The Friday Canon: PULP

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

No, I can't believe we haven't done them yet either. With just 12 UK Top 40 hits, you get FOUR ticks below. However because I'm feeling generous, for one! canon! only! you are allowed an EXTRA text-box vote for a song that's missing - if a song gets enough votes it will be included in the canon proper.

[Poll #1070087]
Duran Duran: (link)
1. Rio
2. Hungry Like The Wolf
=3. Girls On Film
=3. The Reflex
5. Save A Prayer
6. Wild Boys
7. Planet Earth
=8. A View To A Kill
=8. Is There Something I Should Know
=8. Ordinary World

Carter USM/Wonder Stuff/Pop Will Eat Itself: (link)
1. Carter USM - The Only Living Boy In New Cross
2. Carter USM - Sheriff Fatman
3. Pop Will Eat Itself - Can U Dig It
4. Carter USM - After The Watershed
5. Pop Will Eat Itself - Ich Bin Ein Auslander
6. Pop Will Eat Itself - Get The Girl! Kill The Baddies!
7. Wonder Stuff - The Size Of A Cow
=8. Wonder Stuff [w/ Vic Reeves] - Dizzy
=8. Carter USM - Rubbish
=8. Wonder Stuff - Don't Let Me Down Gently

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I never liked it that much to begin with. Pulp have always left me kind of ambivalent. Not annoying, not amazing. I think it's because I don't identify with song lyrics very well (as discussed over on koganbot's Ashlee Simpson posts) and the music needs to be brilliant to win me over. Hence my liking of echoey dismal epic This Is Hardcore, where Jarvis's words kind of get lost in random bibbling.

[martinv.livejournal.com]

I've never been that about the lyrics, either to Common People or, to be honest, to most other Pulp songs. Surely CP is more about the repeated build-ups, the way the music just keeps reaching peaks you can't see how it's going to surpass, and then surpasses them?

This is Hardcore does a similar thing, but is a bit more subtle.

My favourite Pulp single, Sunrise, has just the one 'climax', to my mind, but is possibly the best one ever.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Also I think because the band had been together so long they had worked out exactly how to pace their music to use Jarvis to best effect (physically and vocally) - so more than most groups it feels like the singer is orchestrating the peaks and surges on CP (he was the indie James Brown!). Jarvis scores on the "clever lyrics" but also on the "voice is an instrument" whereas most indie bands settle for one or another.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

My botherdness towards CP is something I can't quite put my finger on. It has good hooks, good instrumentation, daft video, good vocal performance from Jarv. There's just something missing, that ingredient X that I (personally) need for the song to be a 100x on repeat (e.g. the new Girls Aloud song has this X, but Sexy! No No No didn't, even though it had all the other ingredients that usually make me go potty with excitement). It's not Pulp's fault, I can see why billions of other people love the song to bits. But it's not for me.

[celentari.livejournal.com]

I really went off CP for ages but it was over-play, simple as that, and the fact that people who've never really heard anything else from Pulp except maybe Disco 2000 use it to form their entire opinion of the band. But neither of those things are the song's fault. I also have good memories of Joe Swarbrick doing a spot on karaoke of CP when we were about 18, ah halcyon days, nostalgia etc.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

'This Is Hardcore' is one of the best things they ever did, I only wish they'd gone on in that vein, but maybe JC felt that that song had already said it all!

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Ha. I didn't read this before posting the above comment (http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/452726.html?thread=9998198#t9998198) but yes, ambivalence is the right way of describing my relationship with Pulp too!