Oasis are back. Bucket hats are in.
Thirty years on, and a whole new generation of kids are falling in love with Cool Britannia. But just why are Gen Z so obsessed with Britpop nostalgia? Snake Denton investigates.
Strange things are happening to Britain’s youth. These days, you can’t ride a Lime bike down Kingsland High Street without crashing into some cheeky chappy in a Stone Island parka and an ironic Union Jack scarf. There’s something in the air. First, the internet got wind of it. Now, journalists are sniffing it out. Mingling with the stale beer on the counters and the rising damp on the walls, it’s taken on a funny sort of smell: the vague whiff of a Britpop revival.
So where did this wave of nostalgia come from? Why are young people mad fer the sounds and styles of late 90s and early 00s? And will anything new, fresh, or interesting come of it?
On August 27th 2024, the prophecy came true: the stars aligned and the sun shiiiined, as Oasis announced the biggest comeback shows of our time. Some Might Say this fabled reunion was the catalyst for the revival, but there’s been something in the air for a while.
Definitely Maybe (I’ll stop now), it started on TikTok in 2022. Mod cuts made a return by way of fashion influencers like Callum Mullin and Thomas Meacock. At the same time, Sambas and Stone Island jackets became the default youth culture uniform thanks to “bloke-core” (a terrace-inspired fashion trend). The result? Every man under the age of 30 started looking a bit like Liam Gallagher.
“The revival is much looser on dates and definitions – it’s more of a vibe, an attitude, a pose”
“In the last few years loads of Britpop-era styles have come back,” Mark Knox, founder of the internet’s favourite 90s and 00s pop culture archive, BritCult (@brit_cult), tells me. “CP Company goggle jackets, Adidas track tops, vintage parkas – that whole terrace-casual-meets-indie-boy look is everywhere again. Liam Gallagher’s got kids into Clarks Wallabees, and Blur’s more mod-inspired wardrobe is creeping back. You even see blazers and scarves having a resurgence!”
Don’t believe the hype? Get yourself down to Shit Indie Disco (@shitindiedisco), Liverpool’s biggest Brit-centric student club night, and see for yourself. “At our events, Oasis, Blur, and Pulp band t-shirts have made a comeback in a huge way,” claim its founders Nic and Sean Ryan, “and obviously Adidas trainers and baggy jeans are everywhere, as they were in the 90s.”
The popularity of these two Instagram accounts speaks to this Britpop revival. Let it be known this has nothing to do with Y2K – instead, it’s an amorphous take on Cool Britannia, that fleeting mid-to-late 90s moment when the nation’s ingenious pop culture was the envy of the world. The revival is much looser on dates and definitions – it’s more of a vibe, an attitude, a pose. Robbie Williams at Glastonbury? Yeah, that’s Britpop. Heathen Chemistry? Landfill indie? Sure, why not. Purists will claim this is BAD and WRONG, but the kids will tell you they don’t really care.
Back in 1997, Britain really did have something to shout about. We had the best bands, the coolest artists, the hottest designers, a half-decent football team, and a shiny new Prime Minister waiting in the wings. “Cool Britannia was coined by American magazine editors as an umbrella term to describe what was happening in Britain,” Daniel Rachel, the best-selling author of Don't Look Back In Anger: The Rise & Fall of Cool Britannia, tells me. “In all avenues of creative life, there was an explosion of incredible figures and ideas – all conspiring at once.”
These days, the country isn’t exactly swinging. Rents are rising. Pubs and clubs are closing. Even Brat Summer couldn’t bring a British music artist into the worldwide annual charts of the top 10 best selling singles or albums. A YouGov poll from February 2025 found that just 41% of young people from these shores are proud to be British (half the level among young people 20 years ago). None of this feels very “Cool Britannia” – but maybe that explains all this dewy-eyed nostalgia?
Let’s take it back to 2020. Following Boris Johnson’s empathic win in the 2019 election, right-wing commentators hailed the start of the Roaring Twenties. This was to be a decade of growth, stability, and prosperity following the choppy waters of Brexit and austerity. Instead – by way of a global pandemic, international conflicts, and a cost of living crisis – we’ve spluttered, choked, and burped our way through the first five years of the decade.
“Is it any wonder that Gen Z are longing for a return to the era of hedonism, optimism, and national self-confidence?”
Young Britons have shouldered the worst of this. Is it any wonder that Gen Z – who came of age trapped in box rooms or blockaded in student halls, and struggle to afford their flat shares, let alone their own homes – are longing for a return to the era of hedonism, optimism, and national self-confidence? The lives of foppish young Londoners as depicted in Richard Curtis rom-coms appear even more obscenely romantic when viewed from a rented box room in zone 3.
It’s also worth mentioning that this is just the way culture moves: Britpop was a 60s revival (with the Gallaghers borrowing from Lennon and McCartney at every turn, and Damon Albarn styling himself as a great English songwriter in the tradition of Ray Davies of The Kinks). Every generation plunders the past for a new spin on old ideas. But is this revival leading to anything fresh and interesting?
“A lot of the resurgence is about the look rather than the actual spirit of it,” says BritCult’s Mark Knox. “You’ve got bands nicking the bucket hats and parkas, but the real question is whether they can take the energy of the era and do something new with it?”
The author, Daniel Rachel echoes this view. “If there is a Brit-pop revival, then somebody's got to write a song as good as ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ or ‘Tender’. And there's too few songwriters to mind that can do that.”
But the boys from Shit Indie Disco hold a more optimistic outlook. “We've noticed a huge resurgence of guitar-based music off the back of this revival. Liverpool is on fire with fresh talent and bands at the minute. Just this week I saw a viral TikTok of these young scouse lads called The Biscuit Bandits playing ‘Don't Look Back In Anger’ on the bus.”
But hang on – before you set fire to your Fred Perry and bemoan the death of our native youth culture, have a look at the way young musicians are reclaiming the Union Jack (perhaps the enduring symbol of Cool Britannia). In the last 12 months, UK music darlings Nia Archives, Central Cee, and Rachel Chinouriri have brandished the flag on their album covers, plastering it on diamond grills, beanies, and bunting. This is no exercise in stale and pale nationalism – it feels playful and subversive; a nod and a wink to our shared subcultural past.
“All eras, and era-defining sounds, are influenced by what came before them, so young people being inspired by some of the most popular and successful bands to come out of the UK has to be a good thing,” say Nic and Sean of ShitIndieDisco.
Daniel Rachel agrees: “Everything is part of a lineage. Oasis used the Union Jack because The Jam did; Paul Weller had it on stage because The Who had it on their jackets; the Sex Pistols had them everywhere! Everybody borrows, takes a bit of the past, and blends it in with something new, and then, there you are: that's the next thing. And long may that continue.”
So what is Britpop in 2025? It’s less about anthems and more about aesthetics – it’s the look, the stance, the idea of swaggering through a world that feels increasingly joyless – and a general longing for a time when our culture had a bit more bite. And who’s to say something supersonic won’t come out of that?
