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 just be the most highly anticipated live music event this century, ahead even perhaps of Led Zeppelin’s one-off reunion in 2007. An estimated 14 million people joined 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 withstanding – 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 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 shows, 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 called time on the most successful British band of the ‘90s. Big screens, vaguely psychedelic montage graphics every now and then and that’s pretty much it. And what’s more, that’s all they need.
Joyous as they were, recent reunion shows by fellow Britpop alumni Pulp and even Blur two years ago, can’t compete with the motherlode of enormous songs the Gallagher brothers pummel the audience with. What’s The Story...’s roaring, 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 from Oasis’ imperial phase.
At those Definitely Maybe shows last year, Liam dug deep into B-sides, rarities and demos, but while the Pistols-meets-Wham! surge of Fade Away (in MOJO’s opinion, 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 like a pig in the proverbial, the songwriter formerly referred to as ‘The Chief’ hasn’t uttered a single word. Since 2009, the power dynamic between the two brothers has undoubtedly shifted, with the younger brother playing the elder’s songs to crowds that dwarf any at a High Flying Birds gig. So it’s curious to see how Noel fits into proceedings tonight.
Noel re-stakes his claim as the leader of the band by fronting his own 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 feels slightly incongruous in a set so deeply fixated on the mid-‘90s, and you’d happily swap it for another Noel-fronted later-period gem like The Importance Of Being Idle or Falling Down.
It’s interesting, also, to note Noel’s scrunched-face enjoyment as they storm through D’you Know What I Mean? straight afterwards - the lead single off an album he has spent the last three decades routinely 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 forbearers soar.
It really should be noted, too, how perfect Waronker is as Oasis’ choice of drummer tonight. Past Oasis sticksmen Zak Starkey, Chris Sharrock and even Alan White had been suggested for the role in the speculation about who might make up the band's lineup for this tour, but the seasoned session man (introduced on stage as: "our 14th drummer") turns out to be an inspired selection, walloping his kit like Thor taking it to task with a hammer, or - more accurately – original drummer Tony McCarroll with a better sense of time.
In that respect, the Oasis Live ‘25 model strikes a perfect balance: A largely ‘95-era setlist played in the style of Oasis in ‘94, by musicians with the clout and power of the band’s post-2000 years.
Bonehead’s place in the three-guitar line-up is more than a friendly nostalgic nod — he’s a key brick in a barre-chord wall of sound that makes pretty much anything they play sound colossal. Cigarettes & Alcohol, Bring It On Down, even a comparatively middleweight song like Roll With It all roar with an almighty power. Although it makes it doubly galling that an ace like Columbia was left on the bench, as it would have likely sounded magnificent in this setting.
Liam, too, is at the top of his game this evening — delivering Slide Away and Live Forever with the soulful nuance and vulnerability he had on record as a 21-year-old, rather than shouting, snarling or barking at them like a terrier biting off a strip of steak.
“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 going berserk at just 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 as a fan for the first time tonight? The mind-crushing effect this is having on the younger fans (who are 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 play a gig.
“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 and otherwise – lose their collective minds.
“Because we need each other,” Noel sang 20-odd songs earlier, “…we believe in one another.” Regardless of whether Acquiesce is about the complex and symbiotic relationship between him and his brother, it’s a sentiment that, really, sums up Oasis and their fans.
The sheer elation among the 70,000-plus people inside the Principality Stadium that this is even happening meant it would have taken a herculean effort on Oasis’s part for tonight to have failed. The younger members of the audience might not remember, but Oasis do have previous when it comes to doing precisely that in front of a devoted audience.
Tonight wasn’t one of those nights, though. Their greatest songs, played magnificently amidst an atmosphere of fervent euphoria. It will go down as one of the best nights of their career.
Oasis Cardiff Principality Stadium, Friday July 4, 2025 Setlist:
F***in’ 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
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Photo: Getty