Who The Fuck Are Oasis?

Is It My Imagination?

Hello you. Make a cup of tea. Put a record on.

Stop the record and start it again. Definitely Maybe, Side A. Now play it loud.

The first chord hits like a brick sprayed silver. Even when you’re expecting it. The thing is, you should be expecting it. Oasis weren’t subtle. Not then. Not before the coked-up cameras or the press tours licking shots across saloon bars. And certainly not now, when the band’s myth, their fuck-you football-anthem tragedy, keeps rewriting itself in tabloid shreds.

They came, they saw. They sneered at everything. Then took the money and ran. But there’s one question still rattling around the back of the jukebox, sticky with spilled lager and nostalgia:

Who the fuck are Oasis?

Where Oasis Came In

It’s 1991. Before the stadium gigs, before Manchester City became sugar-daddy royalty. Somewhere, in or around Burnage, Liam Gallagher is "singing." Imagine the air quotes. No microphone, just attitude and a parka zipped mid-chest.

His mate Bonehead is on guitar, and there’s a bassist named Guigsy who looks like he’s just wandered in from nicking a meat pie at the shop next door. At some point, Tony McCarroll takes up drums. They call themselves The Rain. It’s not working.

Then Liam’s older brother walks in. Noel Gallagher. The guitarist. The roadie who’s spent years watching someone else take their crack at glory. And Noel’s got songs. Pocketfuls of them. Lyrics scribbled on cigarette packets, chords scratched out on the walls of rehearsal rooms, ideas bigger than the stink of the room.

The Rain becomes Oasis. Noel becomes chief architect, chief songwriter, and chief bastard. Suddenly, there’s direction. Suddenly, the fire and haircuts have purpose.

Still, no one’s paying attention. Not yet. Then Alan McGee happens.

What Oasis Actually Did

Creation Records signed them. Not because the Gallaghers played nice, but because they didn’t. The story goes that McGee saw them by accident, at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow. A five-song set, half sneer, half snarl. No encore. Wasn’t one planned.

That’s the point. Oasis didn’t crawl into the scene and politely wait their turn. They smashed pint glasses on the bar and demanded you give a shit. By 1994, the chaos hardened into purpose. Their debut album, Definitely Maybe, came barrelling out the gate, the fastest-selling debut in UK history.

Tracks like Rock 'n' Roll Star, Live Forever, and Supersonic didn’t so much climb charts as smash them with blunt instruments. They weren’t whispers or gentle invitations into Britpop’s cardigan-and-blazer world. They were wide-legged invitations to believe it was your world too.

Then came (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? Even bigger. Louder. Polished in all the places critics didn’t want polished but sang its guts out anyway. Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back in Anger, Champagne Supernova. The battle songs of an entire post-recession generation.

And then came Be Here Now. Cocaine in album form. Somewhere between genius and a psychotic break, it still managed to become history’s fastest-selling album despite its excess. It’s like they couldn’t miss, even when they swung wild.

Live shows became football chants. Football chants became national anthems in denim and dirty boots. The Britpop crown was taken in bloody scraps from Blur in a very public war that Oasis never really stopped fighting.

What Stuck From Oasis?

Here’s the thing: it didn’t last. Of course, it didn’t. The Gallaghers were their own sledgehammer cracking the glass.

Line-up changes scraped the original fire down to Liam and Noel’s caustic sibling rivalry. Tony McCarroll was out by 1995, replaced by Alan White. Eventually, even Bonehead left. Every fallout from a gig, every missed soundcheck was another part of the band eating itself alive. Blame ego. Blame money. Blame both.

By 2009, they were done. Noel walked out after a backstage spat in Paris, leaving Liam to smirk through a press release.

Still, you don’t just bury Oasis. You can’t. Those records became cultural debris, lying everywhere waiting to be picked up. You don’t claim Live Forever isn’t part of your bloodstream when you’re singing it late and drunk at a flat party you don’t remember leaving.

And Liam? He pivoted, kind of. Beady Eye was fine. Better than fine, once or twice. But his solo work hit closer to what people wanted. Scruffed-up vocals still built for terraces, tracklistings that almost forgive him for being, you know, Liam.

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds went the other way. Kinks records stamped through disco beats. Weird, orchestral brilliance that Liam would tear apart from the cheap bar stool of social media.

Meanwhile Noel laughed his normal laugh. Moved on.

And That’s Who the Fuck Oasis Is

Thirty years ago, Definitely Maybe hit like a sledgehammer. Everything changed. The sound, the swagger, the scene. And now? Thirty years on, the whispers are getting louder. Liam. Noel. Together again?

At first, it was bollocks. Liam said so himself. Denials left, right, and centre. But then came the tweets. Cryptic. Cagey. A wink, a nudge. Like he wanted us to guess, to squint at the screen and think, what if? And then it happened. 27 August. Two days before the anniversary. The news. Oasis. Back. A tour. UK and Ireland, summer 2025. Wembley. Heaton Park. Five nights for each! Five! The kind of places that hold ghosts. That still hum with old chants, old magic. And it doesn’t stop there. They’re going global. Europe, then everywhere. The whole world’s waiting, watching, ready.

Tickets? Gone in minutes. Of course, they were. And when the dust settled, more dates appeared. 16 July. 30 July. 12 August. But even that’s not enough. The hunger’s too big, too real. This isn’t just a reunion. It’s a reckoning. A reminder. A moment.

So here we are. Thirty years later. Back where it all began. You can feel it, yeah? That weight in the air? Like the world’s holding its breath. Are you ready for it? Because this, this is going to be something. See you there.

Give them their space. Leave their records spinning. Take Definitely Maybe out of the sleeve and hear where it all started. Remember every reason guitars became fireworks.

The English identity in four chords.

See you on down the road.