File this under poll results that are not at all surprising and yet I couldn’t be gladder someone gathered them: According to a BuzzFeed poll, U.K. voters in favor of Britain exiting the European Union are significantly more likely to be Oasis fans than Blur fans (68 percent vs. 32 percent), while among voters in favor of staying in the EU, that spread takes a notable dive (58 percent vs. 42 percent). Pollster YouGov told BuzzFeed that there is a “statistically significant difference between EU vote preference and those who preferred either Blur or Oasis.” Things haven’t been so heated between Blur and Oasis fans since the time the two bands competed for U.K. singles-chart dominance in 1995’s Battle of Britpop.
So what might account for the political split among the bands’ enthusiasts? As Jordan Weissmann pointed out this week, Brexit supporters are less educated, less urban, and more conservative than the Remain set. Blur, in the band’s 25-year journey from sun-drenched proto-alt-rockers to incisive Britpoppers to skronky indie importers to moody sonic catholics, is the far more adventurous and cosmopolitan of the two groups, while Oasis, in both its sloppy public antics and its hook-first pop primalism, makes more or less static Britpop for the common man. To put it more plainly and reductively: The folks in the village pub like Oasis and dislike the EU. Former college radio DJs like Blur and the continent.
I will admit to wondering how the mid-’90s incarnation of Blur—the one that pioneered an explicitly British, downright parochial alternative to American alt-rock on albums like Parklife and The Great Escape—might have viewed the referendum, and the members don’t appear to have weighed in publicly with their present views. Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, however, shared a characteristically nihilistic take, telling the CBC:
I see politicians on TV every night telling us that this is a fucking momentous decision that could fucking change Britain forever and blah, blah, blah. It’s like, okay, why don’t you fucking do what we pay you to do which is run the fucking country and make your fucking mind up. What are you asking the people for? 99 percent of the people are thick as pig shit.
Thanks for that, Noel.
