My Top Ten Pulp Songs

And I thought My Top Ten Smiths Songs was hard to compile...



10. Cocaine Socialism

Tony Blair invited various Britpop artists to Number 10 in a brazen effort to inject some cool Britpop chic into his politics. This was Jarvis' response. And it was only ever released as a b-side!

9. Inside Susan

The first Pulp album I ever heard was Intro. I found it in the chuck-out bin in the radio station where I used to work. I loved every track, but this was the one that made me fall in love with Jarvis the storyteller.

She's still thinking about this when the bus goes past Caroline Lee's house where there was a party last week.
There were some German exchange students there who were very immature
They all ended up jumping out of the bedroom window.
One of them tried to get her to kiss him on the stairs,
so she kicked him.
Later she was sick because she drunk too much cider.
Caroline was drunk as well
She was pretending she was married to a tall boy in glasses,
and she had to wear a polo-neck for three days afterwards to cover up the love-bite on her neck.

8. The Fear

Sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it.

This is our music from the bachelor's den
The sound of loneliness turned up to ten
A horror soundtrack from a stagnant waterbed
And it sounds just like this...

After the heights of Britpop fame, Jarvis has a mental breakdown on record, becomes plagued by panic attacks, finds his libido failing him... and even ends up quoting Paul Daniels. You're gonna like it - but not a lot.

7. Countdown

A long time ago I read an interview with Jarvis where he explained what this song was about. Pulp had been together (in one form or another) almost sixteen years before their first minor Top 40 hit in 1994. Countdown was about feeling like you were stuck on the launchpad, waiting for your life to take off, wondering if the countdown would ever begin.

6. Do You Remember The First Time?

I can't remember a worst time...

5. Bad Cover Version

Gets in on the strength of the video alone (which doesn't even feature Jarvis' vocals... although he does do a mean Brian May).

Here's the video version... if you've never seen it before, you MUST press play now.



4. Babies

Young Jarv hides in his friend's sister's wardrobe to spy on her teenage shenanigans. And then things get out of hand...

3. Sorted For Es and Wizz

Reminds me of every music festival I attended in the 90s, and I never took an E or some wizz in my life. (Well, I take a few wizzes every day... and that increases with age... but not that kind of wizz.)

And this hollow feeling grows and grows and grows
And you want to call your mother, and say,
"Mother - I can never come home again
'Cos I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere
Somewhere in a field in Hampshire - all right."

2. A Little Soul

Jarv confronts his estranged father with his most heartrending lyric. I'm in the minority: I actually prefer the album This Is Hardcore to its predecessor, the million-selling Different Class. It's so much darker and so much deeper: my favourite album of the 90s. I could have filled an entire Top Ten with its tracks (then again, I could have done the same with DC). No other Pulp song chokes me up like this one though.

1. Common People

I tried to convince myself there was a better Pulp song than Common People, I really did. Then I listened to it... and realised that there's a very reason it's their biggest hit. The lyrics are quintessentially Jarvis and the song just builds and builds and builds. One of the few Britpop anthems that never grows tired. And that's before we even get to the Shatner version.



If you're as big a Pulp fan as I am, you're no doubt grinding your teeth in horror at the absence of Disco 2000, Misshapes, Razzmatazz, Stacks, Help The Aged and many others. Sorry, but ten is my limit, and these are the ones that make me Love Life. I could have compiled a Top 100 and still not have included all my favourites...