So they’re back then. The nucleus of Oasis, brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher, have patched up their differences enough to stand on the same stage at the same time, several times over, and snarl and clatter through Cigarettes & Alcohol, Supersonic and the rest of the once inescapable set for the delectation of the 90s crowd.
Do look back in nostalgia. In an oddly assuring throwback, The Sun dedicated its front page on Monday to the expected £400 million (€470 million) tour. Whatever the instigator, a reunion shouldn’t be a surprise. To not do it would leave wild sums of money on the table. If bad feeling or stubbornness delayed the inevitable, it is likely only to have swelled the latent demand. Mad for it? Maybe not. Ready for it? Sure.
As this is 2024, the explosion in print inches came only after a social media teaser: today’s date and the time of 8am flickering on the brothers’ respective accounts. Not much decryption necessary there. Straightforward, minimal fuss, like the band itself. And just like that, Oasis were trending.
That the peak years of the band predated social media, streaming and widespread internet use was, of course, integral to how they ascended, exploded, triumphed, consolidated their grip, thrashed about in weary ubiquity and then, finally, waned and went away, helicopters no longer whirring in their vicinity.
What’s more interesting than what was yet to be invented in the 1990s – a time of glorious profits for the music industry, as well as indulgence, complacency and overspending – are the things we had then that have since faded away or imploded as we know it.
When I think back to the ephemera of music fandom from the Oasis period, it’s impossible not to dwell on how much of it subsequently fell away, from gig tickets printed on sturdy card to CD singles that came in breakable plastic cases with the physical address of the fan club tucked inside.
I remember seeing Live Forever on late night MTV in 1994 and it seeming potent and fresh after years of American grunge – now it’s not just music television that’s gone, it’s the entire concept of waiting for a broadcaster to play it again. Even if you were busy taping songs off the radio and videos off MTV, in 1994 you still wanted that official top-down seal of approval, the media endorsements that said this is current, this is happening, this is going to be a hit.
Thirty years is a long time ago. Some facets of music culture then like the nascent, cursory attempts at crowd control – at Slane in 1995, I lost a shoe during one Oasis-inspired surge – are best left in the past.
Others, such as a relative decline in the number of young bands and the prevalence of solo artists in their place, seem like the sad consequence of the atomised, individualistic social media promotion platforms we have today.
Some ways in which the media environment have changed do not feel like healthy evolution. For those who were employed by it and documented the decline, there will be few industry collapses starker than that of the music press.
Oasis might have become the most mainstream of mainstream concerns, but they didn’t start that way. In the months leading up to the release of their Definitely Maybe debut, their story was told by a group of that now lesser spotted phenomenon: full-time music journalists. These were actual members of staff with actual jobs working for actual music publications, both inky and glossy, that were stuffed with news items, interviews, reviews, listings, advertisements, random flourishes, jokes and expertise.
It now seems bizarre that a certain level of fame could be gained and sustained on the pages of titles like NME, Melody Maker, Select, Vox, Q and the unparalleled Smash Hits, but that was how it worked pre-internet: the “lore” of fast-rising newbies like Oasis existed side by side with an array of musical subcultures that never troubled mass-market newspapers.
After Oasis went stratospheric, several of the specialist publications, having positioned themselves as tastemakers, found themselves in a commercial bind. Putting Oasis on the cover sold copies, and even by the millennium that was becoming much more of a struggle. But obsession with the Gallaghers grew tedious, not least for those charged with writing about them, and ultimately undermined the appeal of the product to core buyers who were, by album three at the latest, very definitely sick of them.
The excitement always goes first. Then it’s the jobs, then the print runs. Unlike Oasis – and notwithstanding NME’s latest reinvention as a bimonthly, high-end magazine – the music press is not about to make a comeback any time soon. Instead, its litany of failures became a clear forerunner of the slow demise of general interest print newspapers, a microcosm of the low morale that was to come.
The scarcity of content that prevailed in an analogue world is over. Words are cheap, and recorded music is too. The gigs? Alas, 1990s ticket prices are another thing we can’t have back.
- Sign up for business push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Our Inside Business podcast is published weekly – Find the latest episode here
