I enjoyed yesterday's listen (and workout) so much I'm back t er again this morning, this time with the Different Class album, also by Pulp.
This was the album that went absolutely viral in 1995 while I was living in the U.K.
You simply couldn't gt away from it and it one of the musical touchstones of that particular era of early-mid 90's pop music. Since yesterday's album held up so well over the years, I'm crossing my fingers that this album does the same.
There aren't many albums that state their intent as clearly as Pulp's Different Class. "We're making a move, we're making it now, we're coming out of the sidelines," sings Jarvis Cocker on opener Misshapes, both a call to arms for fellow misfits and a manifesto for the band themselves. "Brothers, sisters can't you see? The future's made for you and me." It was a bold claim, by a band who knew their time had, finally, come.
When Pulp released Different Class in October 1995, it was at the peak of the Britpop era – less a cultural movement and more a label the music press had slapped on a collection of disparate (though mostly white, guitar-based) British bands infiltrating the charts in the mid-90s. What started as a celebration of the British music industry reasserting its influence after a few years dominated by the US grunge scene had morphed into something of a media bandwagon.
The year had already seen UK number one albums by Elastica, Supergrass, The Charlatans, Black Grape and The Boo Radleys. By that summer Britpop had reached – depending on your point of view – either its apex or nadir, when Blur and Oasis were involved in a chart battle that dominated newspapers and made the BBC's Six O'Clock News. Blur won that first round and released their fifth album, The Great Escape, a few weeks later. Oasis followed with (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, which would go on to become the biggest-selling record of the decade in the UK (thus ultimately winning the 'war' with their rivals).
The best, though, was still to come. Pulp had no interest in the Britpop tag – yet 25 years on, its Different Class not only feels like the most enduring snapshot of a mid-90s Britain on the cusp of a New (Labour) era, coming down from the acid-house boom and looking ahead to the millennium – but, with its tales of illegal raves, class divisions and uncertain futures – still feels the most relevant today.
To a casual music fan, it might have felt like Pulp appeared out of nowhere in 1995 – when within the space of weeks their single Common People hit number two in the charts, they played a triumphant Glastonbury headline set and frontman Jarvis Cocker became an unlikely tabloid fixture. It had actually been almost two decades in the making.
Then in 1995 the success of Common People, swiftly followed by the last-minute call from Glastonbury, changed everything.
Much of the writing for the record took place above a pottery warehouse owned by Banks' family. As on His 'n' Hers before, Different Class saw Cocker return to one of his favourite subjects, sex, on songs like Underwear and Pencil Skirt. But his observations also moved out of the bedroom to focus on the class divide, something that he and other band members had become increasingly aware of.
As part of the chart 'battle' between Blur and Oasis, those two bands had seen not only their songs pitted against one another, but their class, often in the simplest and most patronising of ways. Oasis were the northern working-class lads who loved drinking beer and getting into scrapes. Blur were the middle-class art-school southerners whose lyrics quoted Balzac.
Meanwhile Pulp – who confused those stoking the pantomime class war by having members that managed to be both northern, working class and go to art school in London – were too busy writing about class wars to participate in them.
On Common People Cocker tore into class tourists, inspired by a well-to-do Greek girl he met at Central Saint Martins who wanted to try slumming it in Hackney for a while – "smoke some fags and play some pool, pretend she never went to school". Hidden underneath those irresistible pop hooks is a mounting anger not just at her but all those who co-opt a working-class identity as a shortcut to authenticity – without ever dealing with the fear, uncertainty and absence of choice that comes with having no money. Towards the end of the song Cocker is practically spitting. "You will never understand how it feels to live your life with no meaning or control, and with nowhere left to go".
His anger is even more palpable on I Spy, a song in which someone who has nothing observes those who have everything – all the while plotting how to "blow [their] paradise away". While fantasising about how he'll infiltrate this Ladbroke Grove life, he compares his own: "My favourite parks are car parks. Grass is something you smoke, birds are something you shag. Take your Year in Provence and shove it up your ass."
The album reached number one and went on to win the Mercury Music Prize. A sell-out arena tour followed. Pulp were no longer the outsiders. After releasing their seventh album, the Scott Walker-produced We Love Life, in 2001, Pulp went on hiatus for a decade, reforming in 2011 for a series of live dates. They played their last gig – for now at least – in their hometown of Sheffield in December 2013 and, now's it's Kaput!
Not as instantly awesome as yesterday's album, but the trip down memory lane was enjoyable nonetheless and, yeah, so was the workout.
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