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Oasis Are Just Coldplay in a Parka

Working-Class Cosplay With a Tambourine

I was out playing pool the other day with some mates. The conversation had drifted into esoteric tedium. Politics. Peptides. Tech and AI strategies. I needed to shake things up.

Not only that, but there was some awful music playing in the background. I cannot remember exactly what it was. It might have been Sam Fender. It might have been someone Sam Fender-adjacent.

Every cloud though…

I Wanted to Have Some Fun

I needed to pull the chat back to something a bit more fun, at least for me. My mate Dave is an Oasis fan, so that seemed like a good place to start.

“There’s some awful music in here today,” I said to Dave as he was lining up a shot. “You should put some tunes on the jukebox. Nowt shite, though. None of your usual fucking Oasis bollocks. Actually, Dave, probably better if someone else does it.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t bite. He actually potted.

So as he was lining up his next shot, I told him that, “Oasis are just the same as Coldplay. Maybe the working man’s Coldplay. Oasis are just Coldplay in a parka.”

And I was in.

He completely railed against this, obviously, because that is what Oasis fans do. They cannot just like the music; they have to defend the myth.

At the time, I was happy enough to leave it there. It was just a stupid comment to wind up my mate while we were playing pool. A little bit of psychological warfare. Get in his head. Watch him miss a shot because he’s lusting after Liam Gallagher’s unibrow.

But then I started thinking about it a bit more. I think there is merit in it.

Let’s Start From First Principles

I’m now convinced that they are basically the exact same band, at least structurally, and I’m going to prove this with inarguable facts.

Fact 1: Coldplay are the worst band of all time. Pretty uncontroversial, I think we can all agree on that.

Fact 2: Coldplay are formulaic. Bland. Emotionally pre-chewed. Music for people who think watching Question Time makes them politically informed and buying Fairtrade coffee counts as a moral position.

Fact 3: Oasis are also formulaic. Bland. Emotionally pre-chewed.. The accent changes. The audience changes. The posture changes. The product barely does.

Fact 4: Coldplay songs are lab-engineered rather than written. They are sincere-sounding, crescendo-laden, empty spaces designed to make the listener feel moved without requiring them to think about what moved them.

Fact 5: Oasis songs are also lab-engineered. There’s nothing new in there, just a selection box of 60s motifs designed to sound vaguely authentic.

The Similarities Are Fundamental

Coldplay chuck in a big crescendo and a bit of tasteful piano and suddenly everyone is meant to feel as if something profound has happened.

Oasis chuck in some recycled 1960s rock n roll trope, a basic chord progression, a bit of sneering Manc swagger, and people behave as if they have just witnessed working-class authenticity in its purest form.

They are both crowd-pleasing machines. They both deal in easy emotional release. They both make music that gives people the sensation of feeling something without actually requiring much from them.

And they both have terrible, terrible vocalists.

Chris Martin sings like a man apologising to a yoga retreat. Liam Gallagher sings like a man trying to sound like he’s too cool to be there. He’s not.

The Differences Are Superficial

Coldplay sell vague emotional uplift to the anxious middle classes. Oasis sell vague emotional defiance to blokes who want to feel like they’ve said something honest without having to say anything specific.

One gives you a stadium full of wankers waving phone lights. The other gives you a pub full of dickheads shouting the chorus with their arms around each other.

The weird thing with Oasis is that people still act as if the whole thing was somehow dangerous or edgy.

It’s empty, trope-filled, derivative shite that blokes can sing along to when they are pissed because they are too soft to be honest when sober.

At Least Coldplay Probably Know They’re Shit

At least Coldplay probably know they’re shit. Oasis are the ultimate case of people buying into the bullshit they’ve been sold.

Derivative, recycled 60s rock n roll, without the innovation or soul. And customers still lap it up, thinking they’re somehow edgy or cool in their bucket hats. Even the band has bought into their own hype.

Still, get me pissed and I will belt out Wonderwall as loud as the rest of them.