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There will never be another Oasis – British culture, for better and worse, has moved on | Rachel Aroesti

We still have cocksure rock stars, but the gobby Gallaghers’ swaggering brand of witty mockery has gone out of style. Did we grow up – or get boring?

In the 1990s, they embodied new laddism – football, pints, loutish demeanour, but make it self-aware – and while their Britpop peers were more sensitive (Damon Albarn later likened them to school bullies), their mouthiness was mirrored in the era’s pop giants including the Spice Girls and Robbie Williams. Charli xcx brought the party-starting egomania, while CMAT declared she had “an amazing ass and the best Irish country rock’n’roll band in the world.” A group of working-class, betracksuited lads who like drugs, pubs and incendiary jokes performed one of the festival’s most popular sets. The outspoken, straight-talking indie musician Nadine Shah read out an open letter in support of Palestine Action, while Kate Nash generated column inches with her expletive-laden tirade against JK Rowling and transphobia (which “is not fucking feminist”), something CMAT has also spoken passionately against.

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