Programme notes
Pulp - Common People
Summary
A 1995 single by Pulp, from the album Different Class. Jarvis Cocker narrates an encounter with a wealthy art student who wants to 'live like common people'; the arrangement starts sparse and escalates over five minutes into something close to hysteria as the narrator's patience gives out.
Why it matters
It is one of the sharpest pieces of writing to come out of Britpop, and unusual in that it treats class as a subject rather than as set dressing. The song's target is not wealth but slumming — the tourist who can always go home — and that specific accusation is why it has outlasted most records of its moment.