We Are Oasis

Oasis! They split, we split. Why Britain Needs Its Band back more than ever.

August 29th, 2009. Oasis splits. And with that, we flipped into a parallel universe. A world without Oasis. Without their music, their attitude, their outlook. Sure, the Gallagher brothers were still around, cropping up in solo projects and Twitter spats, but the unifying force of nature that was Oasis—the band—was gone. And the world has paid for it ever since.

It wasn’t just the end of a band. It was the death of a feeling, of a soundtrack that stitched together council schemes and terraces across the UK. For me, it marked the end of an era and the start of something more subdued. I became a dad that year. Hung up my spurs. Moved to a new city. Lost connections, gained responsibilities. Swapped the pub for nappies, the guitar for textbooks. And in chasing something better, I quietly turned my back on where I came from.

Sixteen years later, they’re finally back. Oasis are playing shows this year, and it couldn’t come soon enough. Not just for the nostalgia, not just for the songs, but because the world has changed—and not necessarily for the better. And I believe Oasis, in all their swaggering, unapologetic, two-fingered glory, are the antidote to everything that’s gone wrong.

Reflect and Connect

I have a theory. Always have. It’s called Reflect and Connect. I later found out that marketing psychologists call this identity resonance—when a person sees themselves in a brand, a band, or a story, and that reflection builds loyalty, emotion, and belonging.

Oasis were playing "Some Might Say"—a tune I'd already worn out on cassette. I was 11 years old, and there they were on Top of the Pops. Liam, mid-moan (miming) into the mic, was wearing a blue Umbro jacket. My mum, half-watching as she pottered, said, "Look, he's got a jacket like yours." And that was it. Top tune. Top singer. Top jacket. That was the connection. He dressed like me. Talked like the lads on my street, only with a Manc accent and not a Scottish one. He wasn’t performing to me; he was performing as me. Oasis reflected who we were—working class, mouthy, stylish, angry, ambitious—and in doing so, they connected.

Every tribe needs a voice. Oasis were ours. You saw them and thought, "That could be me." They were permission slips. Cultural passports. They told us we could be something more, without having to become someone else.

These days? That’s gone. The music scene is dominated by curated, filtered, algorithm-fed puppets. Acts with no soul, no fire, no roots. Manufactured personalities mimicking authenticity. Don’t believe me? Stick on Glastonbury 2025. Every band looks like they work in a Starbucks. Pleasant-looking kids in vintage band tees with fine line tattoos, kidding on they’re rockstars. Zero swagger. Zero charisma. Useless without the filters and the laptop backing tracks. They look like they’ve just come from oat milk training day. It’s all show, no soul. And the working class? We’re not reflected anymore. So how the fuck can we connect?

But it's not just music that's lost its guts. Society's gone the same way—vapid, homogenous, and terrified of standing out. We wear the same clothes, post the same content, talk in the same recycled TikTok cadences. It’s a beige parade of pseudo-positivity and desperate likability. Nobody wants to offend. Nobody wants to risk being hated. So nobody says anything real.

There used to be a soundtrack for every kind of person. Goths. Skaters. Mods. Rockers. Ravers. Metalheads. Moshers. Each one had a look, a sound, a language, a world. Now? It's just one big melting pot of bland.

That’s the price of over-marketing. Appeal to everyone and you end up meaning nothing to anyone. Culture’s been commodified into a mush of brand-safe nonsense. But art—real art—shouldn’t be safe. It should provoke, disturb, uplift, divide, inspire.

We don’t need another algorithm-approved anthem that has a Tik-Tok dance attached. We need bands with accents. With purpose. With punch. We need voices that don’t bend for sponsorships or social media guidelines. We need a band that reflects us again.

We need Oasis.

Class Isn’t Just a Theme, It’s a Birthmark

The Gallagher brothers are multimillionaires now and will bank a hefty wedge from the gigs this summer and everything that comes with it. Sure, there's been criticism about the ticket prices, but funny how nobody pipes up about that when it’s Taylor fucking Swift or Ed fucking Sheeran.

But here's the thing: as rich as they may be, they’re still unmistakably working class. You can’t fake that. And you can’t wash it off, either. Class clings to you like cigarette smoke in a boozer—it gets in your clothes, your voice, your humour, your outlook. It doesn’t matter how many millions you make or how posh your postcode becomes; if you grew up with damp walls and hand-me-downs, that DNA doesn’t change.

What I’ve realised, through my own detour up the aspirational ladder, is that being working class isn’t something to outgrow—it’s something to be ferociously proud of. Because it’s real. It’s earned. It teaches you to graft, to listen, to laugh in the face of despair, and to smell bullshit a mile away. That’s what Oasis carry with them. That’s what still pulses under the surface of every riff and lyric.

They are—and always will be—the product of post-industrial Britain. And that matters. Because when everything else feels fake, class reminds you who you are. Not who you wish you were. Who you are.

The rise of social media has warped everything. Success is no longer about talent, it’s about reach. About clickability. About marketability. Some 19-year-old sings a Drake cover into their ring light and they’re a “star”. Who are they? What do they stand for? Who knows. Who cares. They're a product.

But worse than that, it’s made everything fake and pasteurised. The truth of being working class isn’t just ignored—it’s hidden, repackaged, or worse, satirised. Our struggles become punchlines or gritty set dressing for middle-class drama. Our accents are mocked until they’re marketable. Our humour gets stolen, our style copied, and our reality blurred by influencers talking 'struggle' for content.

Real life has been filtered out. There’s no space for rawness. No celebration of flaws, of rough edges, of the kind of graft and gallows humour that shaped people like us. Social media’s made it all smooth, beige, and bland—or worse, shocking to the point of being vulgar and absurd just for the sake of attention as I wrote about previously. We either get sanitised nonsense designed not to offend anyone or hysterical displays of manufactured outrage and titillation.

In many ways, the truth of being working class has been erased from view. Hidden, or worse, turned into a caricature. The depth, the dignity, the craft of the culture reduced to memes, parodies, and staged hardship for likes. And without bands like Oasis to punch through that veneer, the real voices get drowned out in the noise of pretending and performing.

No band or artist in the mainstream reflects the grit, grind, or gallus energy of people from schemes, terraces, or building sites. Oasis did.

They didn’t dress up in costumes. They were the costume. And they never apologised for it.

The World Got Too Serious

In the past decade and a half, we’ve become incapable of letting things go. Every week has a new culture war, a new scandal, a new hashtag to fight over. It’s like we’ve all become unpaid columnists for some imaginary newspaper that no one reads.

Back when Oasis ruled, it was okay to take the piss. To argue. To throw pints, not tantrums. The world didn’t end if someone disagreed with you.

Now? We’ve become weaker. Fragile. Too many people would rather live by the cosy lies they tell themselves than confront uncomfortable truths. We’ve stopped calling each other on our bullshit. Accountability’s gone missing. Instead, we hide behind hashtags and diagnoses, turn every disagreement into a moral crime, and weaponise labels like racist, misogynist, fascist—often without knowing the weight of the words.

We’ve become a society afraid of offence, obsessed with optics, and allergic to honesty. But art isn’t meant to be polite. And neither is truth. That’s why we need voices that say what they mean, mean what they say, and don’t ask permission to be real. That’s why we need Oasis.

We weren’t as sensitive, sure. But we were real. And we laughed more. We need that again. We need people who say what they think without a disclaimer, who throw verbal grenades and then light a fag. Liam’s Twitter alone is more honest than most political debates.

But the thing I loved most about Oasis—particularly Liam—was their ability to stay the fuck out of it. They weren’t political. They won't weigh in on Gaza, on Trump, on Brexit or Trans rights. They just loved their tunes, their football, and their families. That’s all most of us blokes want too—to be left alone to enjoy those simple things. No lectures. No hashtags. No grandstanding. Just good music and real life. Keep the politics and pish out the conversation.

Men Need New Mirrors

Let’s be honest. White working-class men have become the punchline in a lot of conversations. At best, we’re seen as relics. At worst, we’re threats.

And it’s not like we don’t have our demons. From pub brawls to petty crime to full-blown villain arcs, the working-class lad has often been cast as the thug, the ned, the scally. And aye, some of that is earned. But scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find the truth: these aren't born baddies. They're boys with nowhere to go. Council schemes without community centres. Pubs closing down. Football priced out. Trades and industry vanishing. No band, no voice, no movement that reflects them. No safe space to just be themselves without judgment or mockery.

So what happens? That energy curdles. That passion turns to poison. You either become invisible or you become feared. And instead of expressing that rage through music, through art, through something transformative, they vent it in 280-character rants. They scream into the void of Twitter, lashing out at ghosts and avatars, their anger bleeding into prejudice, ignorance, and paranoia.

What could have been a raw lyric, a bold painting, or a stage-shaking riff, becomes another thread in an algorithm's web. We’ve mistaken venting for creating. But art doesn’t just express—it elevates. And without a place to channel that anger, all we’re left with is bitterness, hashtags, and a slow, cultural rot.

That’s why we need culture that makes room for them. Art that doesn’t patronise. Bands that don’t pander. A scene where they’re not just welcome—they’re essential.

Oasis were that. They still are.

In the meantime blokes adapted. Some of us became Andrew Tate acolytes. Others went full Liver King. Gym bros. Ice baths. Biohacking. Elk meat and hustle porn. It’s all very American. Very aspirational. Very not us.

But where’s the British version of that masculine ideal? The one that lets a man be loud, flawed, funny, romantic, proud of his roots, but still tender? The working-class noble savage—who looks after himself, works hard for his family, provides, follows his team, and buys a nice pair of Adidas trainers with his hard-earned cash. No gimmicks. No guru talk. Just a straight-up, grounded, decent bloke with backbone and banter. That man deserves cultural reflection too.

Oasis gave us that. They didn’t tell you to meditate. They told you to get on with it. Put the kettle on. Cry if you need to. Drink if you want to. Love your mum. Write a song. That’s a blueprint too.

We Need Art That Smells Like Us

Authenticity isn’t a filter. It’s not an aesthetic. It’s a scent. It’s the smell of pubs and wet tarmac, of chip fat and burnt toast. Of council flats and stolen lighters.

Oasis smelt like us. Talked like us. Argued like us. And they made stunning music anyway. But more than that, their music had a uniting quality—in sound, in spirit, in sheer attitude. We were Oasis. Every single one of us. They were the anthem and the mirror, the fight and the forgiveness, the swagger and the soul. When the Gallaghers split, we split. That invisible thread that pulled the working class together across schemes and terraces snapped. And the silence since has been deafening.

That’s what we’re missing. And it matters. Because when working-class kids don’t see their lives reflected in the culture, they start believing they’re not worthy of it. That art is something that happens to other people.

Fuck that. We built the stages. We pulled the pints. We kept the lights on. We deserve to see ourselves under those lights too.

One Last Thing

This article uses the word 'we' a lot, but I could've just as easily said 'me' or 'I'. Because this has been my journey. I spent a long time trying to be better than my class. Got a degree. Took up psychology. Talked differently. Dressed differently. I tried to prove I was more than some wee guy from the tenements of Torry in Aberdeen.

But I’ve learned something over the last 16 years. Class never leaves you—and it shouldn't. Because being working class is something to be mad proud of. You can't fake it, just like you can't fake not being it. And now I see the value in sticking to my roots, knowing who I am, where I came from, and more importantly, passing those values on to my kids.

Because looking back, I wasn’t climbing up. I was climbing out. Away from myself. I was climbing a ladder of success only to realise it had been leaning against the wrong wall, to coin a phrase. And when you get to the top of the wrong wall, there’s nothing up there worth having—no view, no joy, just distance from your roots.

And now? I want back to the culture that raised me. To the voices that sound like mine. And to the band that made it okay to dream loud.

So I, for one, am beside myself with excitement that they’re back. Liam. Noel. The whole bloody circus. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Because we need Oasis.

We need to remember who the fuck we are.

See you down the front.(Though I’ll probably only get a seating ticket.)

Ray