Rock
Elvis Costello takes swipe at Oasis and jokes he can't decode a Manchester accent
Elvis Costello has suggested Oasis borrowed heavily from The La’s and joked that he still struggles to understand Mancunian accents.
Elvis Costello has shared some candid thoughts on Oasis, The La’s and the North West’s most distinctive accents.
Reflecting on the influence of Lee Mavers and The La’s, Costello said he believes the Manchester band built on ideas the Liverpool group had already shaped.
He explained: “This is probably a heretical thing to say to Mancunians, but I think that Oasis are a simplification of The La’s. There was a purity to Lee’s songs and the whole attitude of that. [Oasis] is much more ruthless, and undoubtedly effective, so I’m not going to knock it.”
Costello - whose parents hails from Liverpool - stressed that Oasis simply weren’t to his taste, adding that music often evolves through reinvention.
He said: “It’s not for me, never has been.
“Sometimes someone has a good idea and someone else takes that idea and turns it into something that communicates to more people. If they’re happy with it then that’s great.”
The singer also joked about his long‑running struggle to decipher Manchester’s famously thick accent. “
He admitted: "I can’t really understand Mancunians.
“They could be saying something nice, or they could be insulting me - I don’t speak that language. I just can’t understand anything they’re saying. Newcastle, I can, weirdly enough. I can tune that one in.”
Costello has criticised Oasis before, most notably in a 2009 interview with The Telegraph, where he dismissed Noel Gallagher’s self‑comparisons to Sir Paul McCartney and questioned his songwriting credentials.
At the time, he said: “Well Noel is deluded about a lot of things, most obviously that he is a songwriter at all… That he even brackets himself in the same sentence as Paul is laughable.”
