CNN: Through their nostalgic tour, Oasis is rekindling the swaggering optimism of the '90s

[highplainsdem]

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/01/entertainment/oasis-live-25-reunion-wembley-90s

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By the time Oasis had finished touring “(What’s the Story?) Morning Glory” in September 1996, the UK’s Conservative government was running on fumes, paving the way for Tony Blair and a New Labour landslide in September 1997. The nation was flush with optimism, led by a government touting Cool Britannia that invited Noel and other artists to drinks at Downing Street (“I was convinced that I was going to get a knighthood,” he later told a reporter). Britain was swaggering on the global stage once more, fronted by a new pantheon of pop culture gods. Hell, the world was even going to fix climate change.

Time and geopolitics slowly eroded Britain’s optimism. Inevitably, musically, politically, it was a tale of diminishing returns as the aughts wore on. Behind the scenes, any infighting from the Gallaghers paled in comparison to what was going on in Downing Street.

In the summer of 2009, Oasis abruptly split, and the following spring Labour lost power to a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. It would take 14 years for Labour to return to government (via another landslide) in July 2024. Then, a month later, Oasis announced it was reuniting. It was the type of coincidence that had one commentator asking if the band’s return was a government psyop.

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“The 1990s now is revered as probably the last great decade when we were free, because the internet had not enslaved us all and driven the world’s neurosis to the point of f—king paralysis,” Noel told GQ in 2021.

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Link to that interview/review in GQ:
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/noel-gallagher-interview-2021

That was a really good interview, with Noel talking a lot about both Oasis and his own work after Oasis broke up in 2009.

Though I had to.smile when I read this:

“As you know, artists are an insecure bunch, because you’re kind of expressing something and giving it to other people to judge,” he told me. “Inside, you think, ‘Well, this is much better than the previous thing I did,’ but you’re not sure. This is the only art form in the world where the people who buy it will try and dictate to you. Nobody stood over Picasso and said, ‘What are you painting blue for? I don’t fucking like blue. I want a red one.’ They didn’t say, ‘Sunflowers? What the fuck’s that? Who wants sunflowers?’ And nobody tells people what movies to make, but in the music business it’s, ‘No, we don’t want that. We want this.’ Somebody said to me early on, people don’t look to you for dance beats and synthesisers. People look to you for the big choruses. I was like, ‘Fuck them.’”

If he still believes that music "is the only art form in the world where the people who buy it will try and dictate to you" then he really needs to talk to a lot more artists who aren't musicians.

Anyway, the GQ piece is a great read.