The news that Taylor Swift is releasing her 12th album in October will thrill her fans but perhaps we should all be grateful because this might mean we can move on from the endless chatter about the Oasis reunion tour. From the moment the Gallaghers announced their lucrative concerts it was clear that a lot of people were going to absolutely lose their minds. News of the shows and ticket sales hit the front pages and stayed there for months. Would the brothers fall out before a note was sung? The suspense could have killed us.
Celebrities and brands have hopped on the Gallagher bandwagon to try and cash in on the Oasis fuss
Then the tour started and any perspective got left behind as mainstream and social media became enthralled by the hype, with news reports in grown-up publications analysing the Gallagher’s body language and comments on stage as if they were matters of state. The band’s hyped-up fans told us that these were the most extraordinary gigs in human history, with truly ground-breaking behaviour such as the crowd singing along, people jumping up and down, and strangers hugging. Aren’t these the staples of most bands’ live shows throughout rock history?
Look, we all feel euphoric when we leave a good gig. I’ve felt that after I’ve seen Oasis and many other bands as well. But the way that Oasis fans insist that their heroes’ reunion performances are like nothing that’s ever happened before suggests that they either haven’t been to many other gigs or that they’re trying to convince themselves they weren’t ripped off.
Oasis fans can be defensive. They’ve spent the summer saying that anyone who doesn’t share their love for their heroes must just be snobs, rather than simply people who hope for something a bit more youthful and inventive from rock than plodding, derivative music barked out by multi-millionaire fifty-somethings.
But celebrities and brands have hopped on the Gallagher bandwagon to try and cash in on the Oasis fuss, and the media has continued to bang on about the tour day after day. So I’ve begun to wonder what it would take for journalists to lose interest. Would anything short of a nuclear war do it?
Maybe we won’t need to go that far. The last time I heard concerts discussed in this tone was during Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, which dominated the conversation in 2023 and 2024 and even prompted comparisons with Beatlemania. Now Swift’s back in the spotlight and I’m hoping she can hold onto it for a bit and save us from Oasis summer.
She’s obviously different to the Gallagher brothers. She reflects and speaks to the era she’s living in, rather than harking back to a trend of 30 years ago, which itself looked back to an era decades earlier. She’s energetic, creative and inspiring, and, like all true stars, she evolves and reinvents herself. She is, in other words, everything the Gallaghers are not.
But it’s the way she relates to and supports her largely female fan base that’s really behind her mammoth success. That empowering vibe is the opposite of the Gallaghers’, who charge their largely working-class fan base exorbitant ticket prices and chuckle all the way to the bank as their fans continue to believe Oasis are the people’s band.
Big concerts cost a lot to put on and Swift charges a pretty penny for her concerts, too, but she’s bringing messages about female empowerment and toxic masculinity that are desperately needed in the world right now. They have a value that resonates far beyond the stadiums she performs in.
Her fans love that she reached the top without the help of a dominant male figure in her life and that fact also really annoys a certain type of man – many of whom go to Oasis reunion gigs. So it will be extra sweet if it’s Swift who calls time on the Gallagher hype.
In an ideal world, no single pop act would colonise our attention the way Oasis and Swift have in recent years. But we are where we are and if one of them has to hog the limelight, give me Swift any day.
Taylor Swift: The Whole Story by Chas Newkey-Burden is out now (Harper Collins).
Comments