Analysis: Back in August 1995, there was only one question that occupied music fans: Blur or Oasis - and which side were you on?
Amid the outpouring of nostalgia that accompanied the two Oasis concerts last weekend at Croke Park, some fans may have noticed that August this year also marks the 30th anniversary of the moment when Britpop reached its zenith. Back in August 1995, there was only one question that occupied music fans: Blur or Oasis - and which side were you on?
While the relationship between the bands had initially been cordial, tension escalated in the run up to that summer. After scoring their first UK no. 1 with Some Might Say in April 1995, Oasis scheduled Roll With It for early release in order to drum up excitement ahead of their forthcoming second album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? Sensing an opportunity to get one over on their rivals, Blur moved their single Country House to be released on the same day as Roll With It.
For the press, who relentlessly stoked the rivalry, the ensuing "Battle of Britpop" was like manna from heaven as it fed into the British tabloid obsession with class: Oasis, the working class northerners, pitted against Blur, the university-educated southerners.
On paper, Blur ultimately won the battle. When the chart sales were revealed the following Sunday, Country House had outsold Roll with It by 274,000 to 216,000. But questions of artistic merit are rarely decided by sales of tickets or records. Time is a much more discerning critic and with its passage we are able to judge the past with a sharper lens.
So how has the music of Oasis and Blur aged over the intervening three decades since those heady summer days of 1995? Certainly the one aspect of Oasis that has increasingly attracted criticism is Noel Gallagher’s songwriting. While the line "Slowly walking down the hall / Faster than a cannonball" from Champagne Supernova has earned its place in the pantheon of clangers, the contradiction in the chorus that follows is only slightly less awkward: "Someday you will find me / Caught beneath the landslide / In a champagne supernova in the sky".
i still can't believe this is real pic.twitter.com/fdRFy0UTdP
— ໊ (@visionthing) August 22, 2025
Indeed there are times that the lyrics seem almost wilfully careless. Much of the clunkiness comes from strained efforts to get the rhyming schemes to tie up. These range from the lacklustre: "There are many things that I would like to know / And there are many places that I wish to go / But everything's depending on the way the wind may blow" (Acquiesce) to the truly abysmal: "I can see a liar, sitting by the fire" (I Can See a Liar).
While it’s easy to pass over such lapses in the verses, many Oasis choruses terminate in similarly bland and meaningless platitudes: "Stand by me, nobody knows the way it’s gonna be" (Stand by Me) or "Some might say we will find a brighter day" (Some Might Say). A further problem with Oasis is that their lyrics contain little in the way of irony or humour, their music is for the most part straightforwardly sincere; they mean what they sing, even if it means nothing much at all.
Blur’s lyrics have better withstood the test of time. For sure, there are songs where the lyrics make no sense, particularly in the more rock-orientated tracks. Song 2, their most famous tune, contains the lines: "I got my head checked / By a jumbo jet / It wasn’t easy / But nothing is, no". This is clearly nonsense but the incoherence is deliberate. The lyrics are just fodder for what many interpret as a parody of grunge songs such as Nirvana’s Smells like Teen Spirit.
In contrast to Oasis, Blur’s lyrics are full of double meaning and irony; frequently poking fun at aspects of the society around them. There is the affectionate lampooning of the British everyman in Parklife or the mocking of materialistic folly in Country House: "He’s reading Balzac and knocking back Prozac". Even when they aren’t poking fun, Blur’s lyrics reach a level of sophistication that is lacking in Oasis. The ode to depression Coffee and TV begins with the brilliant line: "Do you feel like a chain store? Practically floored / One of many zeros kicked around, bored".
If Oasis’s best qualities aren’t necessarily to be found in their lyrics, then they must reside elsewhere. Noel Gallagher’s biggest achievement was coming up with a guitar sound that was at once familiar but yet distinctive enough to act as the band’s signature. This was accomplished by layering multiple guitar voicings on top of each other to build the famous ‘big guitar’ Oasis sound. Accompanied by anthemic choruses, the technique gave Oasis the trait of instant recognisably but it also proved stubbornly difficult to innovate prompting Blur’s Damon Albarn to nickname the band "Oasis Quo".
Blur don’t possess the same signature sound, but this is because stylistic fluidity is their signature. She’s So High from their first album Leisure (1991) is firmly in the shoegaze mould of spaced-out rock while Tender at the beginning of their sixth album 13 (1999) mixes gospel influences. It almost seemed that Blur were acutely conscious that mainstream guitar-driven rock was on the way out whereas Oasis wanted to "keep the dream alive" – as their song goes.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's Arena, Miranda Sawyer discusses her book Uncommon People: Britpop and Beyond in 20 Songs
With the hindsight of 30 years, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the "Battle of Britpop" is how ridiculous it all was. Even the writers of Father Ted referenced the debate in an episode the following year where the rebellious Fr. Damo pointedly asks Fr. Dougal which band he prefers: "Oasis or Blur?"
In our current predicament of near total pop saturation, the question may have long faded into irrelevance for most people. For those like me though, who yearn for the era of rock band rivalries, the question still has a certain nostalgic value. And on that note...it has to be Blur all the way.
Follow RTÉ Brainstorm on WhatsApp and Instagram for more stories and updates
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
