Over the last few years Oasis has experienced an undeniable resurgence, becoming a mainstay in the public spotlight despite not officially producing any new music in over 15 years. With this in mind could we argue that it is not Britpop that refuses to die but Oasis alone? It certainly seems the market is in familiarity and that new music is not a priority amongst listeners.
Since the announcement of Oasis’ Live ’25 tour, there has been a noticeable resurgence in popularity and public displays of support, not to mention the prices the band could command through an unpopular dynamic pricing system. The Manc suggests that for the 2025 shows, 10million fans worldwide sat in the online queue for 1.4million tickets. Evidently the support for Oasis has been stalwart over the years, but what about the other Britpop big hitters? Blur have not reignited the ‘Battle of Britpop’ feud between the bands but maybe they don’t need to. Between the two titans of the 90s English music scene, they are the only ones to release new music with their latest 2023 album ‘The Ballad of Darren’. Not to mention Damon Albarn continuing his creative pursuits beyond Blur with Gorillaz forming in 1998.
Old rivalries aside, Britpop without Oasis has continued to tick along and has seen minor success in the 2020s with bands such as Pulp, Supergrass and Elastica, and the Verve’s Richard Ashcroft all seeing their newest albums rank in the UK charts. So, while the torch is carried by Oasis perpetuating their own music rather than continuing to build on the scene, the bands that defined the decade for many people are continuing to release new music to a far smaller audience – as far as Spotify monthly listener counts will have you believe. It is rare for a person to completely neglect the music they grew up with, and the people who grew up waiting patiently for (What’s the Story) Morning Glory to come out are, as a demographic, still kicking.
It is not just Gen X and Millennials listening to their youths however. In 2024 Ipsos found that 45% of adults aged 18-34 would consider themselves Oasis fans. The oldest of this group would have been born the same year as Definitely Maybe, therefore popularity has surpassed the original consumers. So why has the parka-wearing sunglasses-sporting youth of yesterday not passed on the styling cues along with the music? The community of music still persists. The parkas are swapped for track jackets and polos, and the sunglasses have migrated northwards to become bucket hats and the youth of today have found the same community in Oasis through a scene fostered by their Britpop blaring predecessors.
All, however, is not as it once was: both Oasis as a band and their music have escaped the circumstances that created them – the once working-class group now plays to a masquerading middle class that has adopted the music and will throw copious amounts of money to see a glimpse of feigned authenticity. As established the original fans are still around but as the crowd of today grows they are attracting a wider audience that asks nothing more of them than repetition of the songs they already know: so can Britpop live beyond the artists who started it and the supporters who lived it, or will we always pretend and have gigs at Heaton Park and Knebworth to say we were where we have never been?
