What's Their Best Song? #17: Pulp

I don’t hate it like BITT does I guess. I just never really connected with it fully, probably on account of my conflicted feelings about class growing up, ie the fact that we were definitely a middle-class family but everything I had been taught about class was outdated by the 80s and centred on how much money your family had (we had none) and what jobs they did (my mum was an overworked receptionist and my stepdad was a gardener at the park). So I always felt odd at school in terms of my relation to the classes present and by the time I got to hearing Common People it definitely felt like it was part of a dismissal of people on the basis of things that weren’t necessarily reflective of their personal values or situation.

isn’t this kind of a misinterpretation of the song itself, though? It’s about a rich kid slumming it and it makes it clear that her parents are loaded, rather than focusing on class. The protagonist isn’t even from the UK, she’s from Greece.

Yeah it’s not that I’m pinning this on JC, I guess it looked that way. Just that a lot of why I never took to it was that I felt like it became tied up in that narrative for me.

Don’t think it matters where she’s from, though. It’s about class and I don’t actually think there is a huge amount regarding that which is uniquely British. Yes, we still have the monarchy etc but the same types of people filled those voids at the top of society in other places.

I’d disagree on that, it seems to be a big thing in the UK as opposed to here in Ireland. The whole private/public school thing, idk from an outsider looking in you do have a bit of a class thing going on…Blur vs Oasis as well seemed very ‘class war’. but like you say it’s something that the song might have got sucked into through no fault of its own.

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I think the Irish often seem better generally about a lot of this stuff. I was thinking more of mainland Europe where it just feels to me like it’s all ‘there’. The UK I think talks about it more because we have so many actual Lords etc and they control the entire upper chamber of Parliament. But I think the notion of class tourism here as poverty tourism is kind of universal.

Last Day of the Miners’ Strike

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makeup indonesia GIF

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Hook after goddamn hook. And that guitar line in the chorus :heart_eyes:

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Far too hard to choose, so I’m just going to give all 10 to Razzmatazz.

I can’t DM @Funkhouser though. What am I doing wrong?

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Funko’s profile is hidden and Discourse haven’t provided a simple way around it.

You have to click through to your inbox from your profile by clicking the envelope twice
image
then you click the blue button to start a new message and then you can type Funkhouser into the ‘to’ field but don’t use the @, just type the username.

:confused:

Brill. Tks

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It (the album) is frequently dismissed and tbf most of it is flimsy but there’s a couple of songs I really like on there. Wishful Thinking and Blue Girls have this youthful earnestness to them that makes Jarvis cringe terribly these days but I find it appealing and love the dusky ambience, the flutes and the chatter, makes a lot of sense that years later Jarvis would write the notes for the Kes soundtrack reissue.

My Lighthouse is the sort of thing that I can imagine sending a lot of people away screaming but I don’t mind it at all

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Easily my favourite, just the right levels of desperation and grim resignation in it for me

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I’m very fond of It. It’s a little slight and juvenile, sure, but it’s also charming and very atmospheric in places, particularly the songs you’ve mentioned. This is a great addition to the album too (originally My Lighthouse’s b-side), and possibly their best song of that period

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I always assumed John Barry as JC talked about him as an influence quite a bit. No idea though tbh.

It’s a Barry White reference

Source: quote from Jarvis in Mark Sturdy’s Pulp bio

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Jarvis is wrong. SB is great.

It’s I’m A Man he’s saying is shite, and I agree with him. Songs like that and Sylvia (god, that guitar sound is so tooth-clenchingly awful) that really bring This Is Hardcore down

Seductive Barry is amazing, however

Ah, fair. Yeah, I can barely bring I’m a Man to mind and Sylvia is pretty naff. The good half of TIH is probably my favourite Pulp, but there was some proper shite on there.

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Yeah, completely agree - Hardcore contains some of Pulp’s best moments mixed in with their absolute worst