Common People: A lyrical discussion/dissection

The attitude described in "Common People" is such an amazing encapsulation of certain facets of the Ivy League experience, it's stunning.

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/w/warrant/album-dirty-rotten-filthy-stinking-rich.jpg

Haha. Holiday in Cambodia's in the same vein as Common People, especially the lines about ethnic jazz and "bragging that you know how the niggers feel cold", though Jello's target is a different social type.

kind of but the narrator of 'common people' thinks the slums got so much soul:

"You're amazed that they exist
and they burn so bright,
while you can only wonder why."

The attitude described in "Common People" is such an amazing encapsulation of certain facets of the Ivy League experience, it's stunning.

― feel free to answer my Korn Kuestion (HI DERE), Friday, September 3, 2010 9:00 AM (1 minute ago)

"burn so bright" can also mean the slums are burning. It's all about the hysteria in Cocker's voice.

Oh definitely - just acknowledging that the target of Holiday in Cambodia is more of a jock. Again, it's a very specific song - about certain students at the University of Colorado in the late 70s. Both songs have the details that only come from real observation of individuals rather than attacking a type, a la Eat the Rich.

I'll put a word in for Cocker's vocal performance here - the way he ramps it up from wry satire in the first verse to screaming rage and contempt by the end. The song reminds me a bit of Transmission - the music just builds and builds while the vocal becomes increasingly ragged and unhinged.

Ah, I see Alfred already got there re: the vocal hysteria.

Hard to think of another 90s UK top 3 hit with such howling rage.

i always interpreted cocker's character as being middle class - like he's not really a part of either of those worlds - but maybe that's me projecting

This song's a jam. I can't relate to either the narrator or the girl, nor really to anyone else in the song's vicinity. But it's a great "fuck you" song & that's a classic pop trope.

Would my view be different if I thought the "fuck you" was to me? I dunno. My love of pop music has a lot to do with role playing, & I love my enemies as myself.

i always interpreted cocker's character as being middle class - like he's not really a part of either of those worlds - but maybe that's me projecting

^^^ ditto

i always interpreted cocker's character as being middle class - like he's not really a part of either of those worlds - but maybe that's me projecting

― sarahel, Friday, September 3, 2010 5:12 PM (35 seconds ago) Bookmark

you're better off not delving into it tbh!

'middle class' covers a hell of a lot in this intricate class system of ours

the narrator knows 'common' folk but is not one of them -- *you're* amazed that *they* exist. and he's at art school in that london. i guess he's taken her back home or something? n e ways, he is probably 'lower middle class'.

probably working class but was an outcast from that society, so he feels the need to disparage the rich girl for slumming it even though/because he loathes it himself.

i always interpreted cocker's character as being middle class - like he's not really a part of either of those worlds - but maybe that's me projecting

This, in a nutshell, is why I'm never trying to explain this song to an American, ever again.

And I did it many, many, many times, in anglophile circles, in the States, during the 90s.

Anyway, I've said pretty much every thing I need to say about this song on the other thread.

I don't think it's really related to pitchfork, though, I think it's more to do with that Different Class poll that's been hanging around new answers, but I'm never never going to post on a Pulp thread because I really quite dislike Pulp. (And it's probably more to do with very specific fans I have known than the band itself.)

Now I'm going to bow out.

i think i got the album my last year of college, and was totally obsessed with listening to it after i graduated and was living in SF working crappy temp jobs, so it was definitely a reminder of the limits of class mobility provided by a "good education," contrary to the mythology surrounding it. But, in a way, i was also kinda slumming - i mean, i could have gone into a more secure, lucrative profession. So, when i listened to the song, i'd alternately put myself in the position of his character, as well as the girl's. I mean, i'd be totally dishonest if i told myself that if i was totally broke that i couldn't call my parents and they'd buy me a month's work of groceries or help me out some on the rent.

I understand the British class system and I don't understand why you find that view so woefully incorrect. xpost

the narrator knows 'common' folk but is not one of them -- *you're* amazed that *they* exist. and he's at art school in that london. i guess he's taken her back home or something? n e ways, he is probably 'lower middle class'.

― i am legernd (history mayne), Friday, September 3, 2010 9:15 AM (4 minutes ago)

that was my assumption as well, based on the literal narrative.

u cld argue that college makes u middle class as a matter of fact regardless of background, but i wouldn't go that far, plus i think the switch to "they" may be just a rhetorical decision

the working/middle class distinction in britain has little to do with income. it tends to be about where you're from. which is why I like how complicated the relationship to class is on Common People and the album as a whole.

i remember they did t-shirts saying 'i'm common'... could never really get on board w. that, especially since they dropped 'mis-shapes' about two months later

it's a complicated song for a complicated society

u cld argue that college makes u middle class as a matter of fact regardless of background, but i wouldn't go that far, plus i think the switch to "they" may be just a rhetorical decision

― zvookster, Friday, September 3, 2010 5:24 PM (32 seconds ago) Bookmark

well, yes. but! it's art college, which isn't like college. but! it's st martins, which is hella posh (MIA went there).

the working/middle class distinction in britain has little to do with income. it tends to be about where you're from. which is why I like how complicated the relationship to class is on Common People and the album as a whole.

the working/middle class distinction in britain has little to do with income. it tends to be about where you're from. which is why I like how complicated the relationship to class is on Common People and the album as a whole.

in a way, art school students are more likely to have roaches climbing the walls than people with short hair and jobs. i think?

'lower middle class'

It's important to note that HM means English lower middle class which is diff than American middle class.

I agree with all those that said he's not a part of either groups described in the song.

God I love this song.

America doesn't have 'classes' btw didnt u kno

history mayne - is it the kind of thing where lower middle class families are more likely to encourage/let their kids go to art school than solidly middle class ones? There's a bit of that here in the U.S. - there's this basically pay-to-play art school in SF called the Academy of Art University (née college) where most of the students are either from foreign countries and just want to be in America or seem like they're from lower-middle class backgrounds.

x-post

Waht?

probably working class but was an outcast from that society, so he feels the need to disparage the rich girl for slumming it even though/because he loathes it himself.

OTM. I think he definitely identifies as working class, not even lower middle class, but suddenly finds himself in a privileged environment and projects some of his own discomfort onto the girl. On the one hand, yes, he doesn't have a financial cushion so if he fails to make it (as Jarvis did for many years) then nobody's going to bail him out, so he genuinely resents this girl and most of her contemporaries. BUT the hysteria in his voice when he's describing working-class life suggests that he's happy to be away from it. Economically he is "one" of them but culturally and intellectually he feels apart. It's not uncommon for a bright, hungry, working-class student at a good university to feel at once relieved to be in a comfortable environment and awkward/guilty/resentful about it, and to take this huge ambivalence about what they've left behind out on someone who represents brainless entitlement.

It's not uncommon for a bright, hungry, working-class student at a good university to feel at once relieved to be in a comfortable environment and awkward/guilty/resentful about it, and to take this huge ambivalence about what they've left behind out on someone who represents brainless entitlement.

this happens in America, too - you see it more pronouncedly in African-American and Chicano students

It's not uncommon for a bright, hungry, working-class student at a good university to feel at once relieved to be in a comfortable environment and awkward/guilty/resentful about it, and to take this huge ambivalence about what they've left behind out on someone who represents brainless entitlement.

Hopefully, you could also understand why someone who has been used as a scratching post to represent "brainless entitlement" by persons in that position could grow to really really REALLY resent the song.

Not trying to be all "wah, feel sorry for me" honest, but more "can you see why that would make someone hate it, not love it"?

(ok I just noticed the other discussion that spawned this thread)

There's also the political backdrop here - how the working class were fought over by both the Tories and the unions/Militants in the 80s, how the 90s was meant to be the era of the classless society, etc - but that would take a long time to break down for any non-UK folk.

Karen, I can totally see why that experience would turn you against the song. I had a friend who tried to do that but it turned out that he was just a barmy fantasist whose dad, it transpired after two years of his asserting his working-class bona fides, was a lawyer in Cheshire.

so basically the UK in the 90s was supposed to be like America?

There's also the whole second part of my explanation of why I dislike this song (the common vs. posh and common vs. uncommon dichotomy) which has kind of been completely missed in all the class warrior and "americans vs. brits: you doing class rong" stuff.

there are two threads on the board at the moment with some previous discussion on this

for reference
Pitchfork: The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 20-01
"Please Understand. We don't want no trouble, we just want the right to be different. That's all." PULP - D.I.F.F.E.R.E.N.T.C.L.A.S.S poll

wow, really?

history mayne - is it the kind of thing where lower middle class families are more likely to encourage/let their kids go to art school than solidly middle class ones? There's a bit of that here in the U.S. - there's this basically pay-to-play art school in SF called the Academy of Art University (née college) where most of the students are either from foreign countries and just want to be in America or seem like they're from lower-middle class backgrounds.

― sarahel, Friday, September 3, 2010 5:31 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

actually kind of, yeah. HOWEVER the LONDON art schools mix(ed) up talented misfits from the provinces with posh girls (who didn't used to go to university... of course they did by jarvis's time though).

i dunno about the 1980s, but it used to be that the london colleges were basically postgraduate institutions; you went there after your stint at one of the provincial art schools.

in the period the song is about it was more complex because you had this whole other stratum of higher education institutions that are now redesignated universities... and another however is that since the sixties art schools have been pressured more and more to produce 'people who are needed in the jobs market'.

There's also the whole second part of my explanation of why I dislike this song (the common vs. posh and common vs. uncommon dichotomy) which has kind of been completely missed in all the class warrior and "americans vs. brits: you doing class rong" stuff.

what was this again?

i don't think there is that dichotomy Karen D.

history mayne - is it the kind of thing where lower middle class families are more likely to encourage/let their kids go to art school than solidly middle class ones? There's a bit of that here in the U.S. - there's this basically pay-to-play art school in SF called the Academy of Art University (née college) where most of the students are either from foreign countries and just want to be in America or seem like they're from lower-middle class backgrounds.

I think this has more to do w/ the student loan racket + for-profit colleges more capable of taking advantage of lower-middle class people than 'art'.

like, my family who is middle class, would not have let me go to art school - i could have majored in something "frivolous" and/or "artistic" (which i kinda did, though my mother reassured herself that this was not the case by clipping NYT articles about how semiotics majors were much desired by advertising agencies) - but only at a regular 4 year university, where i could change my mind and pick a more useful major

Don't feel like searching and copying and pasting again. Go and look it up on the P4k 20 thread if you are really interested. But again, it depends on cultural context and personal experiences so YMMV.

I'm off home now.

though my mother reassured herself that this was not the case by clipping NYT articles about how semiotics majors were much desired by advertising agencies

aw

(which is to say I don't think upper middle class people are less likely to go to art school, they just avoid schools that spend half their budget on tv commercials) xp

found it Kate.

For reference:

Eh, usually I wouldn't post something like this on ILX because I know that both Common People and Cocker himself are such sacred cows (and I don't want my dislike to be interpreted as some lame challops for the sake of it any more than I want to repeat arguments I've had since the mid 90s.) But for you, Lex, I'll say a little of it, because I suspect you will understand my reasoning.

1) The terrible awareness that I (middle class, arty, have probably engaged in bouts of class tourism) am exactly the person that the entire nasty vipituous diatribe is aimed at. You're right. I will never *really* know what it's like not to have an expensive education. I will never *really* know what it's like not to have my class background. I don't think that gives you (author or listener) the automatic right to sneer at such a person for wanting to broaden my horizons and *trying* to understand. And also, due to peculiar quirks of the British class system (that one can actually have education and breeding and still be as poor as a church mouse) this does *not* mean that I do not know what it means to live with lack or poverty or difficult choices or narrowed horizons.

2) the conflation of the British class system (Posh vs. Common) with the idea of common vs. uncommon. You're right. I will *never* live like "Common people" and, in fact, I absolutely *refuse* to live "like common people" because I refuse to see it as something negative to aspire towards the extraordinary, the sublime, thegoodthebeautifulthetrue. This song, for me, really encapsulates this kind of negative anti-cultural-Thatcherism which produces some pretty questionable aesthetic results and political conclusions if taken to the logical conclusion. The only kind of aspiration is *not* simply the material kind. I am the kind of person who will spend money on books when she hasn't the money for new clothes, so this has nothing to do with wealth. I can NOT conceive of a world where there is nothing else to do but "drink and dance and screw, because there's nothing else to do" because no matter how little money I have, I *always* have my imagination and enough intellect to think of *something* else. I refuse to apologise for that.

I realise that these things are not entirely of Cocker's intentions, but they are certainly what the song has come to symbolise. In fact, I would have thought that Cocker, with his weirdo arty intellectual background, would understand, but, as we talked about on twitter yesterday, if you play with archetypes that are bigger than you, usually it's you that gets played.

This will of course all be misunderstood and torn to pieces because I don't think I've expressed this very well, but hey, it's Friday afternoon on ILX, I've got time. :-/

― cymose corymb (Karen D. Tregaskin), Friday, September 3, 2010 1:48 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

So as to part 2, I'll say again that I think Cocker/his character is pretty disparaging of the 'dance and drink and screw coz there's nothing else to do' mentality.

iatee - i'm not talking about upper middle class people - they're gonna send their kids to CCA or SFAI or art schools with cultural prestige - i'm talking solid middle class vs. lower middle.

disagree tho dorian pointed out ambivalence here xp

it's basically a defense of that.

High school 85-88 and I listened to a random mix of top 40, classic rock and KROQ/91X style programming. As did everyone at school, pretty much. I don't remember one musical argument from the time at all!

1985-1992. Sixth form common room split between goths, Madchester/dance/hip hop types and classic-rock musos with strained tolerance the norm and occasional bursts of mutual admiration - the early 90s was a good time for crossover because of all the hip hop and indie-dance going on. I remember the real conflicts happening at house parties - we got evicted from a metal-dominated party for slipping on a tape of dance music. We deliberately started with 808 State's Cubik and In Yer Face in an attempt to woo the metalheads, to no avail.

In my latter years at secondary school, five of us in a sixth form of 100 odd liked indie. Jazz funk dominated. Indie types too small a number for anyone else to give a shit either way. But the dominance of the Smiths over indie in the mid-80s meant the music was characterised as crybaby stuff for bedwetters.

Hi. I like this song and this thread.

I got a hold of this album right when it came out. I was probably in my second year of high school.

I always identified with the narrator of the song even though I wouldn't even know how to begin talking about talking about my own relationship with class without numerous paragraphs that would be of very little interest to many.

I just wanted to say, at the risk of taking this thread back a few hundred posts, that, contrary to a few people above, and maybe the spirit of this thread, I do appreciate Marx's focus on ownership as the primary factor in determining social class, even as the more stringent categories he lays out for class distinction do tend to obfuscate the value of the numerous paragraphs each of us could write about our own backgrounds.

A few posters have brought up the importance of choices, possibilities, etc. and how important one's sense of what is out there and what is possible might be in determining class. While this is certainly important, what is more important is that there are those who are able to actually determine what those choices and possibilities are.

What does this have to do with the song? Maybe(!) its the obliviousness to this fact on the part of both the wealthy and the working class that perpetuates the cult of working class authenticity that is distasteful to the narrator. On the one hand, Cocker has to resent that someone who may be of the class of people that could change the material conditions of the lives of the people would actually want to live like them, not out of political solidarity, but out of a twisted vision of social prestige but, on the other hand, he probably dislikes as well, even if he reinforces somewhat, the fatalism of working class culture and weird pride some have in their fatalistic view. The discomfort in the song comes form having to be mediator between the two*, though ultimately, he has to choose a side and he does, perhaps partially out of solidarity but also just because of the ethics of the situation.

*(and others have described above the feeling of having, due to circumstances out of one's control, to become a representative of a group one does not identify with out of choice - it is not a comfortable feeling - I know it as someone raised Jewish who is not Jewish and rather far to the left and not supportive of Israeli policy but also aware of the fact that simply because "I am Jewish" to other people, my thoughts will usually be assumed before being heard, I will usually be seen as speaking form a certain perspective that is not entirely my own, etc. and a sense of solidarity will be re-established between myself and other Jews/"Jews" purely out of being "put in my place")

1996-2001. Oasis, other Britpop and East 17 popular at first, then came dance/trance dominance. All of the various rock/indie subcultures got lumped into the one category. UK Garage came after but was never really as popular.

I remember a lot of guys switching their allegience from dance to rap towards the end, especially after Eminem.

I wonder what Sarah Palin would think of this discussion.

82-87. Metal, electro/old school hip hop, post punk/punk/goth

I don't remember music ever being an issue at school. Even if you liked the Smiths. All the violence and aggravation was all about football, rugby, the brand of your trainers, the tightness of your jeans and for the unfortunate minority, the colour of your skin. My school was a terrible hive of cuntery but I will give them musical open-mindedness. Even the house breakers were bong loaded Zappa and Neu! fans.

And yeah, it is just a weird song, the way it starts as a story and ends as a rant and I don't know that those two halves hang together particularly well.

This is partly why it's great. There isn't even a story past the first two verses - trip to the supermarket and then it's all rant. The last thing the girl does is laugh at him taking the poverty tour guide stuff too srsly, and then it's a feverish speculation that allows her to vicariously experience the frisson of dirt and lust and torpor while he gets fucked up about it.

The reasons to dislike are centred around other people miseading the lyrics as a proletkult apology and the general dishonesty and shittiness of the britpop era. The ~ song itself ~ is pretty singular and great rly.

I feel like I will never go thru a hardcore drug addiction phase
Will never live in a shithole crack den meth lab apartment
Do drugs that involve needles
have sex in a graveyard
communicate with spirits
Have my bros crucify me just 4 shits
Sell my body for drugs
Contract some sort of infection/STD/terminal illness

Just dark ass shit

Feel like I'm always gonna be kinda mnstrm
and I won't ever be that dark

that 'story of Common People' doc is on You Tube it appears.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltodth1h1Oo

terrific blog by Dorian: http://33revolutionsperminute.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/the-rage-of-common-people/

Has anyone read Owen Hatherley's book "Uncommon"?

wow, somehow i completely missed this thread the first time around. i've been reading for 20 minutes and have barely scratched the surface.

it's amazing to me that so many people are new to this song!

to my mind it's one of the best pop (rock?) songs of the 90s. maybe the best? at any rate it's one of the few pop (rock?) songs in recent memory where the snarling, desperate, animal energy of the vocals actually has a convincing basis in the lyrics. i just don't believe singers when they get all angry or excited usually, cause what are they singing about? who knows.

also i just want to take this opportunity to mention that an unremarkable baseball card from a particular year - a card that doesn't command any sort of price above and beyond the rest of them - is called a "common". i always felt sorry for the players pictured on them.

lol @ "recent memory" being.... 15 YEARS AGO

Hatherley wrote a pretty basic piece for The Guardian about their festival performances though really it's just a primer for the book.

pulp were just ridiculously good at primavera. forget suede or blur - this is the really essential britpop reunion you need to be at.

I wouldn't agree with a lot of the above. The song doesn't set our narrator "above" the Greek girl. By the end of the song our narrator has reached the same position that she holds at the start, claiming to want to live with common people "like you", except before the song's end he's stooped lower than she has.

He catches her eye *because* she studies "sculpture" - that's what he is to her, an object of some aesthetic interest, but without, ultimately, any sexual interest. Not "poor" enough, nor (therefore) "cool" enough, or so he'd like to think.

The rejection sends our narrator off on his rant, which is more about his *own* fascination / revulsion for the "common people" than it is about hers (if indeed she has such strong feelings).

By the point at which he's calling the "common people" as witnesses to the Greek girl's failings, he's not only romanticising them and aestheticising them, as she does, he wants them to sing along with his own condemnations. Which is spiteful, cheap, and nasty - but these qualities are, perhaps, not uncommon.

I just hope that the guy got a chance to bone down after he was done freaking the fuck out.

pulp were just ridiculously good at primavera.

this.

I wouldn't agree with a lot of the above. The song doesn't set our narrator "above" the Greek girl. By the end of the song our narrator has reached the same position that she holds at the start, claiming to want to live with common people "like you", except before the song's end he's stooped lower than she has.

He catches her eye *because* she studies "sculpture" - that's what he is to her, an object of some aesthetic interest, but without, ultimately, any sexual interest. Not "poor" enough, nor (therefore) "cool" enough, or so he'd like to think.

The rejection sends our narrator off on his rant, which is more about his *own* fascination / revulsion for the "common people" than it is about hers (if indeed she has such strong feelings).

By the point at which he's calling the "common people" as witnesses to the Greek girl's failings, he's not only romanticising them and aestheticising them, as she does, he wants them to sing along with his own condemnations. Which is spiteful, cheap, and nasty - but these qualities are, perhaps, not uncommon.

― Neil Willett, Thursday, June 16, 2011 12:05 AM (21 hours ago) Bookmark

more interesting than owen hatherley's reading at any rate -- i don't think we should identify with the narrator rly.

idk, im middle-class, i've never pretended to be otherwise, 'common people' is directed against people who do; so i guess i can go on my merry way? i don't mind people liking this pretty mediocre piece of music. never liked the 'deliberately tinselly' vibe of 95-era pulp.

i don't mind people liking this pretty mediocre piece of music.

people everywhere breathe a sigh of relief

it's so refreshing when history mayne just agrees to disagree rather than call his opponents fucking idiots.

well, people i like like pulp

and i liked pulp before they did

I have a cookie here for you.

sometimes, very rarely, but sometimes, it's good to be american

Someone should compile these interpretations and hand them to Jarvis.

Particularly:

By the point at which he's calling the "common people" as witnesses to the Greek girl's failings, he's not only romanticising them and aestheticising them, as she does, he wants them to sing along with his own condemnations. Which is spiteful, cheap, and nasty - but these qualities are, perhaps, not uncommon.

.. which is wrongy, but funny too.

wow, just realised all these years I've been hearing this great line " the tube station grease will come out in the bath." which actually erm sort of isn't in the song.

this is a really great song

this thread's so bizarre. had no idea there were ppl out there who were actually offended by this song.

As good a place as any to ask:

Like a dog lying in a corner,
they'll bite you and never warn you.
Look out.
They'll tear your insides out.

Does anyone know what the backing vocals are here?

http://www.pulpwiki.net/Pulp/AskDrPulp

Jan/Feb 96

Steve Bayliss is from Widnes and he's interested to find out just what Jarvis is going on about in Common People in the "Dog lying in a corner" bit. Is it too obscene to publish, he asks?

The Doc says, whilst recording the acoustic guitar track, Jarvis' headphone level was too loud, and he was asking for it to be turned down. The "Dog lying in the corner" bit is Jarvis wittering on as only he can, while the levels were corrected. The group thought it sounded good anyway and kept it.

Thank you!

http://www.factmag.com/2015/05/07/pulp-common-people-greek-girl-identity/

Please let this turn out to be the right person it would just be too perfect a punchline.

Excellent.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/12/greek-finance-minister-responds-claim-wife-inspiration-pulp-common-people

good song

Hour-long BBC 10th anniversary doc The Story Of Common People, from 2006 is now on the iPlayer.
Hasn't been shown much in the last decade. It's really good.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074fbj#credits

nice, thanks