BY ROBERT INKS
Look, I know I’m gonna catch flak for this, but it has to be said.
I’m no fan of Donald Trump, especially as a presidential candidate. His platform is nonsensical and racist, his personality is a collage of all of America’s worst traits, and his hair… well, the less said there, the better.
But when he called Oasis the most overrated band of the 1990s, that hung with me in a way I’m still having trouble processing.
Trump stuck his foot in his mouth plenty of times in his July 8 interview with NBC News correspondent Katy Tur, so that’s why it was all the more jarring when he came right out and said what I’ve been thinking for years: “Listen, Katy. I have all the respect in the world for Oasis making it big, considering how little talent they have. But looking back, it’s just an indisputable fact that they actually suck.”
And before Tur could press him further, he interrupted her with, “They’ve sucked the whole time, Katy.” That really got to me.
“I mean, first of all, they’re ripoff artists,” Trump continued, unprompted. “And bad ones. They got sued by Stevie Wonder! Stevie Wonder, Katy! That loser can’t even see!”
I could barely pay attention to the interview after that, I was so lost in thought. I almost didn’t catch the part where he explained how badly Oasis has aged, which was good because if I’d heard him the first time when he told the audience about how they’re not the kind of band you look back on and think they were great, but you’re also not immediately filled with regret that you bought (What’s the Story) Morning Glory for a girl you liked in high school—that they have, in fact, so completely dissolved into the bland middle of the ‘90s alt-rock scene that they would have been better off as a teaspoon of sugar in a gallon of tap water—my mind would have been actually blown.
Sure, you say, but there were worse bands in the ‘90s. The Donald covered that, too! He talked about famously terrible bands like Bush and Smash Mouth, made the critical distinction that “those dummies never had the level of critical and commercial success that Oasis did. And [Bush frontman] Gavin Rossdale was even married to [No Doubt frontwoman] Gwen Stefani! He couldn’t have failed so hard at being a real rock star unless he was actually trying to be a loser!” Trump really knows what he’s talking about, here.
Really makes you think, doesn’t it? Because if Donald Trump is so right about Oasis being terrible, what if he’s right about everything else, too?
Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman