations as well. You could see a lot of people going with their kids, but the kids were fully decked out in all the gear, just as hardcore as the parents. People were so emotional and to see a whole stadium jumping like that was impressive.”
Boon found it heartening to see a rock’n’roll band inspiring such strong emotions. “It showed the unity, how songs can unite millions of people,” he says. “Everybody’s buzzing, everybody’s coming together, people who’ve never met each other hugging and crying… I think that’s a beautiful thing. As a nation, we need more of that kind of thing at the moment and less of the divisive stuff that’s going on.”
Indeed, the stark contrast between the jubilant mood at and around Oasis gigs and the sour, combative state of global events and online discourse – from Ukraine and Gaza, to Labour and Reform’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, the UK’s flag protests and the still-spluttering Twitter/X bin fire – has served to make Oasis a singular shining beacon of the Great British spirit in 2025. “For two hours you completely forget about all the s*** that’s happening in the world at the moment,” says Wheeler. For McBain, it was a natural result of the band’s escapist music. “I read something in The Times about Radiohead coming back and their outspoken views on Gaza and all this stuff,” he says, “and it said, ‘Unlike Oasis, who forget that the world outside the stadium even exists…’ They obviously meant that as an insult, but to me that’s literally what you’re aiming for. You want to get 80,000 people in a stadium and just forget about what’s going on for two hours.”
An experience gilded by the redemptive nature of the Gallagher brothers’ reconciliation itself. “There’s such a story with Oasis, that after all this feuding they’re back together and managed to bury the hatchet,” says Wheeler. “People are emotionally invested in it.” The happy resolution of this long-running soap opera, which MacBain calls “part of the fabric of British life”, has certainly struck a chord with the silent, decent majority, the year’s one high-profile indication that humanity still exists. “It’s the best feelgood story of this decade,” Boon argues. “It’s a bit of a fairytale. Some of us knew that this would happen and it was gonna happen sooner rather than later, the reunion. Nobody died or ran off with somebody’s wife. It was just a couple of lads who had a bit of a fall-out.”
Financially, the shows have been a major economic boost – and not just to the Gallaghers’ pockets. Research published online by Dr Charles Nimoh, macroeconomic expert at the University of Salford, found that the tour has caused a “noticeable ripple effect” on the UK economy to the tune of an estimated £940m, with each show resulting in around £55m in local economic activity and £426m generated in London alone. “Every city hosting an Oasis gig turned into a mini-festival,” his report concluded. “Oasis got back together, fans lost their voices, pubs ran out of beer, and the UK made a fortune. The effects of this epic tour will be felt for a long time.”
There’s such a story with Oasis, that after all this feuding they’re back together and managed to bury the hatchet
Musically too. In the Nineties, Oasis were merely the biggest band of a decade-defining Cool Britannia moment that involved many moving parts, from Geri Halliwell’s dress to Chris Evans’ toothbrush. In 2025 however – even with last year’s Blur comeback still warm and Pulp touring a new album – they seem to stand alone in terms of sheer cultural stature, as if solely defining Britpop. But they don’t exist in an online vacuum; many of Oasis’s contemporaries are seeing a knock-on effect from the reunion. “There were lots of younger people there last night and it's great,” Suede’s Mat Osman told me the morning after the first show of their recent Southbank takeover series. “You see them online talking about how they got there – often they saw an Oasis thing, then they read about Britpop, and then they’re like ‘oh, Suede started this’.”
Ash have also seen their fans grow younger and their streaming numbers rocket this summer. “There does seem to be a strong interest in Nineties music,” says Wheeler. “Early on in the summer, I did see a really strong rise in our Spotify numbers, which I think probably was the algorithm throwing our songs in after some Oasis [tracks] sometimes, or Britpop playlists getting heavily hammered at the moment.”
Boon (who tours the UK with Inspiral Carpets in November and December) has noted a rejuvenated interest in the era, both at gigs and during his DJ sets. “It’s definitely given guitar music a little boost that was needed,” he says. “I bet there’s a lot of kids who’ve gone out and got guitars as a result of it. You’ll probably get a lot of people that will emulate Oasis but there’ll be others who make some mad noise and it could become the next punk revolution.”
While The Independent’s sources have debunked whispers of further shows to come next year, we might still be on the cusp of an Oasis-inspired rock revival. “I’m hoping that something really good comes of it,” Welsh says. “That it gets people interested in playing guitars, gets them interested in joining bands, gets them interested in writing songs together. People should want to be Liam and Noel Gallagher. They shouldn’t just be worshipping at that church, they should be thinking, ‘These are ordinary guys that came from the same background as me, I should be up there doing this kind of s*** as well.’”
Historically, such moments of cultural euphoria have had empowering effects on the generations that owned them. Think of the countercultural explosions that followed Beatlemania, or the rush of youth optimism that met New Labour in the wake of Britpop. This time may well be different, argues Ian Pace, Professor of Music, Culture and Society at City St George’s, University of London, who lectures on British music and society since 1945. “Oasis have become iconic of a particular era when so much looked fresh, optimistic, full of possibilities, to which many now look back with nostalgia,” he says, pointing to the vast chasm between the rejuvenating late-Nineties change of political guard – driven by inclusive young people reclaiming the national identity – and today’s world of toxic infighting, economic decline, Starmerite uncertainty and the diminished standing of Brexit Britain.
The result might instead be a “yearning after past ideals” amongst their (predominantly male) fans, which, Pace fears, could dovetail with today’s rising populism. “At the moment I would imagine Oasis-mania and the new flag-wavers are distinct groups,” he says, “but it is certainly possible to imagine the two coming together. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that this sort of fandom could take on a darker tinge.”
Welsh, on the other hand, sees the Oasis gatherings as the diametric opposite of the recent Tommy Robinson march. “There’s nobody there thinking that they’re better or superior to anybody else,” he says. “[There’s no] exceptionalism, there’s no notion of confrontation or aggression. There’s so much love in the stadium… It’s not unity for the sake of denigrating somebody else.” And we can only hope it’s this sentiment, rather than any sort of back-looking anger, that the nation takes to heart.
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