Harvest (Online); Bi-Annual Don’t Look Back in Anger Volume 4(2); 2019 DON'T LOOK BACK IN ANGER: OASIS, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SIBLINGS, REBIRTH AND THE TRICKSTER'S CYCLE Ari Katorza Historian, Music Critic & Cultural Studies Scholar, Sapir Academic College Israel Email:
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[email protected] Phone: 972-54-4791459 Abstract Popular music research was stretching for some decades from subcultures theories to music sociology; from traditional musicology to new musicology, and from cultural studies of modernist and post-modernist culture to semiotics and music aesthetics. Yet, there were hardly – to say at least – any researches concerning popular music bands of siblings and their music. In the 1990s, Oasis was the best-selling band in Britain. TheGallagher brothers, Noel and Liam, who led Oasis, epitomized the era of Britpop. It was a musical and cultural movement that was based on "returning to Englishness", and produced attractive and highly commercial rock music by indie bands. A crucial part of Oasis' success depended on the brothers' relationship. The siblings competed for leadership, control and attention. Their rivalry turned the media obsessed with the band. Journalistic historians of Britpop, Oasis' biographers and academics, have related to the 1990s, the Britpop movement, the band's well- publicized rivalry with Blur, the new post-Thatcherism euphoria, and the rise of Tony Blair and the New Labour, as all part of Oasis Phenomenon. However, I'd like to I understand Oasis' successful music from a different perspective, from a psychological point of view: as a product of the dysfunctional family syndrome, and especially the idea of brothers in a family and a musical unity.