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    #26
    Pulp aren't really all that

    I love Pulp but "Something Changed" annoys me as it's one of those songs which messes about with time and makes no sense (like Bragg's "New England", "I was 21 years when I wrote this but I'm 22 now and I won't be for long", well were you 21 or 22? Why would you write "I'm 22 now" if you were only 21?).

    In "Something Changed" Jarvis writes...

    "I wrote this song two hours before we met"

    Then later...

    "Why did you touch my hand and softly say, stop asking questions which don't matter anyway"

    So, he wrote the song before he'd met her (and even knew her name) but she'd touched his hand and spoken to him? Eh?

    Other songs which are guilty of this sort of time travel lyrics include "Sk8er Boi" by Avril Lavigne and "Up The Junction" by Squeeze and it annoys me, which I realise probably says more about me than the songwriters.

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      #27
      Pulp aren't really all that

      I can't really add anything to this other than I never got Pulp at all and assumed it was only me but it is interesting to read people who were into different eras of them but not others.

      "Common People" suffers from the "My Way/Ace Of Spades" curse that no-one can listen to it objectively anymore. It needs to be off the radar for 20 years so that you can listen to it in its entirety in the future when it comes on Radio 2 and appreciate is a new-ish song (as happened to me with "My Sharona" yesterday)

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        #28
        Pulp aren't really all that

        You know what, CV, now I look them up they're not as I remember them. 'Party Hard' does have that uneasy 'cocaine success people getting agressive' vibe ("Entertainment can sometimes be hard / when the thing that you love / is the same thing that's holding you down. / This man is dangerous, he just shed his load on your best party frock.") but he seems to be the onlooker. I remembered 'I Spy' as being a slightly rapey class-revenge fantasy, but it's not. And I thought in 'Babies' the hiding-in-cupboard voyeurism and getting it on when discovered was a bit iffy, but it's all too Robin Asquith for that.

        Just goes to show: I don't pay attention to lyrics.

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          #29
          Pulp aren't really all that

          Although my fondness for them is with reservations, having a band like Pulp dominating pop's headlines for the few months that they did was a bit of a treat. Jarvis was so obviously a pop star waiting to happen, and his lyrics not so much socio-political comment as they were as souped-up diary revelations.

          This is what the man was good at. It was an act, a caricature - thus I really don't buy this line about his words being aggressively sexual: the average metal merchant wouldn't have the humour, style or self-knowledge to carry it off.

          The problem was that that (plus his stage persona) was the man's trick. And once you'd got it - via 'Babies', 'Do You Remember the First Time?' or 'Common People', whatever - then you'd kind of exhausted the best of it. There were sporadic later moments (I quite like We Love Life, however that's a personal thing), but the best of Pulp was set out within His 'n' Hers and Different Class.

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            #30
            Pulp aren't really all that

            I think I am at odds with most on this thread. I was not keen on Pulp pre-1995, enjoyed Different Class a lot but felt that was dwarfed by This Is Hardcore which I thought was and still is a fantastic album and a career high for them.

            I also don't really remember it being overrated at the time either, I think many people found it too complex and heavy going and missed the sing along standards with catchy choruses that had been typical of it's predecessor.

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              #31
              Pulp aren't really all that

              Derek makes his arguments well - particularly about Mis-shapes, as it goes - but I don't share them. One of the things that set them apart was the way that their three hallmark albums of the Nineties all sounded so different from one another, yet each brilliant in its own way. And bollocks to the lot of you, This is Hardcore was fantastic, not just in its easily charted dark/comedown elements, but in its strangely upbeat ending (Glory Days and The Day After The Revolution still get to me, perhaps because I have particularly good memories associated with them).

              I think musically they sound most accomplished on His'n'Hers, and most lyrically confident on Different Class, but then you're missing out earlier classics like Razzmatazz (which, admittedly, mines similar lyrical themes to His'n'Hers) and My Legendary Girlfriend.

              I do think Derek's right to flag up the latent misogyny behind some songs: I Spy is brilliant as a piece of controlled class rage, but it's daft to laud the political aspect of that while ignoring its rather more vengeful gender politics.

              It was only in We Love Life that they really started to sound like more of a parody of themselves, more where Jarvis really did sound like he was trapped in his own persona - all those namechecks to Trebor factories that closed in the early Seventies and so on, which made them sound more like Blouse (the Brass Eye spoof) than Pulp on top of their game. They might as well have stuck "Me Oh Myra" on that one.

              But even if Common People was the only even vaguely political song they ever did (which it isn't) it would still set them apart from the dull. passive, think-o-phobic era from which they emerged. They were and are fucking great.

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                #32
                Pulp aren't really all that

                diggedy derek wrote:
                Man, liking Richard Hawley over Pulp is like choosing a hug from your gran over 15 minutes with the hot girl next door.
                ...who then turns out to be really your mum....

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                  #33
                  Pulp aren't really all that

                  tratorello wrote:
                  I love Pulp but "Something Changed" annoys me as it's one of those songs which messes about with time and makes no sense (like Bragg's "New England", "I was 21 years when I wrote this but I'm 22 now and I won't be for long", well were you 21 or 22? Why would you write "I'm 22 now" if you were only 21?).

                  In "Something Changed" Jarvis writes...

                  "I wrote this song two hours before we met"

                  Then later...

                  "Why did you touch my hand and softly say, stop asking questions which don't matter anyway"

                  So, he wrote the song before he'd met her (and even knew her name) but she'd touched his hand and spoken to him? Eh?

                  Other songs which are guilty of this sort of time travel lyrics include "Sk8er Boi" by Avril Lavigne and "Up The Junction" by Squeeze and it annoys me, which I realise probably says more about me than the songwriters.
                  oh-er...better stay away from the Doctor Who thread!

                  Comment


                    #34
                    Pulp aren't really all that

                    Sorry for getting the title of "Mis-Shapes" wrong.

                    Maybe I should check out This Is Hardcore again.

                    I get the sense, somehow, that they didn't work together that easily as a group. I don't know why. Somehow, because they seem quite awkward musicians, I don't get that much spark from the way the group plays together. That's not to say there aren't some great songs.

                    Perhaps that's why sometimes they seem exactly the sum of their parts. And sometimes less: how could Pulp working with SCOTT WALKER be boring? (We Love Live). But it was.

                    Incidentally, an interesting aside to mention while we're on the subject: Mark Webber is an expert on avant garde film and wrote an article for The Wire about minimalist composer La Monte Young.

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                      #35
                      Pulp aren't really all that

                      As for political songs, they did a few, most notably Glory Days as Cocaine Socialist for a b-side. But they were always more about observational stuff, I thought.
                      This is Hardcore is still a good album, I think; very bleak and dark in places, though, so perhaps not the most accessible. It's like Sheffield's answer to Berlin.
                      Will agree with We love life being very boring though. I remember liking it when it came out, but I haven't listened to it in years, and reading this thread did not make me feel in the slightest way inclined to do so. I think E10 summed it up pretty well.

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                        #36
                        Pulp aren't really all that

                        There's one really good song on We Love Life, "Wickerman", but even that's a retread of things like "Sheffield Sex City" and "Deep Fried In Kelvin".

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                          #37
                          Pulp aren't really all that

                          I was never that keen on Pulp, mainly because I thought that Jarvis Cocker was and still is a pretentious twat.

                          Don't get me wrong, I can fully understand why many people adored them, but they just weren't for me. I would agree though that 'This Is Hardcore' contained some of their best material, based on what I've heard of it.

                          The anthemic 'Common People' raised more questions than it answered. How do you define who or what 'common' is?

                          And how many students who belted this song out at the time or drunkenly danced to it in nightclubs are now preparing to send their kids to private schools so that they don't have to mix with 'common' kids?

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                            #38
                            Pulp aren't really all that

                            Surely those people were exactly who JC was parodying?

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                              #39
                              Pulp aren't really all that

                              Jarvis Cocker was and still is a pretentious twat.
                              How so? Apart from the "please don't read the lyrics whilst listening to the CD" thing he always put in their liner notes, he doesn't fit my definition of pretentious.

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                                #40
                                Pulp aren't really all that

                                Jah Womble wrote:
                                Surely those people were exactly who JC was parodying?
                                Yes, but plenty of those people did get pissed and dance to it at the time, unfortunately. Plenty of people heard it and didn't get it, which is the problem inherent in trying to bring political messages into an essentially apolitical (if not actively anti-political), passive mainstream. And I do have a terrible fear that a lot of the people watching Pulp live now would be more at ease with some (even if only some) of 2011's ruling-class pop than with the music played by Logan Sama, Cameo or Charlie Sloth ...

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                                  #41
                                  Pulp aren't really all that

                                  The thing about that time was that it was probably the worst era for bands, guitar music, however you want to term it, since rock 'n' roll was invented. All that ghastly shit that went under the Britpop rubric - Oasis and their lardbrained spawn, Elastica, Menswear, fucking hell! So goodish, occasionally very good bands like Pulp and Suede looked quite neat in comparison, especially as they seemed to be sympathetic characters as well.

                                  But why people are excited about Pulp now I can't fathom - they're not doing anything new and I doubt they're claiming to. I'll have to listen again to see if I'm missing something, but last time I tried 'Different Class' it seemed drab and tired.

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                                    #42
                                    Pulp aren't really all that

                                    His n hers and different class were brilliant. Different class was a bit more polished than his n' hers but what the two albums had were brilliantly catchy tunes for dancing, and the upbeat dancing music outweighed the weird pervert thing that cocker had going on.

                                    Unfortunately This is hardcore as the name would suggest was all about the pervert thing just taking over from the music. It was still ok, and it still had some great moments, but still and all, it was a dreadful disappointment.

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                                      #43
                                      Pulp aren't really all that

                                      Mitch wrote:
                                      Jarvis Cocker was and still is a pretentious twat.
                                      How so? Apart from the "please don't read the lyrics whilst listening to the CD" thing he always put in their liner notes, he doesn't fit my definition of pretentious.
                                      Well I realise that it's a word which is open to several shades of meaning and context, but two possible definitions of the word fit JC, imo:

                                      1. Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified.

                                      2. Making or marked by an extravagant outward show; ostentatious.

                                      I felt that JC fitted those two shades of meaning - he just wasn't to my taste.

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                                        #44
                                        Pulp aren't really all that

                                        Yes, but plenty of those people did get pissed and dance to it at the time, unfortunately. Plenty of people heard it and didn't get it, which is the problem inherent in trying to bring political messages into an essentially apolitical (if not actively anti-political), passive mainstream.
                                        Why is that a 'problem'? No writer - including Jarvis Cocker - has a responsibility as to whether fans 'get it' or not.

                                        Comment


                                          #45
                                          Pulp aren't really all that

                                          Yes, but plenty of those people did get pissed and dance to it at the time, unfortunately. Plenty of people heard it and didn't get it, which is the problem inherent in trying to bring political messages into an essentially apolitical (if not actively anti-political), passive mainstream. And I do have a terrible fear that a lot of the people watching Pulp live now would be more at ease with some (even if only some) of 2011's ruling-class pop than with the music played by Logan Sama, Cameo or Charlie Sloth ...
                                          Best not bother then eh?

                                          Comment


                                            #46
                                            Pulp aren't really all that

                                            Apart from the point made about not believing in JC's writing in Babies (I can definitely imagine falling asleep in a wardrobe, I don't think its so fantastical)..

                                            l think I'll agree with the original thread question. Pulp feel dated in a time that I want to forget, I associate them with the Britpop period rather than the playing a toilet years.

                                            Still, most acts have a good one or two tunes in them, my favourite Pulp tunes that still stand up for me are Babies & The Trees, but on balance, on my desert island I'm taking The Ragga Twins

                                            Mixed Truth EP being my favourite of theirs.

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                                              #47
                                              Pulp aren't really all that

                                              First saw Pulp at some toilet of a venue in 1981, on the strength of their Peel Session. Consistantly great over the years, and good on them!

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                                                #48
                                                Pulp aren't really all that

                                                I'm quite relaxed about so many people failing to like or 'get' Pulp, because for a band whose very essence is tribal and oppositional, no evangelising is needed (or even appropriate). It's not like some other artists where I feel it's of vital importance that everyone should appreciate them, and if they don't, there's something badly wrong.

                                                I'm also not bothered if a bunch of tossers miss the point of "Common People". I was more bothered when Jarvis himself started hanging around with the Hoxton rich, and even married some double-barreled posh woman. That felt like a betrayal.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Pulp aren't really all that

                                                  I'm listening to We Love Life right now and it's brilliant. Closer to Jarvis's solo album than the big Pulp records, I guess - slower paced, no razzmatazz - but really strong songs and gorgeous arrangements. A stylish early middle age record.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Pulp aren't really all that

                                                    One day I will post the ring entrance of Franklin James (evil corporate owner of Barrett Gardens Championship Wrestling) with his championship-winning stable of wrestlers The Wraith, X-Khan, and Vinnie Vinatta, and you will all realize It Was Hardcore.

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