Sawt Falasteen - Oasis ride Britpop revival as 90s make nostalgic comeback in UK

A trip to high street retailer Marks and Spencer, popular with older shoppers, feels like stepping back 30 years, with Oasis T-shirts flying off the shelves.

But they're also on sale at Urban Outfitter, a retailer favoured by teens and young adults.

One crop top reads "Oasis, Live Forever", a tribute to one of the band's most famous songs.

On Instagram and TikTok, young people are filming themselves styled like the band's brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher.

The band's reunion, 16 years after the brothers' messy split, has generated huge enthusiasm across the generation gap.

Tickets for the UK and Ireland tour, which kicks off on July 4 in Cardiff, were snapped up at the end of last August.

And Liam and Noel aren't the only ones making a comeback.

Pulp recently returned to the top of the charts for the first time in 27 years with their new album "More".

At the band's concerts, the first notes of most famous hit "Common People" are greeted with the kind of delirium last seen when it was released in 1995.

Suede will release an album in September and Supergrass are touring this summer to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the band's debut album.

The only band missing is Oasis's arch-enemies, Blur, but they already sold out Wembley Stadium in July 2023.

- Cool Britannia -

What is behind the resurgence?

"Everyone likes an anniversary, don't they?" said Glenn Fosbraey, a popular music academic at Winchester University.

In particular, 1995 was "a great year for music" with the release of Oasis album "(What's the Story) Morning Glory?" said the 42-year-old lecturer, who grew up with Britpop.

"It's a nice opportunity to relive our own youth and secondly to introduce this to the next generation," as he is doing with his teenage daughter.

In recent years, he's noticed students rank Oasis among their favourite bands.

Fosbraey admits he was more a fan of Blur during the notorious 1995 Britpop chart war with Oasis, and won't be going to see the Manchester rockers, although has been to see Pulp.

He noted a broader nostalgia for the second half of the 1990s, a period known in the UK as "Cool Britannia", marked by a cultural, artistic, and political revival.

In 1996, England reached the semi-finals of the Euro football championships on home soil and Labour's Tony Blair came to power on a wave of positivity a year later.

Britpop's infectious optimism sound-tracked it all.

"Everyone seemed to be happier," recalled Fosbraey.

- Baggy jeans -

The nostalgia for the 1990s doesn't just affect those in their forties, but also Gen Z, young people born between 1997 and 2012, added James Hannam of Solent University in Southampton.

They perceive those times as "less stressful" than the ones they face, weighed down by concerns about climate change, war and artificial intelligence, he added.

The music industry economics professor has noticed a return of 90s fashion among his students for several years now, with a return of baggy jeans and bucket hats, a staple of Liam Gallagher's wardrobe at the height of his fame.

Several of Hannam's students will be going to the Oasis concert.

Both young and old appreciate that "Noel and Liam Gallagher were much more honest in interviews", he told AFP.

"They would say offensive things. There are lots of music stars who are quite media trained and maybe you don't have the very amusing, honest responses," added Hannam.

Julie Whiteman, a marketing professor at the University of Birmingham, was 20 in 1995 and was never a fan of Oasis.

She said it was "hard to escape" the 90s revival, but there was little nostalgia on her part.

"It was a pretty misogynistic, pretty intolerant time," she told AFP.

"It was quite an unpleasant time for a lot of people, if you were a woman or if you were an ethnic minority or if you were not heterosexual," she said.

"It was not so straightforward, as in just like a really cool time."

P.Tamimi--SF-PST