Jarvis was such a keen observer of the British class system and the lives of ordinary people. One of the defining songs of the Britpop era. Brilliant writing.
Now that you've heard the OG, you have to react to the William Shatner cover. It's actually pretty good and even Jarvis Cocker loved it. Go in blind! There's a fun surprise on it that I don't want spoiled for you
Many people think of "Animal Nitrate" or "Park Life" or "Live Forever" when asked about the most iconic Britpop song. I personally think of this song. It's not as sexy as the Suede song, but it's as clever as anything Albarn came up with. And It's catchy as hell. Oh, and the video is amazing. On a personal note, if you're like me, a person of humble origins who somehow ended up in an institution of higher learning where most people came from a wealthy background, then that "slumming", that anthropological exploration of the "lower classes" is something you saw all the time.
Thanks for doing the proper version Justin. This hooked me again in the 90s after a few years of hiatus thinking that popular music post 70s was a dirty word.
Wife is hearing this from the other room. She was not impressed. I said, sit here and read the lyrics and I played it again. We agreed. This song is good. We liked it.
Such an epic song. The first time I saw Pulp on TV they were performing Common People on Top of the Pops and Jarvis was like some kind of charismatic alien insect - all elbows and finger flicks and attitude. Check out the live version of this from Glastonbury (1995), it's awesome. Great reaction as always, JP.
Brilliant, really interesting reaction. Thank you. For a certain generation this is like an unofficial National Anthem for the UK working class. And glad that you did the long version cos the radio edit lacks some of the intensity of this one. Sing along and it might just get you through.
Jarvis is one of the finest lyricists British popular music has ever produced. I guess you'll be on to "I Spy" next, which is a thrill-ride of a class-based bitter revenge fantasy.
Hazlewood, Cardiacs, Hitchcock and now this! I don't know what kind of a streak you're on right now, Justin, but you're simply lining up my favourites one by one! :-) So glad to see you reacted to the full length version, most people don't (because they react to the video) and they miss some of the best lines of the lyrics. (The whole verse starting "Like a dog lying in a corner" is missing from the edited version.) Sharing the medal with Blur's "Coffee & TV", this was certainly the best thing to ever come out of Brit Pop.
A great tune - such a memorable one from the 90’s! Should try ‘Something Changed’ off the same album - which catches Jarvis in a more softer, reflective mood about lurvvv
Musically great, but for me it’s 5% about the song and 95% about the story. They found a way to get an important message in to the mainstream. For me it’s summed up by “everybody hates a tourist” at the time “poor is cool” disgusted everyone struggling to make ends meet. Meanwhile we had the rich kids on poverty safari while a vast swathe of the country lived Friday pay packet to pay packet.
Always loved this song. For you from the US I guess the British straightforward lyrics can be a bit unusual. Check out The Beautiful South, British popband from the 80’s and 90’s. Honest and bittersweet songs, I recommend the song “ perfect 10”.
An old friend of mine studied at St Martin's college at the same time Jarvis was there, although Jarvis was older than him. He knew the girl from the song and said she actually studied photography not sculpture😄 I guess photography had too many syllables!
Brilliant song - justifiably one of the songs of the decade. Absolutely dripping with bitter cynical angry humour, and catchy as hell. This and the gloriously silly rave song "Sorted for Es and Whiz" are Pulp's masterpieces IMO. BTW, as to where the lyrics are coming from, Pulp are from Sheffield, at that time a depressed industrial city, so they knew. I could imagine similar ideas coming out of Pittsburgh or Detroit.
Pulp were the best band of the Oasis/Blur wars...if you love pulp,then i would highly recommend listening to The Divine Comedy...some absolute diamonds in their body of work..."Gin Soaked Boy",Something for the Weekend" and "Lady of a certain age" amongst many many others,all of their albums are consistently awesome..
Amazing album and whilst this is the most popular song, it's Something's Changed which remains my favourite. The single version misses out the section singing about the dog lying in the the corner. After You is a great non album single which is worth checking out. Also Running This World by Jarvis Cocker is amazing.
Common people is my favourite Pulp song the video for the song is great and you should check it out. Other Pulp songs Lipgloss, Babies, Disco 2000, Sorted for E’s and whizz and Help the Aged.
The William Shatner cover is surprisingly good - produced by Ben Folds with the help of the great Joe Jackson. I can’t deny the excellence of the original, but damn if I don’t play the Shatner/Jackson version more.
fabulous record. In the 1960s and 70s possibly earlier (anyway post WW2) there was at least a sense or pretence of a mixing of the social classes - how true it was is debatable but that changed in the 80s onwards. As an aside Jarvis Cocker and Joe Cocker both of Sheffield checked into their family history but found no connection - it was just a common name.
Nice album! Cool track. I bought this CD and 'This Is Hardcore' back then. Jarvis Cocker seemed a decent stand-in for Roxy era Ferry who had become a bore.
It's a great track. Sort of thing Dylan might have come up with, but he would have handled it differently. I've only ever heard the shorter radio version, so it was fun to hear the full length. It's edited quite well, there's nothing vital missing from the shorter version. It just doesn't fly so far. Jarvis was a bit of a lad, he once mooned at Michael Jackson at an awards ceremony. Rock and roll. Nice to hear it, and your review too.
Hi JP. I always enjoy when you land on one of these tracks - seemingly from nowhere. Reminds me of how good the album is and the fact I haven't given it a listen for a while. Hoping you might pluck Baby Blue by Badfinger from the ether. 🤞
A bit too silly for my taste - I also prefer the previous album His 'N Hers and what came after, though there's no denying Common People is an absolute masterpiece with amazing lyrics and a brilliant build-up. A song that fully deserves its place in pop history.
Jarvis Cocker was a teenager in the 70s - likely a Bowie fan and the LP was produced by Chris Thomas who had produced amongst many others Roxy Music and there are a least a couple of overt Roxy (Eno) references in the mix.
Musically I like it and it was fresh. Lyrically, it feels like a ripoff of The Kinks' "Ordinary People" where a rockstar trades places with a chap named Norman and will even sleep with his wife for the sake of art.
Good lord calm down folks 😅.. yeah it’s an ok britpop choon , but better than Oasis n Blur ??.. get away with ye for goodness sake . That’s the 90’s E’s talking there , mixing up yer memory n emotions 🤣… I forgive you all for talking bollox 🙏 👍🏴
I was OK with it for about a minute and a half or so, but once he was finished essentially saying people never have awkward good intentions, I was already on my way to the thought it left me with at the end: "People in Heaven complaining that the clouds aren't soft enough." Offense is more often taken than given. (And that's the point of departure for me, I just realized. The taking offense is offensive to me. The self pity annoys me.) There's a sour way of looking at tourism to a place like Malawi, for instance. "Slumming". "Poverty tourism". Something like that. The travellers must have bad intentions. So say the mind readers. Well so says my summary of the essence of what they're reading in these bad minds they can see right through like glass. And you know how you "read someone else's mind"? You extrapolate. (Unless there really is a Jesus and you have his fricken phone number, I suppose.) Apart from that, as usual you simply do not know. (Ignorance is fine. Refusing to admit it or allow for itself is a problem.) And the song is pretty cruddy, too. Affected when it gets "dramatic" (melodramatic), and otherwise the kind of thing Half Man Half Biscuit would make fun of. Actually I wonder whether Half Man Half Biscuit ever had some fun with this song? Quite strange. I spent a fair amount of time going along with being ready to enjoy it. And here I am overthinking why I ended up somewhat disliking it. Oh well, doesn't matter, nê?
_There's a sour way of looking at tourism to a place like Malawi, for instance. "Slumming". "Poverty tourism". Something like that. The travellers must have bad intentions_ But it's not about that literal kind of tourism, unless you go to Malawi and pretend to be Malawian, while acting like their daily struggles are just fun experiences for you to bring home. It's about upper-class twits, who slummed it in student housing and cheap bars for a few years in college, because they thought is was fun and cool, or to briefly rebel against their parents, or maybe, if we're generous, because they thought it would give them insight to a different class of people. Even if they had the best intentions, they'll never really understand what life at the bottom of society is like, because they didn't have to live there - they were just passing through, and their romanticised view of that life can be infuriating for those who have no choice.
@@Jacob_Junge Firstly, lest I forget, thanks for responding. However I think I disagree, still - hopefully agreeable, but I can sometimes be a bit of a sarcastic arras hole, just by force of habit. OK, he has something to say, but relative to the real world it's not a big enough thing to get that upset about. Every class of twit visits poor countries (because you're not poor in Malawi even if you are, in a more successful country - you're rich - out and out rich) and sees things through his or her own experience, just like anybody else, anywhere, in any other kind of experience. Only in the Malawi case (and others) I've heard some other twits talk as if the rough living you sometimes have to do to get around such a place is a form of "being with the common people" without being with them - in a nasty kind of way. It would appear that the world must send only its perfect human beings there, otherwise it's downright evil and can have fingers wagged at the misbehaviour. Analogously, a rich girl who circuitously tells a boy who thinks of himself as downtrodden, "Ya wanna feck?" in what turns out to be what sounds like an awkward joke gone wrong, might be sinning by more than just the wickedness of fornication, but jeez! Is that enough to make a great big song and dance about it? "Toffs need not apply for some roley unless they be perfect beings". The interpretation he makes, as he sings his story is that she must have meant simply to demean him. By offering him her unworthy body? Take what she said less literally (whether in reality or fiction doesn't really matter) and one interpretation is that she'd like more, but she'll settle for some sex, if that's all he wants? All of which is an ordinary part of ordinary life, yes. The lines get crossed. She accidentally triggers something he's oversensitive about (we all have things we're oversensitive about? or is it just me?) and instead of a reasonably happy ending, everything blows up out of all proportion. But after it's all said and done (or not done, if they didn't get round to the part of their encounter they both had the same idea about) there must have been a few years or months to realize ... simply that this was maybe worthy of a song, yes, but a light, funny song, that lets go of things, not this storm in a teacup. I can't sympathize, so I can't enjoy the song. The closest I could get to that would be to remember the times in my own life where I've gotten everything all horribly wrong, and exposed a weakness like this. (It's a weakness to allow oneself to feel like that, if nothing else.) Maybe it just disturbed things I've taken good care to properly forget (as one should) and made me, my own perfect self, overreact to the overreaction (because it's too close to some or other embarrassing overreaction I've had myself.) Maybe not, but that's about as close as I could get to accepting the feelings as being valid enough to make up an entire song, the whole of which I listened to.
In the war between Blur and Oasis, the winners were Pulp and Suede.
Wise words my friend!
Totally! I’ve always said that.
No argument there.
Supergrass were the top tier for me
@@SpuddySpud That's one low tier.
Jarvis was such a keen observer of the British class system and the lives of ordinary people. One of the defining songs of the Britpop era. Brilliant writing.
Now that you've heard the OG, you have to react to the William Shatner cover. It's actually pretty good and even Jarvis Cocker loved it. Go in blind! There's a fun surprise on it that I don't want spoiled for you
Joe Jackson and Ben Folds were also involved. Really fun version. That whole Shatner album is great - so many genres and (at times) very heartfelt.
@anarchestra9486 So much for not wanting it spoiled for him 🫤 🤐 🤫
I probably prefer his cover!
@@anarchestra9486 Like so many other people I listened to it expecting it to be awful but it's really tremendous
'kin love this. One of the best poverty safari songs out there.
Chances are high that this was THE best song of the 90s (best indie pop song for sure)
A masterpiece. One of the finest songs of the 90s.
Great reaction to the song. The lyrics are funny and meaningful, Jarvis is a great observational lyricist, a Ray Davies of a later age.
a masterpiece!
Many people think of "Animal Nitrate" or "Park Life" or "Live Forever" when asked about the most iconic Britpop song. I personally think of this song. It's not as sexy as the Suede song, but it's as clever as anything Albarn came up with. And It's catchy as hell.
Oh, and the video is amazing.
On a personal note, if you're like me, a person of humble origins who somehow ended up in an institution of higher learning where most people came from a wealthy background, then that "slumming", that anthropological exploration of the "lower classes" is something you saw all the time.
I think Pulp songs are rather sexy
I really dislike the video. It omits the last verse entirely and censors the naughty words.
Babies and Do You Remember The First Time are my fav Pulp songs. 👌
Everybody hates a tourist.
This is a brilliant song, sung with passion and charisma with a great hook. It's infectious.
A masterpiece of a song and a great reaction Justin. The whole album is amazing and was my favourite album of the nineties.
Thanks for doing the proper version Justin. This hooked me again in the 90s after a few years of hiatus thinking that popular music post 70s was a dirty word.
Forgot how much i love this record.
Wife is hearing this from the other room. She was not impressed. I said, sit here and read the lyrics and I played it again. We agreed. This song is good. We liked it.
This was such a classic, combining smart lyrics with a great pop song.
Thank you for reacting to the full length album version - so many reactors use the shorter 7" edit which omits the blistering last verse
Such an epic song. The first time I saw Pulp on TV they were performing Common People on Top of the Pops and Jarvis was like some kind of charismatic alien insect - all elbows and finger flicks and attitude. Check out the live version of this from Glastonbury (1995), it's awesome. Great reaction as always, JP.
Love it!!! DAMN I miss the 90s.
JP as a guilty pleasure, listen to William Shatner's version of this, awesome. The album is called Has Been. Brilliant.
Not a guilty pleasure to my ears. Just a damn good cover
You rarely hear a song with this much ANGER.
Um, Punk and Industrial are much angrier than pop.
Have you reacted to Pulp’s This is Hard Core, if not it’s a must listen
Jarvis Cocker....is an underatted genius.
A great song from a magnificent album
Pop masterpiece....thanks JP.
Brilliant, really interesting reaction. Thank you. For a certain generation this is like an unofficial National Anthem for the UK working class. And glad that you did the long version cos the radio edit lacks some of the intensity of this one. Sing along and it might just get you through.
Thank Misha! This one was really good!
Jarvis is one of the finest lyricists British popular music has ever produced. I guess you'll be on to "I Spy" next, which is a thrill-ride of a class-based bitter revenge fantasy.
Hazlewood, Cardiacs, Hitchcock and now this! I don't know what kind of a streak you're on right now, Justin, but you're simply lining up my favourites one by one! :-)
So glad to see you reacted to the full length version, most people don't (because they react to the video) and they miss some of the best lines of the lyrics. (The whole verse starting "Like a dog lying in a corner" is missing from the edited version.) Sharing the medal with Blur's "Coffee & TV", this was certainly the best thing to ever come out of Brit Pop.
That makes me happy to hear that you've been enjoying the channel recently outer :) Ty
A great tune - such a memorable one from the 90’s!
Should try ‘Something Changed’ off the same album - which catches Jarvis in a more softer, reflective mood about lurvvv
Musically great, but for me it’s 5% about the song and 95% about the story. They found a way to get an important message in to the mainstream.
For me it’s summed up by “everybody hates a tourist” at the time “poor is cool” disgusted everyone struggling to make ends meet. Meanwhile we had the rich kids on poverty safari while a vast swathe of the country lived Friday pay packet to pay packet.
Not an explosion of energy, more an explosion of anger
Always loved this song. For you from the US I guess the British straightforward lyrics can be a bit unusual. Check out The Beautiful South, British popband from the 80’s and 90’s. Honest and bittersweet songs, I recommend the song “ perfect 10”.
Yes, loads of great hits imbued with honesty and wry comment.
The shortened single version dropped the third verse about the dog in the corner.
An old friend of mine studied at St Martin's college at the same time Jarvis was there, although Jarvis was older than him. He knew the girl from the song and said she actually studied photography not sculpture😄 I guess photography had too many syllables!
Brilliant song - justifiably one of the songs of the decade. Absolutely dripping with bitter cynical angry humour, and catchy as hell. This and the gloriously silly rave song "Sorted for Es and Whiz" are Pulp's masterpieces IMO. BTW, as to where the lyrics are coming from, Pulp are from Sheffield, at that time a depressed industrial city, so they knew. I could imagine similar ideas coming out of Pittsburgh or Detroit.
Chippy Brit heaven. Great reaction to a great song
Pulp were the best band of the Oasis/Blur wars...if you love pulp,then i would highly recommend listening to The Divine Comedy...some absolute diamonds in their body of work..."Gin Soaked Boy",Something for the Weekend" and "Lady of a certain age" amongst many many others,all of their albums are consistently awesome..
Amazing album and whilst this is the most popular song, it's Something's Changed which remains my favourite. The single version misses out the section singing about the dog lying in the the corner. After You is a great non album single which is worth checking out. Also Running This World by Jarvis Cocker is amazing.
The William Shatner/Joe Jackson/Ben Folds cover version is 🔥🔥🔥🔥
You should watch the video clip for this song too!
Jarvis’ dancing is something to behold
yes, hilarious and genius
Common people is my favourite Pulp song the video for the song is great and you should check it out. Other Pulp songs Lipgloss, Babies, Disco 2000, Sorted for E’s and whizz and Help the Aged.
The William Shatner cover is surprisingly good - produced by Ben Folds with the help of the great Joe Jackson. I can’t deny the excellence of the original, but damn if I don’t play the Shatner/Jackson version more.
fabulous record. In the 1960s and 70s possibly earlier (anyway post WW2) there was at least a sense or pretence of a mixing of the social classes - how true it was is debatable but that changed in the 80s onwards. As an aside Jarvis Cocker and Joe Cocker both of Sheffield checked into their family history but found no connection - it was just a common name.
Nice album! Cool track. I bought this CD and 'This Is Hardcore' back then. Jarvis Cocker seemed a decent stand-in for Roxy era Ferry who had become a bore.
It's a great track. Sort of thing Dylan might have come up with, but he would have handled it differently. I've only ever heard the shorter radio version, so it was fun to hear the full length. It's edited quite well, there's nothing vital missing from the shorter version. It just doesn't fly so far.
Jarvis was a bit of a lad, he once mooned at Michael Jackson at an awards ceremony. Rock and roll.
Nice to hear it, and your review too.
That's nonsense. The shorter version doesn't have the entire last verse which has the strongest lyrics in the song.
Hi JP. I always enjoy when you land on one of these tracks - seemingly from nowhere. Reminds me of how good the album is and the fact I haven't given it a listen for a while. Hoping you might pluck Baby Blue by Badfinger from the ether. 🤞
Ty Brian :)
I’d loved “Babies” as a single, but this album blew me away. Not one mediocre song on it.
this albums is a 10/10. Better than Morning Glory, Park Life or Definitely Maybe
OJ and Pulp for breakfast.
I'll just settle for Pulp, not being a brown noser.
You should check out the William Shatner ( yes, Captain Kirk) cover of this.
Get the Es and whizz.
A bit too silly for my taste - I also prefer the previous album His 'N Hers and what came after, though there's no denying Common People is an absolute masterpiece with amazing lyrics and a brilliant build-up. A song that fully deserves its place in pop history.
what do you mean by "silly". There is absolutely nothing silly about this song.
Never heard this before. Thought i was listening to David Bowie!
If he was from South Yorkshire, rather than South London!
😮.. really ??? 🤯
👍🏴
Jarvis Cocker was a teenager in the 70s - likely a Bowie fan and the LP was produced by Chris Thomas who had produced amongst many others Roxy Music and there are a least a couple of overt Roxy (Eno) references in the mix.
Interesting. Appreciate your sharing of knowledge.
Yes you must listen to the william sharner version.
Yeah, and the chip stains and grease will come out in the bath. 😮
Love Jervis cocker he punched Michael Jackson coz he was dancing with kids on TV........have a listen to william shatners (star trek) version
He didn't punch Michael Jackson, he rushed the stage during Jackson's performance, pulled down his pants, and mooned the audience.
What are you talking about ffs? Do some research before spouting nonsense.
Great track. At times he sounds like Ian McCullough.
It's a great album, though I infinitely prefer the album that preceded it.
you have to check out the music video, its hilarious and genius aswell
Musically I like it and it was fresh. Lyrically, it feels like a ripoff of The Kinks' "Ordinary People" where a rockstar trades places with a chap named Norman and will even sleep with his wife for the sake of art.
Never really got into these lot. All i know this was way overplayed. Not fussed.
@@paulcollins5586 As all good songs should be.
Good lord calm down folks 😅.. yeah it’s an ok britpop choon , but better than Oasis n Blur ??.. get away with ye for goodness sake . That’s the 90’s E’s talking there , mixing up yer memory n emotions 🤣… I forgive you all for talking bollox 🙏
👍🏴
whodunnit on steroids. annoying beyond belief. one dimensional comedy dirge
Couldn't be more wrong. I get the impression it's a false reaction!
I quite like it 😂
I was OK with it for about a minute and a half or so, but once he was finished essentially saying people never have awkward good intentions, I was already on my way to the thought it left me with at the end:
"People in Heaven complaining that the clouds aren't soft enough."
Offense is more often taken than given. (And that's the point of departure for me, I just realized. The taking offense is offensive to me. The self pity annoys me.)
There's a sour way of looking at tourism to a place like Malawi, for instance. "Slumming". "Poverty tourism". Something like that. The travellers must have bad intentions. So say the mind readers. Well so says my summary of the essence of what they're reading in these bad minds they can see right through like glass.
And you know how you "read someone else's mind"? You extrapolate. (Unless there really is a Jesus and you have his fricken phone number, I suppose.) Apart from that, as usual you simply do not know. (Ignorance is fine. Refusing to admit it or allow for itself is a problem.)
And the song is pretty cruddy, too. Affected when it gets "dramatic" (melodramatic), and otherwise the kind of thing Half Man Half Biscuit would make fun of. Actually I wonder whether Half Man Half Biscuit ever had some fun with this song?
Quite strange. I spent a fair amount of time going along with being ready to enjoy it. And here I am overthinking why I ended up somewhat disliking it. Oh well, doesn't matter, nê?
Nope. Nothing does, really
_There's a sour way of looking at tourism to a place like Malawi, for instance. "Slumming". "Poverty tourism". Something like that. The travellers must have bad intentions_
But it's not about that literal kind of tourism, unless you go to Malawi and pretend to be Malawian, while acting like their daily struggles are just fun experiences for you to bring home.
It's about upper-class twits, who slummed it in student housing and cheap bars for a few years in college, because they thought is was fun and cool, or to briefly rebel against their parents, or maybe, if we're generous, because they thought it would give them insight to a different class of people. Even if they had the best intentions, they'll never really understand what life at the bottom of society is like, because they didn't have to live there - they were just passing through, and their romanticised view of that life can be infuriating for those who have no choice.
@@Jacob_Junge Firstly, lest I forget, thanks for responding. However I think I disagree, still - hopefully agreeable, but I can sometimes be a bit of a sarcastic arras hole, just by force of habit.
OK, he has something to say, but relative to the real world it's not a big enough thing to get that upset about.
Every class of twit visits poor countries (because you're not poor in Malawi even if you are, in a more successful country - you're rich - out and out rich) and sees things through his or her own experience, just like anybody else, anywhere, in any other kind of experience.
Only in the Malawi case (and others) I've heard some other twits talk as if the rough living you sometimes have to do to get around such a place is a form of "being with the common people" without being with them - in a nasty kind of way. It would appear that the world must send only its perfect human beings there, otherwise it's downright evil and can have fingers wagged at the misbehaviour.
Analogously, a rich girl who circuitously tells a boy who thinks of himself as downtrodden, "Ya wanna feck?" in what turns out to be what sounds like an awkward joke gone wrong, might be sinning by more than just the wickedness of fornication, but jeez! Is that enough to make a great big song and dance about it? "Toffs need not apply for some roley unless they be perfect beings".
The interpretation he makes, as he sings his story is that she must have meant simply to demean him. By offering him her unworthy body? Take what she said less literally (whether in reality or fiction doesn't really matter) and one interpretation is that she'd like more, but she'll settle for some sex, if that's all he wants? All of which is an ordinary part of ordinary life, yes. The lines get crossed. She accidentally triggers something he's oversensitive about (we all have things we're oversensitive about? or is it just me?) and instead of a reasonably happy ending, everything blows up out of all proportion.
But after it's all said and done (or not done, if they didn't get round to the part of their encounter they both had the same idea about) there must have been a few years or months to realize ... simply that this was maybe worthy of a song, yes, but a light, funny song, that lets go of things, not this storm in a teacup.
I can't sympathize, so I can't enjoy the song. The closest I could get to that would be to remember the times in my own life where I've gotten everything all horribly wrong, and exposed a weakness like this. (It's a weakness to allow oneself to feel like that, if nothing else.) Maybe it just disturbed things I've taken good care to properly forget (as one should) and made me, my own perfect self, overreact to the overreaction (because it's too close to some or other embarrassing overreaction I've had myself.) Maybe not, but that's about as close as I could get to accepting the feelings as being valid enough to make up an entire song, the whole of which I listened to.
Pleased that you played the full album version which has the rant at the end. This one starts funny but ends up quite scathing. Fantastic writing.
Maybe you should be listening to Barbie Girl by Aqua.
@group-music why is that, then?