Oasis's Appeal in 2024 Goes Beyond Nostalgia

Next year, Oasis will return to the stage for the first time in years. For observers who have been keeping an eye on the oft-feuding Gallagher brothers, this might come as a surprise; for Oasis fans who live outside of the U.K. and Ireland, the question of whether Oasis will expand their tour remains unanswered. But whether you’re an Oasis diehard thrilled by the band’s return or someone more underwhelmed by the news, you may well have been thinking about the band’s current appeal all wrong.

Specifically, there are plenty of people eager to see Oasis in the 2020s for whom the appeal has nothing to do with revisiting their own younger days. In a new article for The Quietus, Anna Doble — who’s written extensively about music in the 1990s — chronicled the lives of female Oasis fans who were born long after the band’s heyday. Doble describes “many thousands of young, female Oasis fans who chat about the band every day on X, Tik Tok and Instagram” — and spoke with fans from Brazil and Russia over the course of writing the piece.

For one expert Doble talked to, that phenomenon reflects a return to the band’s initial appeal. James Corcoran, host of The Oasis Podcast, recalled a relatively even gender balance when he first began going to Oasis shows. “Later on it did get more rowdy and male, that football fan crowd took over a bit and an Oasis gig became an opportunity for lads to meet up and get hammered,” he told The Quietus.

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It isn’t that surreal for a band — on whatever scale — to find a new generation of listeners drawn to their music years or decades after their formation. (See also: the rise of reissue labels like Numero Group.) But one of the interesting elements of Doble’s reporting has to do with a particularly 21st century twist to circa-now Oasis fandom — specifically, Liam Gallagher’s accessibility and willingness to respond to fans on Twitter/X.

All of which is to say: if you find yourself at an Oasis gig next year and are surprised that the crowd is younger than you’d have expected, there’s a reason for that. Or, perhaps, a convergence of a few reasons.