Music

Remembering Britpop Battle: 25 years since Oasis and Blur battled on music charts


It’s been 25 years since Oasis and Blur battled on the music charts (Picture: Rex/Getty)

It’s hard to believe that it’s been exactly 25 years since Britpop bands Oasis and Blur competed in one of the most iconic music chart battles.

Proclaimed the Battle Of Britpop, Oasis had planned to release their single Roll With It on August 14 1995 – but in a last minute decision, their rivals Blur moved the release of their track Country House to the same day in order to go head to head.

Both bands were two of the most successful to emerge from the rock music scene in the 90s, and although both had been respectful towards one another earlier in their careers, things quickly turned sour once Oasis scored their first number one single with Some Might Say in April.

It was a competition like no other, that focused on social class just as much as music – a group of working class Northerners, up against a selection of middle class men from Southern England, who had attended university.

Fans of the groups eagerly anticipated the winning act, with the top 40 UK Singles Chart for that week unveiled on BBC Radio One on August 18.

Ultimately, Blur emerged victorious, with Country House topping the charts, selling 274,000 copies. Meanwhile, Oasis settled for number two, achieving 216,000 sales.

One could argue that part of the reason for Blur’s success was attributed to the fact they had released two CD singles for the song, one which included live tracks from their Mile End gig from June, 1995.

Country House also became the band’s first single to reach number one, with the second and most recent, Beetlebum, hitting the top spot in 1997.  

The Battle Of Britpop arguably became the most important British music rivalry since The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the 1960s, but even that was met with a more civil approach.

Blur emerged victorious, with their single hitting number one (Picture: Rex)

Earlier this year, Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher angrily responded to his brother Noel’s claim that the feud between the bands emerged due to him and Blur’s Damon Albarn getting caught up in a love triangle.

Damon had reportedly slept with a mystery woman Liam had been dating, leading to the fallout.

Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher denied that a love triangle involving him and Blur’s Damon Albarn was the cause of the feud (Picture: Getty Images)

According to The Sun, Noel claims the feud was fuelled by drugs: ‘Liam and Damon were s******g the same bird and there was a lot of cocaine involved. That’s where the germ of it grew from.’

The claim also appeared in the book Don’t Look Back In Anger, written by Oasis’ former manager Alan McGee.

However, Liam took to Twitter to deny this was the case, referring to the Blur frontman as ‘Dermot Oblong’.

He tweeted: ‘Just for the record me and Dermot oblong never fell out over a girl or boy we always had the craic think things turned nasty when Noel Gallagher wished he Dermot caught AIDS and die not Rkid’s finest moment as you were LG x [sic].’

Liam later added that he had ‘never done cocaine’ with any of the Blur members.

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