Nobody at the Oasis show cares if you’re cool

I did not expect to achieve self-actualization at Oasis’ hometown show in Manchester on a sunny mid-July afternoon, tears streaming freely during “Acquiesce.” I was singing that song, one of the few to feature both Liam and Noel Gallagher on vocals, at the top of my lungs alongside tens of thousands of lads in a Pacific Ocean of bucket hats and sky-blue ephemera, but there we were, and now here we are. Within minutes, I’d gone from rolling my eyes at the idea of moshing to “Morning Glory” to screeching each verse in total euphoria, as these are lyrics you can never forget because they are burned deep and hard into our skulls from the first listen. Because after so many years grappling with my love for Oasis — and where liking British guitar music put me on the ever-shifting axis of “coolness” — one thing became clear as I sang those songs I’d never thought I’d hear live. You will never, ever be too cool to love music in its entirety, because it is one of the few things in life worth living for.

I’ll admit that I had my own reservations about the reunion. I was a die-hard Oasis fan as a teenager after my guitar teacher played me “Champagne Supernova,” and overdosed on their entire discography and lore. It led to me being diagnosed with the disease of Anglophila, as I discovered Blur, Arctic Monkeys, and New Order soon after. British rock music became my solace and source of escape from the misery of my own life, impacted by my parents’ divorce and the depressive ennui that came with merely being a teenaged misfit. My fanaticism became so unruly that I also at one point not only a) dressed up as Noel Gallagher as part of a Halloween cover show night as my band were playing as Oasis, but I also got b) dumped dressed up as Noel Gallagher, wig and glasses and all. The fact that U.K. music culture was so rich and different from my life in every single way was greatly appealing. Oasis’ escapist lyrics and records, which were all about a desperation to leave their hometown of Manchester for something, anything better, deeply resonated with me. They are the band, after the Beatles, to have shaped my life the most.

But as I graduated out of my moody British guitar music phase and spent more time expanding my listening tastes, I knew what the appropriate responses were meant to be when Oasis were brought up in conversation. You were to scoff, to scorn; to flippantly dismiss them as nothing more than a generic indie guitar lad band, the personification of white male mediocrity, music for the smooth-brained. Music for the masses. But even through all my performative scoffing, I still woke up at 4am in a frenzied headrush to (successfully) purchase tickets for their reunion tour, an event that I hadn’t been able to begin to process until almost an entire year later, because my dormant love for Oasis was reborn.

I could understand why British people associated Oasis with the establishment, and with nationalism. My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields believed Britpop was a conspiracy pushed by the government. These are reasons why I do not like the NFL or Taylor Swift. But I am not British. I am from the desolate land otherwise known as the United States of America, and I love Oasis because they represent the opposite of everything that I have ever known as I was growing up, and I will continue to love them because life is too short to not sing “Champagne Supernova” on a field in Manchester during the summertime with your closest friends. I’m not alone here. Oasismania has been sweeping both the U.K. and the U.S., with the tours selling out instantly. It uncovered a generation of young music fans who have chosen to lean into their love of Oasis, including our favorite current indie rock bands like Momma, Militaire Gun, Dazy, and Wishy.

My fears that the Heaton Park crowd would be boisterous and rowdy were unfounded, because everyone there was aware of the scale of the event, a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. Yes, there were plenty of lads on the ale, but they were friendly, and cheerful in their drunken stupor: “Best Wednesday I’ve had all week,” a man in front of me remarked to his mate, pint in either hand while also smoking a cig. There will be no other rock band who will be able to be so unifying and momentous in their return, and every attendee at the Oasis shows are aware of this fact. There were plenty of crowdgoers who are sure to have witnessed the band at their peak in the ‘90s, but it was enlightening to also be surrounded by lots of millennials my age who were just newborns when (What’s the Story) was released; lots of young women with their girlfriends; loads of Gen-Z kids wearing Charli xcx wraparound sunglasses and vintage football jerseys; and just lots and lots of hugging, arms around shoulders, ear-to-ear grins, elated sobbing. Sure, I did think I was about to die during the intro snippet of “Fuckin’ In the Bushes” that barelled into bombastic openers “Hello,” “Acquiesce,” “Morning Glory,” where everyone around me started jumping up and down in euphoric unison that I felt like someone was about to yell “FOR SCOTLAND”. Beers were thrown in the air, grown men were hoisted up on the shoulders of others, toothy grins stretching from ear to ear. But it was the sort of fevered excitement that I saw at football matches, the crowd singalongs akin to “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at Anfield in solidarity with thousands of other Liverpool fans. I was highly aware that I was merely a visitor in these parts, a daytripper at the holy sanctuary that is Northern England to partake in a religious sermon, but there was no hierarchy in the crowd. As long as you were there, you mattered.

I am on such a high of euphoria that individual moments of the set are blurry to me, and all I can remember is the feeling of singing certain verses and choruses, watching Liam shake his maracas as if his goddamn life depended on it. Never did I think watching grown men throw pints of lager onto their heads would be so beautiful. Noel Gallagher’s melodies and lyrics — “Is it my imagination, or have I finally found something worth living for?” from “Cigarettes & Alcohol” was particularly affecting — have transcended to hymn status at this point. There will always be something cathartic about noisy guitars and rock music, losing yourself in the power chords and dissonance, but there is something so healing watching the Gallagher brothers play a reunion show 15 years in the making and a 70,000-strong choir singing all the words.

Nobody here is pretending they are too cool for Oasis. My parents’ divorce started the year that the band broke up, and singing “Some Might Say” to myself healed the pain of the divorce which, in turn, made me agonize over the possibility that I’d never see them perform. Chanting the opening riff of “Supersonic” healed the trauma of when I got dumped while dressed as Noel Gallagher (wig *and* glasses) a few years ago because my band was about to cover Oasis for a Halloween show at Our Wicked Lady in Brooklyn, and the sound engineer told me that I was playing the opening guitar riff of that song wrong. Dancing to “Slide Away” and listening to Liam’s strained, cracking vocals and echoing his sentiments of being in love washed away any reservations I had about where loving Oasis stands in the coolness matrix. Life’s too short to shy away from the songs that you love.