Cigarettes, alcohol and sunsheeeeeine: How the UK has changed since Oasis first hit the big time

They may not match Keats or Heaney for poetic heft, but you’re a hell of a lot more likely to recognise Oasis’s lyrics than anything written by more celebrated wordsmiths. The words penned by the brothers Gallagher have become easy cultural bonds, common references belted at karaoke nights, sports events and probably a few funerals. 

From ”Supersonic” to ”Champagne Supernova”, the lyrics have stuck around, lodging themselves in a country’s psyche and giving an instant sense of what life was like. But how true to life do they remain? How does the country of 2025, with Oasis about to embark on their reunion tour, compare to the UK of 1994 – the year of Definitely Maybe, and from which Liam and Noel carved such a distinctive legacy? 

There’s no better way to unravel the differences than through the lyrics themselves. 

I live my life in the city (Rock ‘n’ Roll Star) 

The very first lyric of the very first track on any Oasis album. Nowadays, more and more Brits live their lives in the city. In 2023, 84.4% of the UK’s population lived in an urban area, up from 78.6% in 2000. This mirrors a global trend: 23% of the world’s population now live in a city, and the number of ‘megacities’ over 10 million inhabitants is forecast to rise from 33 in 2018 to 43 in 2030. 

Read more:

• The history of Oasis, through five iconic Big Issue interviews: ‘Liam’s an idiot… But he’s my idiot’
• Meet the man who captured Oasis as they went supersonic: ‘It went beyond my wildest dreams’
• Oasis tickets row highlights how music fans are ‘taken advantage of’ amid a cost of living crisis

Spend your days in the sunshine (Cigarettes & Alcohol)

 For anyone looking to cultivate a Liam Gallagher impression, there’s only one place to start: “Sunsheeeeeine.” 

It remains to be seen if he’ll be so chipper as experts warn humanity has just three years left to limit global warming to 1.5C. That trend has only seen our time in the sunshine intensify. 

 The hottest day of 1994 in the UK was 33.4C, recorded in Morley St Botolph, Norfolk, on 12 July. Compare that to 2024, when the hottest day was the 34.8C recorded on 12 August in Cambridge, and the UK had a hottest day on record of 40.3C at Coningsby in Lincolnshire during the 2022 heatwave. 

So Sally can wait (Don’t Look Back in Anger)

 It might just be too late for Sally as a name. In 1996, the first year of available data, 303 babies born in England and Wales were named Sally, making it the 144th most popular name. In 2023, there were just 11, making it the 2,346th ranked. 

 Had they been writing the song today and picked the 144th most popular name, we’d have had Darcy. I’m sure they’d have had fun rhyming that one. 

 As for Liam and Noel: Liam has slid from 10th ranked to 71st, and Noel has risen from 564th to 431st. 

What’s the Story (Morning Glory)?

For Bryan Johnson, a man on a quest to live forever, morning glory is a key sign of vitality. The longevity maverick reportedly sleeps with a sensor the size of a sugar cube under his foreskin to measure his morning erections, a sign he is reversing his biological age. 

And yet, the global story with morning glory is going in the other direction. In 1995, 152 million men worldwide experienced erectile dysfunction, which rapidly grew to an estimated 322 million by 2025. The global market for erectile dysfunction drugs is solidifying, and expected to double in size to £3.8 billion by 2032. 

Slide away

Children’s playgrounds have been closing at an alarming rate: in the 10 years to 2023, 793 playgrounds closed, and 28,000 reports of vandalism were made. 

They have been a notable victim of austerity, as local authorities blamed budget cuts on the closures. From 2018 to 2021 there was a 44% decrease in spend on play facilities. The slides truly have gone away. 

Cigarettes & Alcohol

Neither cigarettes nor alcohol are the easily accessible pleasures they were in 1994. A night of 10 pints of lager and a 20-pack would have set you back £18.42 in 1994. By 2025, that same nano-bender would cost £64.90. 

It’s an inflation-busting rise: today’s £64.90 would be around £31 in 1994 money – so the cost has almost doubled relative to inflation. 

Gas Panic!

Surprisingly not a song about the fear that takes hold when your schoolmates accuse you of being the mystery farter, “Gas Panic!” is Oasis approaching their most poetic. 

Their reunion emerges into a country battered by a gas panic. Soaring wholesale prices pushed the country’s vulnerable into a cost of living crisis. For comparison, gas prices are almost five times higher now than in 1994. They remain over 50% higher than in 2022. 

Supersonic

Give me gin and tonic, I’m feeling supersonic? Well, it’s just a feeling if you’d only ever remained on land in 1994 – though it had long been achieved up in the sky. Back then, the land speed record was Richard Noble’s 1983 run in Thrust2. Noble achieved speeds of 663.47mph over one mile. It wasn’t until 1997 when landlubbers went truly supersonic, with Andy Green’s 763mph run in ThrustSSC in 1997, a record which stands today. 

Can I ride with you in your BMW? (Supersonic)

 Back in the 90s, BMWs remained a rare status symbol. Liam Gallagher probably didn’t have a middle manager trying to get to a business park outside Reading in mind when he sang Supersonic. 

Yet the German whips have become far more ubiquitous in the intervening years. BMW sold 45,000 cars in the UK in 1994. This rose to 125,000 by 2024, with BMW becoming the UK’s second-largest car brand for the first time ever. 

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