Now Is Not the Time to Cry, Now’s the Time to Find Out Why

Words provided by Laurence Bray , founder of creative-led marketing collective DOUBLE W WORLDWIDE and co-founder of re.DEFINED a weekly free well-being community helping men prioritise their mental health through exercise, honest conversation and real connection. With thanks and photography by James Fry art director at Double W, who captured Oasis during their early rise.

​Oasis are back. And it’s not just the usual reunion fanfare. On July 4th, Liam and Noel walked out at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff for the first show of Oasis 25 and something in the national mood says this isn’t just about music. This is about memory, identity, and something more personal: the emotional outlet they gave to a generation of British men who never really had one.

Tickets? Gone. Hotels? Hammering fans for every penny. And no doubt, outside the stadium, someone will be flogging Liam and Noel half-and-half scarves.

But for some of us, the reason we still care isn’t the hype. It’s because Oasis gave lads like us something we weren’t supposed to need … a way to feel things, even when we couldn’t say them.

Maybe it’s because they were too big. Too obvious. And you’d always got those wannabe-Liam lads on a stag do, stomping around in knock-off trackies and dodgy haircuts, shouting their heads off in the kebab queue. Same energy as some bloke in a Matrix coat at a Marilyn Manson gig … it was never the band that put me off, but the circus around them sometimes did.

But even if you tried to resist it, the music got in. The lyrics, the chords, the way Liam sang like he meant every word, reached you in ways nothing else did. Their strength is in their songs; traditional and secure reliable guitar-based rock that rest on a tried and tested formula; verse chorus verse chorus middle eight chorus end.

Back in the 90s and early 00s, mental health wasn’t a conversation. Especially not for British men. You didn’t cry. You didn’t talk. I remember a couple of tears sneaking out during The Shawshank Redemption - not just “getting emotional,” but actual tears and pretending to sneeze or yawn, anything to hide it. That was the level of emotional self-policing. You couldn’t even let that out. You kept your head down. Got on with it. Took the piss out of anyone who didn’t. That was the rule. Feelings were weakness. End of.

And that silence had future consequences. Quiet breakdowns. Numb marriages. Panic attacks passed off as “just stress.” We’ve made some progress since, but even now, suicide is still the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK.

There wasn’t much of a language for what men were feeling. But somehow, Oasis gave us one, verse by verse, shouted into the dark, pint in hand. Not a solution, but a pressure valve.

On the surface, Oasis were simple, functional and successful, with a huge following of largely white British, often working-class men drawn from the same prosaic education and background as the guys on the stage. This band from the North West of England never preached politics, in fact they didn't appear to preach anything at all, they just sat comfortably within the realms of New Labour, sidestepping ‘real’ issues preferring cocaine and champagne over political debate.

But under the surface was there more? perhaps there's an explanation for their undying support that goes beyond well-crafted gobby three-minute rock tunes that you can sing along too with a can of warm beer in your hand. Pissed up.

A generation of young men who loved football perhaps a bit too much, trainers, and a few pints were often mocked or dismissed by the media. The “lad mag” tag was in full force, but behind the bravado it was of course only natural as human beings that these men felt deeply, even if they didn’t show it. Oasis gave that youth a voice. For once, someone was speaking their language.

Liam with his emotive voice that could always carry the tune, and Noel with elevated chords and functional and grounded words, were able to transmit this vulnerability and emptiness and give those people a voice and a sense of belonging all of their own and it has to be this more than anything else that elevated Oasis above other, ironic, and often smug British pop bands.

Was it all about the emotional pull? with songs like Slide Away, Acquiesce, Half The World Away or Some Might Say…

Take Some Might Say…

“I’ve been standing at the station, in need of education in the rain.”

Perhaps you can recognise this kid, the one in this situation, it could be any one of us, someone who didn't do that well at school, stood there on a platform waiting for the physical and metaphorically rain to stop and for something to actually happen.

Let’s not forget that beyond the red-top headlines about falling out of the Groucho Club at 4am, Oasis were an emotional journey. Their songs carried something universal: raw, well-travelled feelings that Noel’s chord progressions tapped into, full of highs and lows. It’s the kind of material Neil Young or John Lennon could’ve written. Simple, honest, powerful. And it came from a band who, on the surface, seemed blunt and fearless, but behind the wall were vulnerable, emotional, and deeply expressive. The die-hard fans always got that. The rest didn’t matter.

Don’t Go Away: “Say what you say, say that you’ll stay forever and a day.” That’s not swagger. That’s fear. A quiet plea hidden in melody.

Oasis didn’t hand you answers. They handed you feelings, the ones you didn’t know you had until you were screaming them back at a speaker stack, with 20,000 other blokes doing the same.

So in a way, when this came together as a live force Oasis gigs were football, therapy, and church – all at once.

Seeing Oasis wasn’t just going to a gig. It felt like turning up to a cup final where everyone wins. Flags draped over amps. Man City shirts everywhere. That old “Brother” sponsor stretched across chests like a badge of honour. Pre-gig pints, full voice in the pub, then the roar as Team Gallagher hit the stage.

And for all the “who the fuck are Man United” singalongs, the whole setup ironically had more in common with Fergie’s United than City; dominance, drama, confidence. Oasis were a 90s Premier League superclub. Just with guitars.

Football can, at any point in any season, have you staring into the abyss whoever your team, but here the score remains the same and you're always on the winning side as Oasis' songs know how to pull you out of that vortex

But beyond the football metaphors and swagger, something else was happening. Men were feeling things. And showing it. In the crowd, you’d see tears. Hugs. Strangers picking each other up off the floor. Blokes mouthing lyrics like prayers. For a few hours, no one needed to pretend they were fine. The noise made it safe to feel something real.

It’s only after Italia 90, Gazza and New Orders World in Motion that the two evolved into the same family, so during the Oasis glory years, football and music was a relatively new partnership at this stadium level where they were able to blend that experience.

Inevitably that would bring resistance from certain intellectuals and more importantly pseudo intellectuals who often still struggle with the Oasis phenomena. There was a section of the music press that always leaned toward the more ‘literary’ side of Britpop, bands like the Manics, who felt more ‘library intellectual’ by design. Oasis, with their high-street style and straight-to-the-gut lyrics, didn’t fit that mold. And for some, that made them a target. The emotional directness was seen as simplistic. Their mass appeal, somehow a flaw.

A band drenched in irony and wrapped in glitter strangely got more cultural credit than Oasis. The critics wanted eyeliner, not Adidas. And because Oasis never played that game, no camp sparkle or art-school aesthetics, they were dismissed as too obvious and could never be art. They didn’t write songs about Common People. They were the people. And for some, that made them too “common”.

They stayed on the high street for style, trainers, football shirts, and certainly no guyliner. Not a concept album in sight. That approach gave their critics the ammunition they needed to write them off. “Quoasis” was one of the digs as if they were just the brown ale two-dimensional rock of Status Quo but with a fringe and a swagger. One riff, one trick, no depth.

These critics needed Oasis to be dumb. Unrefined. Just a bunch of thick lads in trackies with loud guitars and nothing to say. That’s how they made sense of the band’s popularity. It helped them keep their cultural superiority. Oasis were the punchline.

But what they missed and what the fans felt was the emotional connection. The stuff that didn’t show up in reviews but did show up in the way men sang those lyrics like their lives depended on it.

A moment I won’t forget, one that really cements all this, was at Benicàssim Festival. I convinced my best mate - who we lost in 2020 at just 39 - to come see Oasis with me. He wasn’t that bothered at first. More into dance music. But he was a massive Villa fan, so I said, “It’ll be like the Holte End. Imagine Paul McGrath just made a goal-saving tackle. That’s Oasis.”

We ended up down the front, on random people’s shoulders, the whole thing blurry and brilliant like slow motion.

He never said it was like the Holte End. But he never slagged off Oasis again.

It’s been over 30 years since Definitely Maybe and What’s the Story Morning Glory? and thankfully, attitudes around male mental health have started to shift. A stone’s been lifted, even if only slightly. There’s more understanding now that men struggle too. That not all pain looks dramatic. That even the loudest, lairiest blokes can be hanging on by a thread.
That emotional shift is starting to show up in the spaces where blokes have always felt most at home: football terraces, pubs, stadiums. Places Oasis once sound tracked with anthems that let men feel something without saying a word.
You see it now in campaigns like Norwich Football Club “Check in on those around you”, released for #WorldMentalHealthDay.

In the short film, two men are shown attending matches together over a season. One seems upbeat, always laughing. The other, quiet and withdrawn. But by the end, it’s the louder one who’s taken his life a stark reminder that the signs don’t always show. No surprise organisations like Mind , Calm , Shout UK , and Heads Together backed it. It landed because it felt true.

And in a strange way, that film echoed something Oasis did all along - gave men permission to feel, without having to say the words out loud. Different format. Same truth.

It's not suggested here Oasis have some special power or medical intervention that can directly solve depression and anxiety but it's worth pointing out that music as open and wide as theirs has a quality to bring people together and just for even a few moments create a feeling of self-worth, unity and belonging.

Thirty years ago, there were very few places for a young man or woman to go in search of the light against depression, but one of them was an Oasis record. Behind that brash exterior was an emotional pull and a place where it’s alright not to be all right, a message that, on reflection, feels coded into every track.

When you ask yourself, why have Oasis been so enduring? Those young 20 year olds once clutching cans of warm beer in their sky blue shirts are now in their 40s and 50s. In that time, those young men have grown older, maybe had kids of their own, and faced whatever life’s thrown at them, the good and the bad. The songs crafted by Noel and so beautifully delivered by Liam were, are, and will always be the soundtrack to a life lived. Worn, celebrated, bruised, battered, and somehow overcome.

So when the beer is kicking in and the music is loud and it's getting dark over stadiums in Cardiff, Manchester, Edinburgh, Dublin and London, start crying your heart out, do it, it's good for you … it may not cure you but it will remind you that you're not alone.

If you or someone you know is struggling, you can find support and signposting at

reDEFINED: https://www.redefineduk.org/support​

reDEFINED: https://www.redefineduk.org/

Double W Worldwide www.wwldn.com​