Besides the fact that they have both made hugely triumphant and long-awaited comebacks this year, come from the UK and are made up of humans who play music, there really aren’t many similarities between Radiohead and Oasis. I can attest to this. I was lucky enough to see Oasis three times during their Live ’25 run of shows during the summer and the standard didn’t drop once – it was wall-to-wall holler-alongs as gigs so euphoric it didn’t matter that Oasis played exactly the same setlist each time. This wasn’t just something they did for me – Noel and Liam have played exactly the same setlist on every single night of the Oasis Live ’25 tour which, whilst noting that the shows have been brilliant, is also a bit weird.
The difference could not be more marked to Radiohead. Whilst I really, really like Oasis, the Oxford five-piece are my number one and have been since I saw them support R.E.M. at my very first gig in July 1995. I went to see them twice in Madrid last week, where they chose to launch their first tour since 2018, and they were 10/10 shows the both of them. But my double-thumbs-up score is pretty much they only thing the two gigs shared: Radiohead played 25 songs each night and, astoundingly, swapped out 15 from one night to the next. The gigs were so good, the vibes so exhilarating, and the song choices so strong that I only really noticed the next day. Mid-gig, there was simply no room in my brain to think, ‘Hold on, they haven’t played Climbing Up The Walls’.
