Oasis
Cardiff Principality Stadium, Friday July 4, 2025
To say tonight’s Oasis show has been eagerly awaited might be something of an understatement. Oasis’s Live ‘25 reunion tour might be most might highly anticipated live music event this century, ahead even perhaps of Led Zeppelin’s one-off reunion in 2007.
Even overlooking the ham-fisted scramble to get tickets last year, fans have been queuing outside Cardiff’s Principality Stadium since last night, and in a sign of the cultural weight afforded Liam and Noel Gallagher finally burying the hatchet, the BBC have been running a live stream all afternoon purely of bucket hatted punters getting off at Cardiff Central station. Something is happening here, and even for those who might have long turned their nose up at the Gallaghers’ contribution to the musical canon, you cannot deny the significance of it.
When the time finally comes, Oasis v.2025 – Liam and Noel Gallagher, Gem Archer, Andy Bell, Bonehead and new drummer Joey Waronker – walk onstage to F***in’ In the Bushes, Oasis’s walk-on song ever since they recalibrated post Be Here Now.
The fact that Hello – dodgy Gary Glitter connotation not with standing – goes straight into Acquiesce, perhaps their greatest B-side, makes it clear that the Gallaghers are acutely aware of the weight and power of their own legend and myth. Noel may have long claimed that the latter song has naff-all to do with the relationship between him and his brother, but choosing it as their second song proper shows that they understand what it means to those in attendance.
As Liam revealed to MOJO last year, an offer was put on the table to Noel to reform in time for Definitely Maybe’s 30th anniversary which he rejected. Liam went on to play Oasis' debut album live himself (you can read MOJO’s review of his show at London’s O2 HERE), and while it’s unlikely the band need to put in much effort to flog the recently announced Morning Glory? reissue to those in attendance, tonight’s set skews heavily towards the album that transformed Oasis from the best rock and roll band in the country to megastars: from being on the front page of the NME to being on the cover of the News Of The World most weekends. In fact, as it plays out, tonight’s set appears remarkably close to that of Oasis’s other live mega-gig landmark at Knebworth Park in August 1996.
In the intervening 16 years since Liam and Noel Gallagher stepped out onstage together, the production values of a stadium show have been ratcheted up to eyeball-frazzling levels. While no one would have expected Liam to float out across the audience in a red car a la Beyonce’s recent show at Houston last month, there’s something strangely comforting about the fact that Oasis’s stage show hasn’t really changed much since that fateful night where Liam threw a plum at his older brother, smashed his guitar and thus called time on the most successful British band of the ‘90s.
Indeed, joyous as they were, recent reunion shows by fellow Britpop alumni Pulp and even Blur two years ago, can’t quite compete with the motherlode of enormous songs the Gallagher brothers pummel the audience with.
What’s The Story...’s R.E.M.-cribbing title track drives headlong into their first number #1 single, Some Might Say, and what follows is an embarrassment of riches. At those Definitely Maybe shows, Liam dug deep into B-sides, rarities and demos, but while the Pistols meets Wham! surge of Fade Away (in MOJO’s opinion, still one of Oasis' greatest songs) still excites, what we are given largely hits the ‘94-‘95 jugular. All killer, no equally, if not better filler.
It can’t go unnoticed that at the gig’s quarter-mark, while his younger brother is clearly in his element lik a pig in the proverbial, the songwriter formerly referred to as ‘The Chief’ hasn’t uttered a single word. Since 2007, the power dynamic between the two brothers has undoubtedly shifted, and it is curious to see how Noel fits into proceedings now the commercial-draw shoe is on the other foot.
He proves it in his own, Noel-slowy section, taking in B-sides Talk Tonight, Half The World Away (a punch of brass really drilling home its debt to Burt Bacharach’s This Guy’s In Love With You), and Heathen Chemistry’s Little By Little, the only song played on stage tonight released after their third album in 1997.
It’s interesting to see Noel’s scrunched-face enjoyment as they storm through D’you Know What I Mean?, the lead single off an album he has spent the last three decades slagging off. It sounds ferocious, but the same can’t be said for BHN’s Stand By Me, which despite being stripped of its endless overdubs still plods where its earlier ascendants soar.
It really should be noted, too, how perfect Waronker is as a drummer tonight. Past Oasis stickmen from Zak Starkey to Chris Sharrock and even Alan White have been suggested for the role in the speculation about who might take the stool for this tour, but the seasoned session man turns out to be an inspired choice, walloping his kit like Thor taking it out on his hammer, or - more accurately – original drummer Tony McCarrol with a better sense of time
“I love nostalgia!” Liam told MOJO’s Ted Kessler last year, before these shows were announced, or a rapprochement with Noel even brokered. Suggesting – perhaps jokingly – that he’d even be up for performing the band’s final LP Dig Out Your Soul live if the offer came up.
But if this was merely a case of stoking some heady memories of the summer of 1995, then how would you explain the kids in their teens and twenties here tonight absolutely losing their minds at even being in the presence of the actual, real-life Oasis,
Some of us in attendance might mentally compare notes with pre-2009 Oasis shows we’ve seen: Maine Road in ’96, the 100 Club in ’94, even later triumphs like Reading Festival in 2000, or the comparatively intimate 10 Years Of Noise And Confusion tour the following year. But can you *imagine* seeing Oasis for the first time tonight ? The mind-crushing effect this is having on the younger fans (who are vastly outnumbering the OG supporters as far as we can see) for whom getting the chance to ever see their favourite band live seemed for a long time about as likely as getting to watch the original line up of The Beatles perform live.
“This one is for all the kids in their twenties who have never seen us before...” says Noel before launching into The Masterplan, another B-side masterpiece that cues up an unimpeachable trio of Don’t Look Back In Anger, Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova, as the crowd – kids, parents or otherwise – loses their collective mids.
“Because we need each other,” Noel sang 20 odd songs previously, “...we believe in one another.” He might claim to have not been speaking about the irreplaceable chemistry he has with his brother that tonight we have finally witnessed re-ignited, but really, it’s a sentiment that applies to his band and their fans.
Oasis Cardiff Principality Stadium, Friday July 4, 2025 Setlist:
F***ing In The Bushes
Hello
Acquiesce
Morning Glory
Some Might Say
Bring It On Down
Cigarettes & Alcohol
Fade Away
Supersonic
Roll With It
Talk Tonight
Half the World Away
Little by Little
D’you Know What I Mean?
Stand By Me
Cast No Shadow
Slide Away
Whatever
Live Forever
Rock and Roll Star
The Masterplan
Don’t Look Back in Anger
Wonderwall
Champagne Supernova
Mad for more Oasis? Pick up MOJO's newly updated bookazine, MOJO The Collectors’ Series: Oasis Essentials 2025 Special Edition, for the definitive guide to Oasis’s albums, songs, films and books. ORDER YOUR COPY HERE!
Photo: Getty