ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #081

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#081: Pulp – ‘Common People’ (Island Records ’95)

Dear friends,

This is a very special single in the series indeed!

Those of you who remember the post on the very first one (The Akrylykz, quite a long time ago, mind you – 14 November 2022!!! ) might also remember me moaning about the fact that so many great songs were not released on 7” in the first place and some of those which were, are now way too expensive to get hold of these days.

Today’s offering is actually an example of both.  It was just over a year after it had been a big hit that the record company decided to give it a reissue via 7″ yellow vinyl, but the quantity pressed was so small that it was hard to get a hold of, and the second-hand market is now expensive.

Now, one very kind soul and a very dear friend of mine read this and sent me today’s single. I’ll let him go unnamed, because knowing him, I can well imagine that he would not want it otherwise, something which only honours him even more, as far as I’m concerned! So thank you, my friend – drinks are on me the next time we meet!

I must admit there is nothing new I can tell you about ‘Common People’, everything has been written before in lengthy detail. I have never been one for praising Britpop all too much, not now and certainly not at the time. But I think people are right when describing this song as Britpop’s ultimate peak – it did not get any better than this, if you ask me.

But this does not mean that one shouldn’t take closer care of Pulp’s back catalogue, they have always been around – from the early 80’s on, if I remember correctly. Not very much successful in their early days, it must be said, but from the early 90’s on they were simply brilliant: ‘Babies’, ‘O.U.’, ‘Razzmatazz’, ‘Disco 2000’– all killers, no question about this! And consequently it would be a shame if you concentrated on ‘Common People’ only, as great as it might be.

So, personally I already quite adored Pulp in the very early 90s, but said adoration turned into profound love in the mid-90s, one reason being ‘Common People’, of course, but another reason was (true arousing story to follow – a bit in SWC’s famous Our-Price-Girl-style probably, if you remember her) that at the time I encountered a girl and not very much later we used to have sex fairly frequently. It was all pretty much normal stuff going on, but this changed within a second when Pulp came on the radio. I won’t get into detail here, but she was like a different person when this happened!

Now, the amateurish psychiatrist in me believes that the combination of us screwing and simultaneously Pulp thundering away in the background brought up an acute schizophrenic episode to her, resulting in a firm belief that she was shagging good ole’ Jarvis instead of me. I mean, I don’t even look remotely like Jarvis, but hey – being a helpful chap, I consequently provided her with a lot of Pulp albums and also a live-DVD …

“well, what else could I do?”, as Jarvis asks here:

mp3: Pulp – Common People

Oh, I do love this record, and I do love Pulp – for many reasons!

Enjoy,

Dirk