Grian Chatten vs Liam Gallagher - table topping clash of the premier league frontmen

As Oasis kicked off in Cardiff and Fontaines DC filled Finsbury Park, we look at OG feral frontman Liam Gallagher and ask if the torch has passed to Fontaines DC's Grian Chatten.

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All great bands need a brilliant frontman/woman. Liam Gallagher and Grian Chatten are not singers, they are frontmen. Not just vocalists. Frontmen. The kind of feral, fire-eyed misfits who command a crowd with a glance, a growl or a cigarette raised in either contempt or communion. And who don't lack confidence - as Liam memorably said "There's Elvis and me. I couldn't say which of the two is the best".

But these two aren’t cut from the same cloth, although both were born in England to Irish parents (or one in Grian's case). Liam born in Manchester in the ’70s with a voice like sandpaper soaked in lager, the other forged in the post-Celtic twilight of Dublin’s poetic underbelly, wired on Yeats and Joy Division. And yet both carry a rare, vital voltage. How do they measure up?

The Swagger

Liam Gallagher is a walking caricature of the lad-rock era (although he started it) - all parkas, tambourines and a sneer that could cut concrete. His strut is legendary. It’s not just confidence, it’s messianic. There’s a reason people will pay huge sums to see him perform Supersonic, Rock 'n’ Roll Star or Cigarettes and Alcohol. He’s got working-class madman charm, all rolled up in Manc defiance. Like a football hooligan with a tambourine and lungs like a Greek god gobbing off from Mount Olympus.

Grian Chatten, by contrast, is all coiled tension. He doesn’t strut - he paces. Agitated. Eyes darting like he's seen something apocalyptic the rest of us missed. If Liam’s the rock star who knows he’s a god, Grian’s the prophet who wishes he wasn’t. His presence is clenched, coiled, volatile as he wrenches words from his innards. Watching him on stage is like watching someone try to exorcise themselves via a microphone.

The Voice

Liam’s voice is what you’d get if John Lennon and a chainsaw had a lovechild. Nasal, biting, and unmistakable. As Simon Armitage noted in the Guardian "all tonsil, adenoid, teeth and tongue, loud enough to crowd-surf to the back of a stadium, sharp and sneery enough to enunciate." Even now he still belts with a force that makes his younger contemporaries sound like choirboys. He spits every line like it’s both a threat and a punchline. In his prime? Untouchable.

Grian, on the other hand, doesn’t so much sing as deliver. Barked poetry, shouted anthems, sometimes half-mumbled, always half-unraveled. As Pitchfork had it: "his nasal and stony voice pushes melodies around in a way that dares you to judge them out of tune." He sounds like a man crawling through emotional wreckage, live. The voice cracks. It warps. But it's intentional. In Fontaines D.C., vulnerability is weaponised. There’s romance in the ruin. On his solo album he showed a more vulnerable, tender side. That voice can sing.

The Songs

There's no point pretending Liam was anything other than the Oasis frontman. Noel wrote the anthems, Liam delivered them like a hellfire preacher declaiming texts from the bible. He gave Noel’s romanticism its edge, its threat, its raw, snot-nosed soul. Paul McCartney said "when you got a job to do, you got to do it well. You gotta give the other fellow hell." For two feuding, Beatles worshipping brothers, it could not be more apt.

Grian is the pen and the blade. Fontaines D.C. lyrics aren’t about escape — they’re rooted, resisting, grieving. A Hero’s Death and Skinty Fia read like literature and bleed like diaries. A Joycean romp through Dublin's dialects and dives. Grian’s gift is turning emotional dissonance into anthems, giving poetry to the post-punk parade. You get the sense he feels every line like a bruise.

The Era

Liam is the last true rock ’n’ roll frontman of the pre-internet age. The myth of Oasis - two brothers, one band, millions of dreams - was built in pubs and tabloids. He defines the '90s. Pint-spilling, headline-grabbing, stadium-conquering chaos. Toilet circuit to Knebworth (in a helicopter) in a year. Anxious? Nah - "I suppose I do get sad, but not for too long. I just look in the mirror and go, 'What a fucking good-looking fuck you are.' And then I brighten up."

Grian is what you get in the anxiety addled, post-Brexit, post-pandemic, post-hope age. His is a quieter despair. A howl from the margins. He doesn't want to be your hero. He just wants to survive the night, maybe write something real before the lights go out. He’s relevant, in the bleakest sense of the word. Whereas Liam floats, Grian feels: "I have to draw something out of myself every night. There’s a huge emotional tax to pay for me every night."

Different readers of the same story

Time is critical here as Oasis were pre internet and pre fracturing of mass media; they were able to dominate in a way which is impossible now. However Liam Gallagher and Grian Chatten are both premier league frontmen of their time. Liam, the messiah of hedonism. Grian, the mourner of lost futures.

One makes you raise a pint and sing. The other makes you light a cigarette and think.

And maybe that’s what makes this comparison so thrilling — one’s a swaggering firework, the other’s a slow-burning fuse. Both light up the stage. Just in very different hues of fire.

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