Long prior to the roar that greets their arrival onstage at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, the noise around the return of Oasis has been deafening.
Long prior to the roar that greets their arrival onstage at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, the noise around the return of Oasis has been deafening.
Splashed all over the tabloids every day, just as they were post Knebworth. Teenage fans spreading audio of soundchecks and rehearsals on TikTok, furiously speculating as to which songs might make the set. Giant popup stores with queues out of the door in cities across the UK. Documentaries. Books (one of which, A Sound So Very Loud, is especially good). All night radio and TV specials. Oasis are, nearly 30 years on from the release of (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, everywhere in a way that they have never been before.
In 2025, they will play to more people than they have in any other calendar year of their existence. Excitingly, too, these audiences will not be comprised solely of 45-year-olds looking to recapture their glory years. Multiple new generations – seduced by the chaotic swagger on display in 2016’s excellent Supersonic doc – want their piece of the action.
Part of Noel Gallagher’s often-cited justification for not sooner reuniting with his brother – among other reasons – was that anyone who wanted to see Oasis play had surely had plenty of opportunity. Unlike his own heroes The Jam, The Smiths and the Stone Roses – all in and out within half a decade, never playing stadiums – the band that he led played to tens of thousands-strong crowds all over the world for more than 15 years. Even if you were a toddler when Definitely Maybe arrived, you could still have watched them at Wembley Stadium or Heaton Park with a legally purchased pint in hand. But now? There is an entirely new audience to service who weren’t even born when Oasis split up. And service them they do, with the setlist of dreams.
The opening blast of “Hello” and “Acquiesce” is almost impossibly euphoric. Suddenly a six piece – with Noel, Gem Archer and Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs all on guitar – the Oasis wall of noise is even more titanic. Drummer Joey Waronker – recruited from Liam’s project with John Squire – successfully apes the styles of all four previous drummers (“our fourteenth drummer”, Noel jokes): from Tony McCarroll’s rattling garage band hi hats to Alan White’s show-y fills to Zak Starkey and Chris Sharrock’s retronomic grooves.
Liam Gallagher, it is immediately apparent, is fired up for this like never before. It is he who has most craved this reunion: as much if not more so than the fans. He attacks “Morning Glory” and “Cigarettes & Alcohol” and “Supersonic” with a venom that elevates them way above nostalgia. These are sentiments – “I need to be myself/I can’t be no one else” – that ring as true coming from his mouth as they did when they were first released.
Given that Oasis have about 75 minutes’ worth of material that they simply have to play, there isn’t a great deal of room for curveballs. But the brash, Buzzcocks punk of “Fade Away” – a song both Liam and Noel revisited as solo artists – is a welcome, unexpected inclusion. A Be Here Now one-two of “D’You Know What I Mean?” and “Stand By Me” sits comfortably amongst the songs from better regarded albums. The Noel-sung moments, too – aside from the obvious ones – are surprising: “Talk Tonight” a rare low key moment, and a huge highlight.
But of course, in the main, it is the euphoria of the enormo-songs that people have paid all that money for. And relentlessly they come. “Live Forever” and “Half The World Away” and “Wonderwall“. “Don’t Look Back In Anger” and “The Masterplan” and “Slide Away“. When “Champagne Supernova” finally arrives, its seven minutes feel almost physical.
The question of how long this reunion will run for – and if there will be new music – is one that nobody yet knows the answer to. Very little is said in between songs – there are certainly no across-the stage barbs – but by as the final chords ring out, as one of the biggest roasts of the night greets the sight of Liam and Noel briefly embracing each other, it feels like anyone with a pulse would want to experience an occasion as emotionally visceral as this many, many more times. And in that I include the two people at the very centre of all this.
Oasis setlist Cardiff July 4, 2025:
Hello
Acquiesce
Morning Glory
Some Might Say
Bring It on Down
Cigarettes & Alcohol
Fade Away
Supersonic
Roll With It
Talk Tonight (sung by Noel)
Half the World Away (sung by Noel)
Little By Little (sung by Noel)
D’You Know What I Mean?
Stand By Me
Cast No Shadow
Slide Away
Whatever
Live Forever
Rock ’n’ Roll Star
The Masterplan (sung by Noel)
Don’t Look Back in Anger (sung by Noel)
Wonderwall
Champagne Supernova
A Sound So Very Loud by Ted Kessler and Hamish MacBain is available now from Pan Macmillan
