“What a stadium, man,” Liam Gallagher shouted at the audience, just over thirty-seven minutes into Oasis’s first of two sold-out shows at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey — an 82,500-seater venue. “Nearly as big as my house.”
If there’d been any doubt, Oasis’s unmitigated swagger and trademark self-regard were clearly back. With recent stops in South Korea, Japan, and Australia, plus several more coming up in South America, its Live ’25 tour — the band’s first since breaking up in 2009 — has been a euphoric success. Leaving little to chance, it has also resulted in few surprises, whether capacity crowds (despite costly dynamic ticket pricing), visible onstage warmth between the oft-tempestuous Gallagher brothers, or charismatic setlists that have dwelled on the band’s canonical first two albums, Definitely Maybe (1994) and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (1995).
What has been surprising is the ecstatic reception the band has received, especially in the United States. While British listeners briskly institutionalized Oasis, reflected by its historic shows at the Knebworth Festival in 1996 only two years after its debut LP, it had a more polarizing effect on American audiences during the 1990s. Its brash self-proclamation about being bigger than the Beatles caused distaste at a time when crass commercialism proved divisive among musicians and audiences on the independent music scene.
Liam Gallagher confronted this past ambivalence in East Rutherford. “We love coming here. . . . We’ve even got one of your guys on the drums” [in reference to Joey Waronker, currently a touring member of Oasis]. “We love coming here,” he repeated later, “but what we didn’t like is being told . . . you gotta play the game, kids. . . . You don’t have to play the fucking game.”
If Oasis’s music and attitude hasn’t changed, the world has. Audiences have not simply learned to tolerate the Gallagher brothers’ preening…
Auteur: Christopher J. Lee
