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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
It became increasingly apparent during 1995 that the answer to the question "Blur or Oasis?" was, in fact, "Pulp". Different Class was the sound of a band so on "it" that they defined "it". Thirty years of fury, frustration, sexual longing, class angst and observations about girls' skirts was rammed into the grand Brechtian/Brel-like drama of "Live Bed Show", "I Spy" and, of course, "Common People"; and sure enough it has the impact of crashing head-on into someone's entire sordid, suppressed secret life. When Jarvis hisses "I can't help it / I was dragged up / Grass is something you smoke/ Birds are something you shag / Take your 'Year In Provence' and shove it up your ass," it sounds like mustard gas escaping over the trenches in the class war. And he wins. If music had a class system, this would be our ruler. --Caitlin Moran
Review
For some bands, success comes after years of hard work, playing tiny venues and selling meagre amounts of merchandise to put enough fuel in the tank to reach whatever hellhole’s next on a never-ending tour. For others, it arrives practically overnight – they ride the crest of a hype wave and either crash onto rocks or enjoy smooth surf all the way to platinum discs and MTV Cribs. Uniquely, Pulp are experienced in both routes to household name status.
Formed in Sheffield in 1978, and with enough ex-members to form several more outfits, Pulp had released four albums by the summer of 1995. Their latest, 94’s His ‘n’ Hers, had been nominated for the Mercury Prize but lost to M People’s Elegant Slumming (to this day: huh?). A couple of singles from it cracked the UK top 40, but to most people Pulp were just another band of Britpoppers to file beside Cast and Ocean Colour Scene as lower-league attractions operating in the shadow of Oasis and Blur. But the summer of 1995 would change everything.
And it started early: in May, Jarvis Cocker and company achieved the previously unthinkable and scored a Genuine Hit Record. Common People rocketed to number two, helped by a colourful video starring Sadie Frost and moves from Cocker that would go down in the history of improvisational interpretive dance. Then, the next month, they headlined the biggest music festival on the planet, filling in for The Stone Roses – whose John Squire had fractured his collarbone – at Glastonbury. These two major turns in fortune provided all the momentum necessary to ensure the band’s fifth album, Different Class, would be, commercially, their definitive release.
Number seven on NME’s best albums of 95, 11 on Mojo’s, and taking top spot on Melody Maker’s countdown, it was clear that Different Class was another critical hit. Crucially though it also clicked with a public now truly savvy with Britpop, and looking for the next Morning Glory or Parklife – especially as Blur’s own album of 95, The Great Escape, lacked the instant-fix everyman tunes of its predecessor. Different Class came crammed with cuts that seemed to connect with the Loaded generation. Disco 2000, Sorted For E’s & Wizz, Something Changed: all three were top ten singles. Pulp had, rather belatedly, arrived.
This being Pulp, though, there was plenty for lasses, too. Clever songwriting isn’t biased to any gender, and while several of his peers were content to play up their laddishness, Cocker’s peculiar disposition had him turning heads of both sexes. He was the new Bowie, the new Lennon, the new Bolan, a pale-face Grace Jones, in one. Though he, like his band, wasn’t new at all – how very queer by today’s make-‘em-and-break-‘em standards.
Different Class scooped the Mercury Prize in 1996 – triumphing from a field that featured Oasis’ all-conquering Morning Glory and the Manics’ phenomenal comeback LP Everything Must Go. The award was the cherry atop a most morish cake of a record, which over 15 years since its release continues to reward the listener with some of the smartest, slinkiest, sauciest, spectacular pop songs of a decade that was, looking back, not that brilliant once the bucket hats and ironic anoraks are whipped away.
--Mike Diver
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Squalid, Seedy, Desperate.... Superb.,
By
This review is from: Different Class (Audio CD)
For those not gullible or stupid enough to buy into the whole media-led Battle of Blur/Oasis nonsense of 1995/96, there were other bands to listen to. This was my first year at university, and it seemed that every corridor in every Hall of Residence resonated to the sound of either (What's The Story) Morning Glory or Different Class. As great and enjoyable as the former was, despite being proclaimed by many as a genius, at the end of the day Noel Gallagher's lyrics were incoherent gibberish. If you're a lyrics person who likes to get lost in the vivid world to which the words and music take you, then Pulp were the obvious popular alternative.
And it really couldn't get more vivid than the world to which Jarvis Cocker took us. Cynical and disillusioned, squalid and depraved, funny and sad, joyful and desperate ' if you could step inside the album you would most likely find yourself leaning against a urine-soaked wall on a rainy street corner on a run-down Sheffield housing estate, watching its impoverished inhabitants eke out their dead-end existence with no hope or escape, only drink, drugs, seedy casual sex and mindless violence providing any distraction from the bleakness of it all. Depressing as this vision is, Different Class is by no means a depressing listen. Whilst it has its moments of desperate, lonely sadness (Live Bed Show), pathetic, forlorn longing (Disco 2000, Underwear) and sordid depravity (Pencil Skirt, I Spy), there are also uplifting moments of defiance and righteous anger, all of which is wonderfully underscored by Cocker's spiky wit. Opening track Mis-Shapes is a rallying cry for anyone who has ever been made to suffer for standing out from the herd, whilst Common People ' the classic for which Pulp will always be remembered ' rages magnificently against those who attempt to be fashionably working class. There is tenderness too ' Something Changed is simply lovely. Pulp had already been around for a long time before Different Class was released, and this album represents them at the absolute pinnacle of their game. The perfect album for its time, it rose above the frenzied hype and media manipulation that surrounded the Britpop era, and perhaps serves as the most powerful and articulate example of the music produced during this period. It speaks to the secret dark side in all of us of which we are uncomfortably aware but would prefer not to acknowledge, especially to other people. Cocker is forthright and unabashed in sharing his with us to superb (if occasionally unsettling) effect. I can get as misty-eyed as everyone else of my generation at the sound of Wonderwall or Don't Look Back In Anger ' after all, they were hits at the same time, I like them very much and they provoke very fond memories of my student days. But ultimately they are meaningless and have nothing to say. There's nothing at all wrong with that, of course. But to hear a song that takes you on a vivid lyrical journey to a very unpleasant place in all its stark, dank, grimy squalor and thoroughly enjoy the ride as well as appreciate the message is an all too rare experience. Different Class achieves this with practically every track. As an album, it is a must-have for anyone's collection. As a document of the 'Cool Britannia' period (which, again, was purely a media creation in the first place) it is invaluable ' proof that not all British rock stars of that time were drunken loutish neanderthals. And as a reminder of my first year at university' utterly indispensible.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Masterpiece.,
By
This review is from: Different Class (Audio CD)
I hadn't listened to this album in about 8 years and revisited it recently. I couldn't believe I had left it so long - almost every track is truly brilliant, from tales of drugged-out nights in a field, the inevitable come-downs, being 'common'!Marvellous.
Every song on this disc is totally memorable (bringing back wild and happy memories from the summer I turned 18). It seems to have everything from mildly comedic ramblings in Sorted for E's and Whizz, true sentiment in Something Changed to the faintly sinister I Spy. All delivered in Cocker's instantly recognisable broad Sheffield accent (Eat your heart out, Arctic Monkeys). This album definitely has to be one of the finest to come out of the nineties. Nuff Said!
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best album of the 90s,
By A Customer
This review is from: Different Class (Audio CD)
"Different Class" is possibly the most perfect album produced in the last twenty years. It certainly is the best I've heard in the last decade. Brilliant and diverse music with worthy lyrics (especially for the definitive "Common People", which is so perfectly constructed and performed, with every one of Cocker's vocal nuances adding another layer, that it must be a strong contender for the title of best song ever), each song contributes to the album's overall feel of the frustration the young feel about the old and the poor feel about the rich. "Disco 2000" and "Sorted for E's and Wizz" are obviously wonderful, but my personal favourite is "Something Changed" which is both hilarious and heartbreaking. All-in-all, an album that touches upon perfection.
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