- Purchase a product from the Music Store sold by Amazon.co.uk and receive £1 to use on an album download in our MP3 Store. Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Amazon.co.uk allows you to pay for your items in your local currency. Restrictions apply. Learn More. |
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s
Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or
view the MP3 Album.
|
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
If any band is more deserving than Pulp of a Hits package, let them step forward now. Pulp have suffered the twin misfortunes of having an enormous, era-defining pop hit on their hands (1995's "Common People") and a uniquely gangly, instantly recognisable frontman who is better known than his songs. Pulp's years spent skulking rather happily in indie-land produced some fine (and not so fine) songs. Pulp care--about their music at least.
It's also refreshing to have a hits compilation put together with some love (instead of the Manics ill-assembled Forever Delayed and U2's jumbled Best of 1990-2000). Here, instead of "Mis-shapes", we have "Sorted for E's and Whizz" as well as "Underwear". The latter was always planned as a double A-side, but was dwarfed by the enormity of twin "Common People."
It's easy to forget just how brilliant Pulp are sometimes. With some nay-sayers questioning the future of the band, it is a satisfying experience indeed to bask in the shimmering beauty of "Last Day of the Miners' Strike", a slow burner of a quality, maturity and beauty that would make even the harshest critic usher the band into the nearest recording studio as soon as possible. With a dignity that most of his contemporaries--even the Manics--could never muster, Jarvis sings lines such as "Some joker with a headband is getting chicks for free" and name-checks kids spitting on the town hall and frightening old ladies. "The future's ours for the taking now, if we just stick together." Let's hope for the future of interesting, diverse guitar pop that they do. --Ben Johncock
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb compilation by defining act of the 90s,
By Greg Farefield-Rose (Hertfordshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hits (Audio CD)
In most musical scenes, there’s an act who have been around for a while but still manage to become a major part of the movement. For the Baggy scene at the turn of the 90s it was James and for Britpop it was Pulp. After 10 years of Peel sessions and independently released records, the band signed to Island with a new sense of purposes. Within a couple of years they were one of the biggest and best bands in country. Frontman Jarvis Cocker finally achieved the fame he had sought for all those year though it ultimately proved to be a big disappointment…This compilation chronologically collects together all the singles the band released for Island with the exception of Mis-shapes which some band members now detest for reasons best known to themselves. It starts with the catchy, sexually seedy singles from the His’n’Hers LP before continuing with the epic Common People. One of the defining songs of the 90s, Common People’s true story of a rich girl trendily pretending to be poor is not dissimilar to Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone with both songs having a similar historical resonance within the context of their decades. Following on from Common People are the other singles from Pulp’s biggest album Different Class including the beautiful Something Changed, a rare purely romantic moment amidst the sex, spite and politics elsewhere. All seemed to be going swimmingly well for the band on the surface though Jarvis found the fame he had sought for so long to be a major disappointment. Pulp finally re-emerged a couple of years later with This Is Hardcore, the ultimate anti-Britpop LP. Resolutely uncommercial for such a major act, it now stands as a leading artistic statement. It took the fourth release from the album, the glam-tastic Bowie-esuqe Party Hard for the band to release an obvious single. Prior to that we had a poignant song written from the viewpoint of Jarvis’ estranged father with whom he’d recently been reunited, an excellent song about helping the aged and the slightly tedious title track about watching porn. Mostly good worthy stuff though not the hook-laden chart-friendly songs the band’s more mainstream fans and Island were looking for… After a long break, Pulp returned in late 2001 with their final album We Love Life. A more optimistic LP with several song using metaphors from the joys of nature, it includes the brilliant Sunrise. Released as a double A-side single with Trees, Sunrise has an extended, uplifting coda – thrilling semi-psychedelia and possibly the best section of music the band have ever produced. It’s also free of the kitsch, bleeping synths so beloved of the band as is the final, previously unreleased track on Hits, Last Day Of The Miners' Strike. With a harder rockier sound, Miners’ Strike shows that Pulp had plenty more mileage left in them. Taking an extended break after refusing a much-reduced new contract from Island, it now looks unlikely that they will take the stage as a unit again though individual collaborations will continue. A great shame though Hits is an excellent worthy epitaph to their legacy.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Possibly the greatest compilation ever!,
By ArrGee (London UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hits (Audio CD)
This album charts the rise and supposed fall of Britain's greatest band in the 1990s. Babies, Razzmatazz (the greatest single ever), LipGloss & DYRTFT? kick in with Pulp's main obsession, sex. This is how it really is. Exciting, dirty and a little tragic! Never quite what you hoped it would be. These songs all start off low key before rising to a crescendo and coming back down. Then onto class wars with Common People, raves with Sorted, and young love in Disco 2000 & Something Changed. By now, Pulp were stars, and it was time to return to the sex again. Geriatrics, porn, and absent fathers take you through Hardcore Pulp. And then it was back to nature with The Trees and Sunrise. An album so good, you won't want to listen to anything else until next Christmas!
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
not wishing to bore your pants off again,
By schmind (Portsmouth, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hits (Audio CD)
I'm sat writing this late at night as I happen to have stumbled across this item. which I own, on an evening trawl of the web. It isn't the shiraz which has implored me to write this, rather the lack of superlatives in the other reviews. Pulp were, and remain to be, one of the seminal British Bands of the 1990s and early noughties. This album is a key purchase for anyone who wishes to dabble in the phoenomenon that was Britpop. Pulp preceeded, endured and overcame the aforementioned through the unique nature of their material. The fact that I can sit here and lament all of the tracks that are not included simply sums up the depth of their back catalogue. Buy this album and enjoy it. If you do, you will...
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
