Pulp: Different Class

Different Class 

Best song: Common People

Worst song: Live Bed Show if I have to pick

Grade: 7

I listened to this yesterday afternoon, and I already want to listen to it again. You’d think I’d be sick of it by now, but I’m not, it’s just that kind of album. It also might be one of the hookiest albums ever made… every song gets stuck in my head on a frequent basis, which doesn’t annoy me anywhere near as much as it should, because every song is good.

That’s something you don’t realise at first, though. The big single is the third track, Common People, which reached #2 in the UK, and it deserved to be huge. And the first time I heard the album, I was so blown away by this one song, that I wasn’t really able to appreciate everything that surrounds it. It’s only on subsequent listens that you come to the realisation, ‘Hey, Mis-Shapes is good too! Oh, and so’s Sorted for E’s and Wizz! And so’s… wait, you know what? There isn’t a bad song on here!’

So, what makes these songs so good? Apart from the great melodies, there’s a lot of variety – within every individual song are a lot of different textures; parts where the focus is Jarvis’ voice with very little backing, and parts where there’s a very thick layer of instruments all built up. The tracks are an excellent mix of the accessible (see: the fun, feel-good pop of ‘Disco 2000’) and the slightly more experimental (‘Feeling Called Love’, which is a good explanation of Pulp’s reputation as the artiest Britpop band).  And, it goes without saying, the lyrics, which are some of my all time favourites. A sample: ‘I can’t help it, I was dragged up/My favourite park’s a car park/Grass is something you smoke/Birds are something you shag.’

I chose ‘Live Bed Show’ as the worst song but I still think it’s great, with its smooth, gentle melody and warm feeling that opposes the sadness in its lyrics. But maybe it seems weaker because it comes directly before another ballad, ‘Something Changed’, which I prefer because of the obvious sincerity behind it and the way it messes around with timings – beginning ‘I wrote this song two hours before we met’, but then going on to describe things that happened after they met. So is it all inside his head, a crazy daydream, or does it really happen?

My version of this album has 12 different cover options – little cards that you can slot into the front of the lyrics sheet to create your own cover art. It’s a gimmick but a good one; I change it every time I listen. The covers all feature full-colour scenes with some or all of the band members present, but they’re in black and white. This relates to the idea of being outsiders, a theme that runs through the whole album, which is full of commentaries on other peoples’ lives, other peoples’ relationships, that the narrator is not quite involved in. Yet they still manage to be anthemic and uniting, bringing these oddballs together from ‘We don’t look the same as you, we don’t do the things you do/But we live round here too’ all the way to ‘It’s around the corner in Soho where other broken people go/Let’s go.’

I get a strange sense of righteous anger from these songs. They make me want to go out and change the world.