Even before the new Gorillaz album was released on Friday, Damon Albarn was anticipating Liam Gallagher’s hot take on We Got the Power, the first formal collaboration between the erstwhile Blur frontman and Liam’s estranged older brother Noel. “No one’s asked Liam what he thinks about the song yet,” Albarn told Vulture. “No doubt he’d have a fantastic one-liner about what a bunch of fucking knobheads we are.”



Noel may as well have said “Our Kid” five times into the bathroom mirror, because within 24 hours of the quote appearing online, Liam’s verdict was in. “That dick out of Blur and the creepy one out of Oasis need to hang there heads in shame as it’s no dancing in the streets,” he tweeted, presumably referring to Mick Jagger and David Bowie’s endearingly naff version of the Martha and the Vandellas classic. He then went on to deride Albarn as a “gobshite” who’d turned Noel into a “massive girl” and promised “there’s gonna be war” the next time they meet.

That gobshite out of blur might have turned noel Gallagher into a massive girl but believe you me nxt time i see him there's gonna be war — Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) April 28, 2017

It is easy to forget that in the early days of Britpop, there was a mutual respect – and even tentative admiration – between Blur and Oasis. At the 1995 NME Awards, where Blur won five awards to Oasis’s three, Noel and Damon gamely mugged for the cameras together, and Liam, in a rare moment of humility, conceded that: “I don’t think we should have got more [awards] than Blur. Blur are a top band.” It wasn’t until a couple of months later, when Albarn turned up to a Creation Records party celebrating Some Might Say reaching No 1 – and was mercilessly taunted by a triumphal Liam – that the seeds of the greatest pop rivalry of the age were sown. “Damon got on one about it and decided to take Oasis on,” Creation boss Alan McGee later recalled to NME. “Oasis, being Oasis, decided to hate them. And Blur, being Blur, thought it was a game.”

Everyone knows what happened next. Blur and their label engineered a chart battle between the bands’ next singles, Country House and Roll With It, from which Blur would ultimately emerge victorious, if mildly traumatised. (Guitarist Graham Coxon famously threatened to jump out of a window over the whole affair.) Yet more memorable than the songs themselves, both of which were the bands’ weakest to date, was the media circus surrounding the showdown – the tribal loyalties it engendered; NME’s breathless “heavyweight championship” cover; and Noel’s infamous off-the-cuff remark wishing Aids on Albarn and his bandmate Alex James. (Gallagher apologised in 2011, saying he should have wished “a bad cold” on them instead.)

Blur’s triumph in the charts marked the high point, if not the end of hostilities: six months later, Oasis would revel in sweeping the board at the Brits by treating the audience to a rendition of Parklife they charmingly retitled “Shitelife”. Then, as Britpop began to fizzle out, the Gallaghers’ fire was increasingly trained on another target, Robbie Williams, in addition to each other. Nevertheless, Albarn told NME in 2006: “I can’t make it up with Noel. Britpop would be over and heaven forbid that we’d ever admit we’d all grown up!”



After Oasis imploded in 2009, however, their long-dormant rivalry became a recurring subplot in Liam’s ongoing beef with his brother, who – when Liam’s not bemoaning his inexplicable reluctance to be in a band with him again – is regularly (and entertainingly) denounced as “old brown tongue”, “the Ronnie Corbett of rock’n’roll” and “POTATO”. Noel and Damon made their peace in 2011, but when they appeared on stage at a Teenage Cancer Trust benefit in 2013, Liam compared the occasion to Noel’s Downing Street tete-a-tete with Tony Blair (“Don’t know what’s worse RKID sipping champagne with a war criminal or them backing vocals you’ve just done for BLUE!”) and claimed their detente had effectively “killed Britpop”. (At least he acknowledged it was dead.)

Celebrity summit … Tony Blair and Noel Gallagher at No 10. Photograph: Rebecca Naden/PA

In the 90s, the feud held some tangible rewards for both bands (or their respective labels, at any rate). Since then, however, the battle lines have been redrawn beyond recognition: Oasis doesn’t exist, Blur’s future is unknown. The principals have long since buried the hatchet, leaving Liam – the eternal man with a fork in a world of soup – to wage a one-sided guerrilla war of snark on social media. “[It’s] about him staying relevant,” speculated Noel of his brother’s shit-stirring last year. “If you’re him, what else is there to tweet about? How his spring/summer collections are doing for his clothing firm? I’m not sure that warrants a tweet.”

There is undoubtedly some truth in that. Tellingly, Liam signed off on his 140-character review of We Got the Power with the words, “as you were” – the title of his forthcoming solo album, which after Beady Eye’s brief, inglorious existence looks increasingly make-or-break for his musical career. Does he actively dislike Damon Albarn? Probably not, considering he championed Blur’s Lonesome Street as the “song of the year” in 2015. Two decades on from the Battle of Britpop, however, it is oddly comforting to see that the Blur-Oasis vendetta remains as contrived and cynical as ever. The bad blood between the Gallagher brothers themselves, on the other hand, is very real. “Lots of people say I need to chill out about Noel,” Liam confessed to Q magazine last year. “Not until they stop Twitter. That cunt will always get it from me.”