Common People: A lyrical discussion/dissection

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.

he has a complicated relationship with it to be sure

right! which is why I think the phenomenon of lower-middle class people at academy of art sf has more in common w/ the phenomenon of lower-middle class devry and university of phoenix - than it does w/ the idea of 'art school'...

lower-middle class peopel at* devry

again, when jarvis went to college under the evil margaret thatcher, there was more money for art students

think that posh folk these days don't bother slumming coz they don't even feel guilt

solid middle class vs. lower middle

in the end it's too complex, i couldn't quite say, or could only speak from experience, which isn't exactly either of these. i dunno if you've seen 'nowhere boy' (abt john lennon) -- i didn't think it was a masterpiece, but i think it deals with these ridiculously nuanced class distinctions quite well. can't remember if j-len gets static for wanting to go to art school, but it wasn't a university-or-art-school choice back then, for the lower middle classes; it was get a job (or maybe technical college, or possibly if you're a misfit art college).

That second bullet point takes a statement made in the context of disparaging an over-privileged person for exoticizing and fetishizing the experiences of people with less money as being more real and authentic and recasts it as an indictment of aspiring to have more than what you have. I never scanned that line as being disparaging of people who attempt to aspire for more than what they have; it seems as clear as day to be disparaging people for pretending they have less than what they have.

This is of course the totally wrong biased American reading of the song.

dan otm. jarvis is not saying that the common folk's MO is something to aspire to, but he is indeed 'disparaging people for pretending they have less than what they have.'

but i think kate is a bit otm too, factoring in how the song was received (ie by hypocritical middle-class alts). but that was a long time ago!

well one thing I think we can all agree upon is that most hypocritical middle-class alts are really dumm

i'm not sure if we're agreeing or ... basically the point i'm trying to make/hypothesis i'm throwing out there, because i'm not omniscient and haven't rigorously studied is:

In America -

upper middle class family: oh, honey, you want to go to art school, you are such a special snowflake and so talented because you are our child after all and we want you to live up to your fullest potential - well, of course you can go to art school, but only if you get into a prestigious one

middle class family: that doesn't sound like something that will get you a good job - can't you just go to a good state school with a good art department, take some art classes but major in something "real" - like elementary education? You can get a job teaching art to kids, at least.

lower-middle class family: Art school? Honey, you can do anything you want, you should follow your dreams, and they accepted you? Wonderful!

I'd agree with that, although you also have to factor in American class movement and how a person who is now upper middle class who grew up lower middle class or lower class is much more likely to have the middle class reaction

do you mean that they are upper middle class - or that they have more money?

Don't get all british on us, sarah.

Dan otm. My parents, who were umc by the time I went to college, grew up lower class (in the UK, but let's forget about that for a sec) and would simply have refused to allow me to attend art school, but allowed my brother to study music in college only in a music-education course.

how did hypocritical middle-class alts deal with "if you called your dad he could stop it all" with the fucking drums going bananas. just pretended they didn't have that safety net? i think kate is talking about having to deal with class resentment in general, and this song being abt class resentment.

xp - kkvgz - my dad's stepmom, who for all intents and purposes was my grandmother - was a middle class Londoner before she emigrated to the US as an adult

in order for class distinctions to have any meaning, they have to be at least partly about how much money you have! my parents are probably not what most people think of when they think upper middle class because they don't come from money and they're immigrants and brown, but they make more money than, like, 90% of the country. Dan's otm, btw, they were v displeased with the course i followed in my education. they were right btw.

xxp to sarahel

yeah, but the mistake a lot of people make about the class system in the US is they equate money with class, as opposed to it only being partly about how much money you have. cultural capital is a significant factor.

...

yeah but in terms of advantages and privilege afforded at birth the actual $ is a big deal.

i dunno - i grew up around a number of people whose families had money (they weren't rich, but they had incomes equivalent to upper middle class families) and their kids had dozens of pairs of guess jeans and got new cars when they turned 16, but when it came to things like college or cultural opportunities that would aid their kids in future careers: the kids didn't care, and neither did their parents.

these people vacationed at disneyland or went to Hawaii - or they'd pay for the teenage kid and a friend or two to go to Hawaii - not exactly classy.

they were v displeased with the course i followed in my education. they were right btw.

lol. yes, I now join in with my parents in smh at my english degree.

On the bus now & this is gonna take forever but...

The whole thing about point 2 & the reaction of Brit alt at the time was this fetishisation of "working class authenticity" & the accompanying dull leaden culture that went with it - reaching it's apotheosis in what would become landfill indie. & ignoring (& actually disparraging in other forms) the flashy mod side of actual working class art. I know this is a big part of what gets up Lex's nose as well.

Hopefully someone smarter & more articulate will take this & expand on it.

I don't think this was Cocker's intention with this song but this song certainly got used as justification for the later lad-ification of 90s indie.

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