What would British culture be like if Oasis hadn't existed?
Their world reunion tour, which kicks off this July 4th, is one of the events of the summer. While they may not hold a candle to the Beatles, according to many music lovers, the Gallagher brothers have nonetheless become icons. And if Oasis hadn't existed from 1991 to 2009, the face of the United Kingdom would have been changed, journalist Dorian Lynskey muses.
In Danny Boyle's 2019 romantic-alternate comedy Yesterday , the Beatles are erased from history, and only one man remains to remember them and their songs. And in this world imagined by screenwriter Richard Curtis, all the world's bands were born despite the Beatles' absence, except one: Oasis.
But what would the world be without Oasis? As the Gallagher brothers themselves have acknowledged, they are a far cry from the geniuses that were the Beatles, who continually changed the course of pop. If Noel hadn't joined Liam's band in late 1991, Creation Records would likely have gone bust, Manchester City would have a less pop-oriented aura, and the series The Royle Family [released in 1998, set in Manchester and opening with Oasis' "Half the World Away "] would have needed another theme song.
But ultimately, the musical universe wouldn't be fundamentally disrupted. Today's young bands are more likely to cite the finesse and intelligence of Radiohead or the Smiths than the grand thrusts of Oasis, and few bands since Arctic Monkeys expect to fill stadiums.
This era [of the 1990s] marked by “the liveliness of things being done”, as he so aptly summed up
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