Oasis are reuniting, and it’s entirely the fault of one man. Of course that man is Keir Starmer. I’m only half joking.
There should be something utterly risible about this recent bit of music news. But somehow, when just about every cultural event makes itself so annoyingly unavoidable, shrieking in your face and daring you to ignore it, it’s often difficult to muster more than a shrug. This is surely the point.
Stepping back though, I cannot help but feel a kind of wry pity for Britain. This is an island that once fancied itself the pinnacle of western civilization, and had all the pomp and brutal violence needed to back it up. Now it’s a place that prides itself on being a backwater.
Thirty some odd years ago, when Oasis first started climbing their way up the charts, the country was at least trying to find a way to maintain its spot in the global cosmopolis without its empire. That was the whole grating point of “Cool Britannia” and Britpop. If it gave rise to insufferable groups like Oasis, it at least helped expose the world to the likes of Elastica, Suede, and Pulp (the latter of which is a band that can do no fucking wrong musically and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise).
And now? Now Britain is the kind of place where people start burning down hotels because a few migrants are daring to shelter there instead of drowning off the cliffs of Dover. Yes, it was always that kind of place. Underneath the surface of even the most liberal (former) empire is the most basic and nasty forms of racism you can find, and Britain was never that liberal to begin with.
Now the last vestiges of the empire are juttering themselves loose from the mothership. Brexit has all but assured the return of Northern Ireland to the rest of the 32 counties. The main reason Scottish independence isn’t immediately imminent is because the Scottish National Party has imploded, but it’s only a matter of time until some other force manages to pick that mantle back up.
Between this and the unravelling of what is left of the country’s social safety net, it’s no wonder that people who wrapped entirely too much of their identity around being British are completely losing it right now. They want nothing more than for things to go back the way they were, even if that way never existed. They’ll impose it through rampant destruction if need be. And because centrists don’t riot over anything, I’m going to go ahead and say that Oasis’ reunion is the centrist equivalent.
Look, I will be the first to admit that Oasis’ songs could be extremely catchy, and it’s on some level understandable that you can still hear drunk forty-somethings caterwauling their songs in pubs late at night. Zoom out, though, and you have to wonder why this was the band that came to symbolize Britpop. They were the least interesting, the least experimental and adventurous, the most hidebound by their conceptions of what rock and roll “should be.”
This is, according to the band’s own history, entirely down to Noel Gallagher. When he joined the band, he did it on the explicit condition that he be its sole songwriter and front-man. It was a quizzical insistence given that he also insisted Liam continue as Oasis’ lead singer. Particularly because Noel can sing just fine. Hell, he sings their most recognizable song, “Don’t Look Back In Anger.” The video features Liam skulking in the background with a tambourine, reduced to an appendage, a cut-rate Bez. It all gives us a pretty good idea of Noel’s actual vision for Oasis, one he never had the spine to make reality.
Still, “Don’t Look Back In Anger” is a pretty good example of what Noel brought to the band. The song resolutely refuses to stray from the “verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-chorus” convention. The rhythm guitar is a basic and predictable barre chord progression, and the bass is all root notes. There is absolutely nothing even remotely risky or innovative in the song.
To be fair, it’s not like the band was trying to revolutionize music. Oasis got a lot of flak for sounding so much like the early Beatles. The opening piano part is, by Noel’s admission, ripped off from John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Even the song’s title is an inversion of John Osborne’s iconic 1956 play Look Back In Anger, a break in the dam that briefly turned the theatre into a receptacle of rage and dissatisfaction directed at what had become of the British way of life.
“Don’t Look Back In Anger” is an appeal to convention in every sense. From its predictable structure to its video’s set piece rockstar mansion to Noel’s own Union Jack guitar, this is a song that declares the band’s intention to behave. Particularly compared to what most other Britpop bands were doing. No wonder they became the genre’s poster lads. In the context of a slow-but-steady attrition against public funding for the arts and arts education, the truly patriotic British artists must learn to be comfortable in the middle of the road.
It was a role Oasis eagerly took up. Blur had a contradictory relationship with New Labour, Pulp’s take was more outwardly oppositional. Noel Gallagher and Oasis loved Tony Blair, a man who Margaret Thatcher once called her “greatest accomplishment.” More recently, Gallagher has become one of those sneering centrist dads whose hatred for all things left and egalitarian can only be explained by either their class position or a complete lack of basic sense.
“Fuck Jeremy Corbyn,” said Gallagher during Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, “he’s a communist.” He also said that he wished Blair was still in politics so he could vote for him again, and that he’d rather reunite with his brother than have Corbyn run the country. Now he’s got Keir Starmer in power and Oasis is back together. Starmer is no Blair, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Gallagher were angling for another invitation to come party at No. 10.
Call it a return to his glory days. A Labour government in power, one that leaves his wealth intact. Starmer won’t be doing much of anything to help out most ordinary Brits, but I’m willing to bet people like Gallagher will be acting like he has. Blairism and Cool Britannia were themselves little more than vibes.
I may not know how people feel about Oasis’ reunion, but I do know for a fact that millions of young people in Britain feel trapped between a vague memory of how things were and what they are now. Between the hopeless expenses of higher education and the knowledge that it used to be (relatively) affordable. Between the promises of the National Health Service they learned about in school and the current months-long wait to see a doctor. Between the idea that the basic role of a functional society is to take care of everyone, and the “no entry” signs that seem to cordon off anything resembling a future.
They’ve heard that at some point, something has to give, and are asking, a bit more desperately each time, when that might be. Now, the universe replies: “Anyway, here’s ‘Wonderwall.’”
Header photo is from the video for Oasis’ “Wonderwall.”