Oasis kick off their comeback: The best they’ve been since the 90s
Oasis blew off the cobwebs and swept away the doubters as they kicked off their reunion tour in Cardiff.
Taking to the stage after a 16-year break, the band sounded refreshed and rejuvenated, tearing into classics like Cigarettes and Alcohol, Live Forever and Slide Away – as 70,000 fans clasped each other and spilled beer all over themselves.
They opened with Hello, with its chorus of “it’s good to be back”, following up with Acquiesce – one of the few songs that features vocals from both Noel and Liam Gallagher.
The lyric “we need each other” felt like a reconciliation – or a sigh of relief – as the brothers buried the hatchet of a decades-long feud and reconnected with their fans.
Liam, in particular, attacked the gig with wild-eyed passion – stalking the stage and biting into the lyrics like a lion tearing apart its prey.
The audience responded in kind. A communal fervour greeted songs like Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back In Anger, both pulled from Oasis’s 1995 masterpiece, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? – one of the best selling British albums of all time.
All night, it was one singalong after another: Some Might Say, Supersonic, Whatever, Half The World Away, Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.
During Live Forever – which they dedicated to Liverpool footballer Diogo Jota – the audience even sang Noel’s guitar solo.
“You sound like a load of Charlotte Churches,” said Liam, impressed, after Stand By Me.
The frontman sounded fresh and powerful himself, putting to rest the vocal issues that had plagued him on previous tours – a result of Hashimoto’s disease, an auto-immune condition that can affect the voice.
As fans will know, Oasis were never the most dynamic act on stage. Noel, in particular, wears the studious look of a man trying to remember his National Insurance number – but somehow, it’s impossible to take your eyes off them.
Although they came out hand in hand, there were few other signs of chemistry between the brothers, who never addressed one another during the two-and-a-quarter hour show.
But just hearing them harmonise again, after all the animosity and the turbulent waters under the bridge, was hugely emotional.
“Nice one for putting up with us over the years,” said Liam, introducing the night’s last song, Champagne Supernova. “We are hard work, I get it.”
As they left the stage, the Gallaghers shared a brief hug.
But the band’s volatility was always part of the appeal.
Their off-stage antics made the headlines as often as their music: They missed their first European gig after getting arrested on a cross-channel ferry, Liam lost two front teeth in a fight with German police, and later abandoned a pivotal US tour go house-hunting.
Half the fun was working out which act of the Shakespearean drama was being enacted in front of you.
Still, Liam’s antics often frustrated his brother.
“Noel is the guy who’s chained to the Tasmanian devil,” Danny Eccleston, consultant editor of the Mojo magazine, once said. “A lifetime of that would wear you down.”
It all came to a head at a gig in Paris in 2009. Oasis split up after a backstage altercation that began with Liam throwing a plum at his older brother’s head.
In the intervening years, they engaged in a long war of words in the press, on stage and social media.
Liam repeatedly called Noel a “massive potato” on Twitter and, more seriously, accused him of skipping the One Love concert for victims of the Manchester Arena bombing.
Noel responded by saying Liam was a “village idiot” who “needs to see a psychiatrist”.
But relations thawed last year, with Liam dedicating Half The World Away to his brother at Reading Festival last August.
Two days later, the reunion was announced, with the band declaring: “The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.”
A scramble for tickets ensued, with more than 10 million people applying to see the 19 UK dates alone.
Those who succeeded were shocked by the high prices – especially when standing tickets advertised at £155 were re-labelled “in demand” and changed on Ticketmaster to £355 plus fees.
On stage, Liam made light of the scandal, asking the audience: “Is it worth the £4,000 you paid for a ticket?”
For many, the answer was yes. Cardiff was awash with Oasis fans from all over the world – including Peru, Japan, Argentina, Spain and South Korea.
An Italian couple had “live forever” inscribed on their wedding rings. A British woman, expecting her first child, had scrawled “our kid” – Noel’s nickname for Liam – across her baby bump.
The city was awash in bucket hats and branded tracksuit tops. Outside the stadium, an enterprising busker drew a massive crowd by playing a set of Oasis songs. Everyone joined in.
Inside, the band stuck to the classics, with a setlist that only strayed out of the 1990s once, for 2002’s Little By Little.
The songs held up remarkably well.
The youthful hunger of tracks like Live Forever and Supersonic crackled with energy. And Cigarettes and Alcohol, written by Noel in 1991, about the discontent of Manchester’s working classes after 15 years of Conservative rule, sounded as relevant in 2025 as it did then.
“Is it worth the aggravation to find yourself a job when there’s nothing worth working for?” snarled Liam. Fans, young and old, roared along in recognition and approval.
Later, during Wonderwall, the frontman cheekily changed the lyrics to say: “There are many things that I would like to say to you… but I don’t speak Welsh.”
I have seen Oasis many, many times and this was the best they’ve been since 1995, when I caught them supporting REM at Ireland’s Slane Castle, as they limbered up for the release of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
The Manchester band blew the headliners away – instantly making them seem dated and irrelevant – in a show that threatened to turn into chaos after Liam threatened a fan who’d thrown a projectile on stage.
They might not have that sense of danger in 2025, but there was a hunger and a passion that was missing from their last shows in 2009.
Fans, and some parts of the British press, are already speculating over whether Liam and Noel’s rapprochement will hold – but from the evidence on stage in Cardiff, the Gallaghers are finally, belatedly, mad fer it once more.
Oasis setlist – 4 July 2025
Encore
