Oasis vs Blur: Who had the most number ones?

Posted On December 16, 2025December 16, 2025

The electric guitars are plugged into the amps, the jungle drums begin to rumble, and the stage is set. That means only one thing: Oasis and Blur are both in the house.

It’s a classic Britpop rivalry that has traversed down the ages – or, at least until this year, when Damon Albarn finally put it to bed. But either way, along with the hedonism of the 1990s Britpop era itself, it was the one cornerstone that that specific moment in music came to be remembered by. Sex, drugs, and a good old chart battle. 

Many people will say that this day and age has gone too PC for anything like that to ever happen again, and in some ways they’re right. In no other era would Noel Gallagher say, “It’s fucking on”. Albarn responds by calling him a “school bully”, and the Gallagher camp hits back by saying he wishes he would die of AIDS. If it wasn’t acceptable then, you can only imagine what the reaction would be now.

As much as Blur theoretically one the great Britpop battle of 1995 when ‘Country House’ clinched its way to the number one spot, everyone knew that this didn’t exactly tell the full story. This was something that even Albarn admitted earlier this year in light of the Oasis reunion tour. It was hardly conceding defeat, but simply acknowledging a fact that a lot of people already knew to be true.

The reality of the matter was that Blur supposedly winning the Britpop battle was a bit of a red herring, as it was actually Oasis who far outweighed them when it came to the number of number one singles they managed to garner. With Oasis’ eight compared to Blur’s two, there really was no competition, yet the rivalry still exists. 

What were the number one singles from Oasis and Blur?

With Britpop’s most blazing brothers clocking up eight chart toppers over the course of their initial tenure in the form of ‘Some Might Say’, ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, ‘D’you Know What I Mean?’, ‘All Around the World’, ‘Go Let It Out’, ‘The Hindu Times’, ‘Lyla’, and ‘The Importance of Being Idle’, it was fair to say that their back catalogue was stacked – and that was without ever reaching ‘Wonderwall’ or ‘Champagne Supernova’.

By comparison, Blur’s number ones were ‘Country House’ and ‘Beetlebum’, although their seven number one albums do somewhat counteract that. Nevertheless, purely from a singles perspective, the Gallagher brothers win the battle once and for all, fair and square.

Of course, there are many hairs you can split between the bands for all their success and acclaim. But in this case, with Oasis outrunning Albarn and Co by a country mile in terms of their song efforts, there’s not much you can do except sit back and applaud. 

As we all know, however, it’s a case of winning the battle and not the war. For now, Oasis are the ones most definitely riding high, but as past tales have taught us, there is always room for an unexpected comeback. Blur, it’s over to you.

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