Liam Gallagher and Oasis perform at Met Life Stadium on August 31, 2025. The long-awaited reunion concert highlights the human in a world of overwhelming technology. Steven Zeitchik Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment In September 1996, early in a misbegotten youth - though not nearly as misbegotten, I should say for the record, as Liam Gallagher's - my friend Gary and I attended an Oasis concert at Jones Beach, on Long Island. We didn't know it at the time, but the now-iconic "What's The Story (Morning Glory)?" tour, which had just arrived in the U.S. after record-breaking crowds in the U.K., was about to come to a crashing halt when Liam would leave the band a few days later in a(nother) fit of petulance. That night we just blissfully rocked out to live renditions of the record that had been playing everywhere the previous year - everywhere we went, anyway. Years ahead of Google - and decades before TikTok - we basked in the discovery of this strange, snarling British rock that wasn't much on the radio but lived in every scratch of our CDs, and minds. Related Stories Lifestyle As Oasis Kicks Off Reunion Tour in the U.S., Fans Lap Up New Merch (and Seek New Ticketing Options) News Oasis Fan Dies After Falling During Concert at London's Wembley Stadium Gary passed away in a paddleboarding accident exactly two decades later, some 10 miles west of Jones Beach. And while I'm hardly a woo woo reincarnation type, I found myself looking up into the Eastern Seaboard sky Sunday night as I listened to Oasis playing those songs with an almost impeccable similarity to that evening 29 years ago. I imagined that Gary's spirit was up there, and that, with his trademark giant goofy grin and booming voice, he was bopping along to "Wonderwall," "Champagne Supernova," "Some Might Say" - and, during a number that brought me a smile more faithful than ironic, "Live Forever." In fact, I was sure of it. If the Gallagher Bros. had somehow bent every rule of nature to join hands and perform on the same stage after all their epochal fights, was it really so crazy to think that Gary and the others we lost along the way had pulled a supernatural trick of their own to tune in to the bad boys of Britpop one more time? But it wasn't just the thought of an afterlife that filled me - and, dare I say, the 60,000 other people who packed Met Life Stadium Sunday - with a jolt of spiritual energy. (The band gives another performance there Monday, then closes out its three-city U.S. run with a pair of gigs at the Rose Bowl next weekend.) It was the sheer messy humanity of every distorted guitar, soaring falsetto, driving drum and swaggering piece of banter - the simple idea that the Gallagher Bros. had even gotten here to do this, coupled with what they were doing and how it seemed to be making every person in that stadium feel. If you read any music press, you've already seen the Oasis Live '25 reviews, from Cardiff and Wembley and Toronto and Chicago. You don't need one more wide-eyed entertainment journalist to give you one more rave about how tightly they performed, how timeless they sounded, how terminally weird Liam was. (But seriously, he was weird. He yelled New Jersey for no apparent reason several times between numbers and at another point mid-song tried to balance a tambourine and maraca on his head simultaneously while the rest of the band ground away. Crucially, though, he never disappeared - in fact he kept re-appearing, popping up from out of nowhere after the few seconds the lights went dark following a Noel song.) What may not have come up as often in those reviews is what the band is doing beneath the surface - what was coming across subtextually even in lesser-known hits like "Little By Little" and "Acquiesce" and "Whatever" - and, more important, the sense of possibility that subtext was evoking. This was a deeply human experience at a time, with its seething algorithmic outrage and a dawning AI, when we seem in danger of losing that humanity. A handful of lyrics sung Sunday preach a kind of get-along connection "Don't Look Back In Anger," most prominently, but also "Because we need each other, we believe in one another" from "Acquiesce," "All my people right here right now," from "D' You Know What I Mean" and "Two of a kind, we'll find a way," from "Slide Away." But it wasn't what the artists were saying as much as how they were saying it. The Gallaghers are known for what has affectionately been called the largest pub singalong in the world, and that seemed true in spades Sunday, as the whole crowd often seemed to be taking the stage with them, howling and playing along with every note. And what could be more analogue-ly human than people singing in a pub? Even the fact that Oasis had chosen to play pretty much the exact same 23-song setlist on ever