In case you didn’t hear: Oasis are back.
Manchester’s most celebrated band – comprised of Gallagher brothers Liam and Noel – split in 2009 amid fall-outs and fights, waged a cold war in the press for 15 years, and have ostensibly put their differences aside.
Despite the Ticketmaster fiasco that followed their announcement of a string of live dates for summer 2025 – and despite questions raised over the band’s decision to apparently allow such a shambles – those nights will be treasured by the thousands flocking to Heaton Park, Wembley, and elsewhere.
Thirty years ago, Oasis were – for better or worse – the biggest band in the country, and remained so for the majority of their 18 years together. Sixteen number one singles and albums combined, millions of records sold worldwide, the Wonderwall hitmakers remain the flagship British band of the 1990s.
But their reunion raises a question: which British bands from the 21st century, if they split up today, would command even a 10th of Oasis’ widespread furor if they were to reunite in 2040?
Arctic Monkeys are the obvious choice. But what of the several dozen others who came up alongside them in the British garage rock revival and ‘indie sleaze’ era of the mid-2000s?
The Libertines? Bloc Party? Franz Ferdinand? The… Kooks? The, erm, Pigeon Detectives? Razorlight? Please don’t make me ring up The Twang or Reverend and the Makers. I’d rather not bring Royal Blood or The Vaccines into this either.
A lot’s also been made of the unfortunate timing of Catfish and the Bottlemen’s August 2025 gig at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium – it clashes with one of Oasis’ shows at Wembley Stadium just down the road. A significant number of Catfish tickets, available at £65, remain unsold. It’s a losing battle.
You imagine the poor old Bottlemen gig would face similarly stiff competition were it Blur, or Pulp, or Radiohead, or even The Manic Street Preachers who had been absent since 2009 and suddenly promised a run of Wembley gigs.
Regardless, the list of viable 21st century options is miniscule. So, you have to wonder: when did new British rock stop resonating with the British public?
For 15 years now, if not longer, the pop charts have been bereft of such a scene or sound from these shores. The bare facts state that the last rock band to land a UK number one with a new song were American act Kings of Leon (Sex on Fire) in 2008, while the last British band to achieve the feat with a rock song were Kaiser Chiefs (Ruby) a year prior.
Coldplay scored number ones in the 2010s but their albums from either side of the turn of the decade, 2008’s Viva La Vida and 2011’s Mylo Xoloto, marked a significant pop-oriented departure from their early Britpop sound. Rage Against the Machine’s funk metal Christmas number one in 2009, Killing in the Name, was already 17 years old when it topped the charts.
The British public stopped buying rock albums
In the 2000s, British rock bands were responsible for 18 of the 100 biggest-selling albums of the decade. Three of those were greatest hits compilations from The Beatles, Queen, and Oasis themselves, but the numbers remain healthy.
Between 2010 and 2019, that number dropped to just eight. And of those eight best-selling albums, three were greatest hits collections of bands formed before 2000 (Oasis, Electric Light Orchestra, and Stereophonics), one was released in 1977 (Rumours by Fleetwood Mac), and two were from Coldplay, for whom the 2010s was defined by their deeper forays into pop and electronic genres.
All this serves to reinforce is that, to the music-buying public, British rock is a thing of the past. Something that once was but no longer is, running only on nostalgia and fumes.
Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner insisted in 2014 that ‘rock and roll [would always] make its way back through the sludge and smash through the glass ceiling,’ but there’s barely been a tap on said ceiling in the subsequent decade.
The decline of British rock as a commercial force is not something to mourn by default. I could happily live without it, as could – it seems – millions of others. Pop is a glorious, diverse thing that contains multitudes and then some. Scenes come and go, buying habits change, genres shift and mutate. If rock is a victim of anything, it’s just the cyclical nature of all things.
The banks crashed, the world’s economy collapsed…
But, with that said, dig under the surface of British rock’s decline and something nasty crawls out. A country’s arts scene neglected and desolate, an entire class of people almost completely shut out of mainstream culture, and a genre growing increasingly complacent and sedentary.
In 2008, a year after Kaiser Chiefs’ last stand, the banks crashed, the world’s economy collapsed on itself, UK public services were decimated by Tory austerity, and UK arts funding among the working classes collapsed.
An investigation by The Guardian has revealed that some major city councils – including Birmingham and Nottingham – are cutting arts and cultural funding by 100%, while public fundraising initiatives for the arts have all but disappeared.
Research conducted by Equity found that British arts funding fell by 16% after 2017, with the worst of those cuts coming in Wales (30%). Data from the University of Warwick found that culture funding dropped 48% between 2009 and 2023.
Add the growing cost of living crisis to the equation, the impact of Brexit on grants provided by the European Union, and you have to ask: is this most expensive time in modern history for a group of kids to start a band?
If the answer is yes, then surely cash-strapped independent record labels must be living through the riskiest and most expensive time to sign them up.
Tom Clarke, frontman of indie outfit The Enemy – who enjoyed major chart success in the late 2000s – revealed to BeffShuff in 2018 that a group of rock kids being able to go over the top was no longer possible just a decade after their heyday.
He said: ‘Before there was [the band], a manager, an agent, a promoter, a record label, a publisher. It’s not possible to do that in today’s market unless you’re going to put millions of pounds behind it.’
In a separate statement in 2015, Tom stated: ‘I’ve seen [middle and upper class] parents bankroll the beginnings of entire careers, where working class artists would have had to sign away rights to get funding from labels.’
And this is happening against a much larger, more devastating backdrop, where the number of working class musicians, actors, and writers occupying high-profile cultural positions has fallen by half since the 1970s.
With that in mind, however, it’s worth asking why British rock has fallen so far out of mainstream consideration with teenagers and young adults, while UK rap – a thoroughly working class genre from day one – has thrived and defined conversations about British exports on the world stage since the 2010s.
Does British rock have an answer to Glastonbury headliner Stormzy, or Platinum-selling D-Block Europe, or Mercury Prize winner Little Simz, or two-time number one star J Hus, or chart-topping acts Dave and Central Cee, or indie darling Loyle Carner?
Even before Tory cuts, rock on the international stage hadn’t shown any signs of returning to the top of the mountain since the emergence of US hip hop and synthpop in the 80s, or rave and electronic dance music in the 90s.
In a UK context, against the backdrop of Tory austerity, is rap just a more effective, faster, and (most importantly) cheaper way to get working class voices and stories to as many young ears as possible? Why join a band and fork out for equipment, rehearsal spaces, and rising electricity bills, when you can lead an army of one from your bedroom, armed only with a notepad, a USB microphone, and the truth?
Scenes and movements within UK rap – such as drill – have had to battle against legal action taken by the UK government and police to quash listening figures and encourage radio station bans. Still the likes of Central Cee and Digga D consistently produce major hit singles and number one albums.
Which begs another question: is rock just running out of ways to innovate and resonate with kids? Has the set-up of singer, guitarist, bassist, and drummer reached its artistic limits? When was the last time you heard something new come from rock? Thinking about it, it was probably grunge (American anyway) or shoegaze – both progressions from the 20th century.
Are Oasis to blame?
With their return on everybody’s lips, it’s also worth asking whether the ubiquity of Oasis in the 1990s played a part in the stagnation we’ve laid witness to since. The Gallaghers’ brand of consciously retrograde Britpop, which filled stadiums and openly cribbed from Slade, T. Rex, The Kinks, and The Beatles, came to define British rock for a generation afterward.
Everything that has existed since has operated in Oasis’ impossibly large shadow, which still looms.
Late music critic and rock musician Neil Kulkarni, who wrote for Melody Maker and NME during the Britpop era, said in 2020: ‘[All Oasis meant to me] was the homophobes and racists taking over, the rejection of queerness stylistically, and the reassertion of the English Rock Defence League’s tiny-minded ideas about “proper music”.’
The Britpop years laid the foundation for British rock’s public perception as heritage site rather than an innovative environment – that rock should only remember and pay homage, rather than push things forward (as so much UK rap and other working-class genres have done since The Streets put the call out more than 20 years ago).
‘Rock regressed into a soulless pastiche [in the 90s],’ Kulkarni continued. ‘National broadcasters boosted the lads, the coked-up, and the lairy. And above all, it enabled a middle class media to homogenise its ideas about what counted as working class art – as if Oasis was the best the working class could do.’
Kulkarni asserted: ‘Oasis were a triumph of reactionary conservatism.’
In the modernist era, rock and roll was top dog. Lifting itself out of blues and ramping up the aggression, speed, and sexual tension, it moved at the speed of light, created the ‘teenager’ as we know it, and ushered in a new age of music listening altogether.
It went from Rock Around the Clock to Tomorrow Never Knows in 14 years.
A warning for the future of British rock…
In the current post-modernist era, however, rock has dwindled. And, if it’s not careful, it could go the way of classical, big band and swing, and jazz. Another pop genre belonging almost exclusively to the past or niche revival scenes. The markets, money, and forward-thinkers will either be shut out or decide to move elsewhere.
Not all is lost, of course. You never say never. No genre is ever dead. The return of Oasis – and the consistent album-driven success of their rumoured 2025 support act, Stockport band Blossoms – could inspire a new generation of teenagers and youthful, fresh thinkers who see a clear path to rock’s future.
Plus, American solo acts Olivia Rodrigo and Benson Boone have wielded guitars and topped the UK charts in the 2020s. Rock still appeals to the frustrated teens of the TikTok generation.
But even that stat should come with the caveat that 2024 didn’t produce an entirely British UK number one until August – dubstep and drum & bass act Chase & Status teamed up with Stormzy for their collaborative hit Backbone.
Rock’s steeped, influential past is preserved, but its role in the present and its place in the future are uncertain. A landmark moment like Oasis’ reunion should be a time for reflection and consideration – that as we enjoy a night dedicated to recapturing how things were, it’s pertinent to keep an eye how things will be.
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