Oasis

Yesterday

Sam Matthews Boehmer

Oasis are the World Cup’s real champions

In the regretful days that followed England’s World Cup exit last week, a video was played on repeat on social media. Someone had edited red and white into greyscale over a clip of England’s footballers linking arms and swaying, singing along to Oasis’s ‘Wonderwall’.  At this tournament it became a tradition. England won a game, then a few more. The pundits finally fell silent. Ian Wright or Gary Neville whispered: ‘Drink it in.’ That famous guitar started up; the camera panned along the players’ line. We all knew the opening words: ‘Today is gonna be the day…’ No more ‘Sweet Caroline’. ‘Three Lions’ was played but the crowd only cursorily joined in.

Thursday

Daisy Dunn

The mystical hold of the 1990s over Gen Z

At some point during the past decade and a half, it was decided that the 1990s were a golden age. While Britpop, New Labour and acid house do not immediately evoke the same spirit as, say, Versailles under Louis XIV or Augustan Rome, compared with what followed they were certainly characteristic of something. Appetites for what the energetic Sawyer calls ‘the last nutty pre-internet age’ have never been greater Members of Gen Z who have known only the colourless, anodyne first years of the new millennium speak of the Nineties in mystical tones. At a party last week, I found myself holding court over some twentysomethings who’d discovered that I am a millennial. ‘What was it really like?’ they asked, as if coming face-to-face with Shackleton or Francis Drake.

Tuesday

David Honigmann

Who’s still flying the flag for Britpop?

There’s only one Cincinnatus in the Cotswolds, and it’s not Boris Johnson. Over the Rainbow tells the story of how, once again, Alex James was torn from his life in a very big house in the country to fulfil his national duty to play bass with Blur. The tale comes in the form of a diary, like Brian Eno’s wonderful A Year with Swollen Appendices, except that this is a year with inflated egos. To make sure our sympathies are in the right place, it begins with a preamble at the end of December 2022, during which the author attends a series of parties, each more wearisomely smug than the last. Then he sets up the stakes of the plot.

Friday

Julie Burchill

Bring back our bitchy celebs!

You would have to be quite odd not to approve of the sudden surge of solidarity amongst Hollywood stars of the female persuasion. (Though I did wonder, when Frances McDormand called so movingly during her Oscar-winner speech ‘Meryl, if you do it everyone else will!’ whether she meant ‘Suck up to Weinstein for years’ or ‘Give Polanski a standing ovation’ - because Streep certainly led the liberal sheep in those fields.) But still - Ancient Mariner on the oceans of objectionability that I am - I do miss the days when ‘actress’ was shorthand not for ‘whore’ but for ‘bitch.’ These days, female actors want to be seen to be building each other up rather than tearing each other down.