Time has a funny way of smoothing rough edges. Just ask Alex James, who’s watching history repeat itself from his Cotswolds farm – though this time with a gentler touch. The 56-year-old Blur bassist recently shared his thoughts on the upcoming Oasis reunion, and his words carried an unexpected warmth that would’ve seemed impossible during the heated Britpop wars of the ’90s.
“It’s wonderful,” James told The Sun, reflecting on the Gallagher brothers’ impending return after their 16-year silence. “It’s awful that most bands end up hating each other.” Coming from someone who weathered his own band’s storms – including Graham Coxon’s temporary exit in the early 2000s – the sentiment rings particularly true.
Meanwhile, the desert sands of Coachella 2025 shifted beneath an entirely different kind of musical revolution. Irish troublemakers Kneecap sparked an unlikely political moment when American festival-goers found themselves chanting “Margaret Thatcher is still dead” – before the livestream mysteriously went dark. Some things, it seems, still manage to raise eyebrows even in our supposedly shock-proof era.
But nothing could’ve prepared the festival crowd for Lady Gaga’s audacious reimagining of what a headline set could be. “I decided to build you an opera house in the desert,” she announced, before unleashing nearly two hours of theatrical genius that left jaws firmly planted in the sand. The performance unfolded in four acts plus bookends, each more ambitious than the last.
During “Abracadabra,” audiences witnessed Gaga’s metamorphosis from Victorian invalid to what could only be described as the satanic DJ of a medieval prison – the kind of creative leap that sounds absurd on paper but somehow made perfect sense in execution. Working alongside choreography virtuoso Parris Goebel, Gaga crafted something that transcended the typical festival spectacle.
The show’s emotional core emerged during an stripped-down “Shallow,” performed solo at a skull-adorned piano amid the crowd. The mainstage fell so silent you could’ve heard a guitar pick drop, before erupting into a unified chorus that had hardened festival veterans wiping away tears.
These parallel narratives – from James’s pastoral musings to Gaga’s desert opera – paint a portrait of an industry that refuses to sit still. As James preps Britpop Classical with the London Concert Orchestra and Gaga pushes live performance into uncharted territory, music’s ability to unite, provoke, and transform remains startlingly vital.
Perhaps that’s the weekend’s real lesson. Whether through the healing of ancient feuds or the creation of avant-garde spectacles in the California desert, music keeps finding new ways to move us – even if sometimes that means watching a pop star DJ for the damned while Victorian ghosts dance in the background.
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