Very few pop stars throughout music history have been as rowdy, drugged, hedonistic, stone-cold drunk and at the same time so "streetsmart" as the Gallagher brothers, says Andres Lokko, who is a music journalist at Svenska Dagbladet and covered the Britpop wave for the magazine Pop in the 90s.
Noel and Liam Gallagher grew up in a municipal housing area in Manchester with a violent father, but against all odds became one of the world's biggest rock bands in the 90s. According to Lokko, Oasis embodies the British "we can get out of our boring damn misery" romance more than any other band since then.
There are rappers in modern times who represent this, but as a band, one can see Oasis as the working class's last victory over the establishment and the upper class, a revenge that has no counterpart in pop history. After that, all British guitar-based pop music has come from nepo babies with a golden spoon in their mouth.
Equation
Tina Mehrafzoon, music reporter at Sveriges Radio, was born in 1990 and initially wanted to avoid the Gallagher brothers' presence on MTV and ZTV. But in her teens, the identification with their melancholy and nonchalance became irresistible.
It's the contrast between the depth in songwriting and the chaos with the people. It's an equation that can't be solved. How can those who have such a sharp view of everyday life and emotions be such damn messy people?
Mehrafzoon calls the reunion tour a "maximization of the nostalgia trend". She also believes that the great interest in Oasis has a psychological explanation.
It's all too uncertain in the world and then you just want something that's safe, she says.
The Smartest
Lokko reminds us that Oasis broke through after the glam rock, but "before the algorithm" - when pop music could still be groundbreaking, compared to today when everything can be traced back to its influences. For younger fans, the reunion can be a museum-like experience. For the older ones, it's about a lifelong loyalty.
The smartest thing Oasis did was to behave like a football team. They're not something you like, they're something you support, says Lokko.
The lifelong and often violent sibling rivalry between Liam and Noel Gallagher led to Oasis's split in 2009, when Liam threw a guitar at Noel backstage at a festival in Paris. The question is whether the brothers will get along on the reunion tour.
For the sake of entertainment, I of course hope they screw up right away on Friday night in Cardiff, says Andres Lokko.
