Common People

"Are you sure you want to live like common people,
You want to see whatever common people see,
You want to sleep with common people,
Common people like me?"

According to Susan Dempster's review of Hits, the recently released Pulp compilation, "monumental everyman-anthem 'Common People' still chimes with the timeless ring of pop authenticity." But on closer lyrical inspection the everyman-anthem tag seems slightly inaccurate, and when the body of Pulp's work is taken into account it becomes nothing less than ludicrous.

"The trouble with your brother, he's always sleeping with your mother,
And I know that your sister missed her time again this month,
Am I talking too fast or are you just playing dumb? If you want I can write it down."

Sometimes listening to a Pulp song is like watching the Jerry Springer show, and the likes of Razzamatazz and Babies seem to treat the working class with something between disgusted fascination and sneering disdain. The supposedly inferior morals and intelligence of the working class seem to be a common target for Pulp's lyrics. More the behaviour of some public school bully bashing the oiks than that of the champion of the common man that is the popular image we have of Jarvis. Even in everyman-anthem Common People Jarvis goes to great lengths to remind us that he was at St. Martins college, tellingly the only piece of background information that the song's protagonist lets slip. This is despite his advice that you should "pretend you never went to school" to feel like one of the common people, further distancing himself from them. I may be one of the common people to a wealthy Greek heiress he tells us, but don't you uneducated oafs with your fags and cockroaches start thinking for one second that I'm one of you.

"Check your lucky numbers,
That much money could drag you under, oh.
What's the point of being rich,
If you can't think what to do with it?
Cos you're so bleeding thick."

Despite the apparent call to arms at the heart of Mis-Shapes, Jarvis does not direct his protests against the ruling elite who have mapped out the future for him. Once again the object of Jarvis Cocker's wrath is the uneducated working class. And just who is the the mis-shape, the misfit? Certainly not the Common People who buy their lottery ticket once or twice a week, but Jarvis, the educated man who has learnt too much at school, and now sits in sneering judgement over us.

"We can't help it, we're so thick we can't think,
Can't think of anything but shit, sleep and drink."

The parade of grotesque caricatures reaches its peak in Joyriders, with the usual attacks on the intelligence and morals of the working class descending to suggestions of outright criminality. Yet more than any other Pulp lyric, the line in Joyriders that has a ring of truth to it is this: "Hey you, you in the Jesus sandals." One can imagine Jarvis being subjected to such verbal abuse in the high street, and returning to his bedsit to pen bilious attacks on his bleeding thick antagonists by way of revenge. You can imagine the whole parade of insults that Jarvis has let loose over the years stemming from such an encounter. What we have here is not an everyman-anthem, but a retaliation against real or imagined transgressions from behind the safety of a song. With the disgust that Jarvis has consistently shown for the common man, the disbelief in his voice is unsuprising as he asks: "Are you sure you want to live like common people?"