Common People: A lyrical discussion/dissection

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.

so basically this was an equivalent of the "keepin' it real" ethos?

lol sarahel u strike me as from a different planet sometimes, i just can't make sense of where you're coming from

it is true - i am actually an alien from outer space.

For US posters.....
Alongside the posh V common thing, it's important to remember that Cocker is from Sheffield - which gives a different weight to the setting 'St. Martin's College' (many English people mightn't know where it is, but for those who do, it is quintessentially metropolitan, and for those not from London, it's very 'London') - the singer is clearly Northern (accent would be immediately apparent to British listeners) so St. Martin's is not his home turf either.

would it be similar to say - someone from the midwest going to NYC?

cultural capital is a significant factor

I think sarahel is getting at something interesting actually; I mean this helps explain why American politics doesn't divide along class lines and yet during elections superficial class issues become a big deal (Obama's mustard choices or whatever)

horseshoe also raised a really important point about US vs. UK class difference vis a vis the history of immigration here and how immigrants are perceived and that it is probably more complicated here than in the UK.

I was attending Oxford University as a Marshall scholar when this song was a hit. I was, er, hooking up at the time with what I guess would be termed a very "rough trade" working class kid, a young barman who lived in a flat with some flatmates across town. I was over at his place and we watched the video for this on "Top of the Pops" at his place and there was this jubilation that he and his flatmates felt about this tune being a big pop hit and I felt this deep/comic humiliation and feeling of being "hailed" / called out by the song. Because I really was a totally privileged kid from an elitist school who was hanging out with these working class kids and kind of reveling in feeling like I had snuck into a world where I didn't belong and there was Jarvis laying it down. As an American I'm outside of Brit class systems frameworks, but this kind of slumming dynamic was a constant at Oxford: kids who would affect a Cockney accent and working class voices/slang, but then they'd be off to Blenheim to ride with the Duchess of Marlborough come the weekend.

Oh man - the slumming dynamic at Ivy League schools drove me crazy ... but it was good preparation for dealing with other white "hipsters" living in Oakland who affect ghetto slang

That's strange, Karen, I think Pulp represent the exact opposite of 90s laddism. Oasis portrayed working-class identity as pure good times, don't read books, don't worry about politics, etc - Pulp were the arty, intellectually aspirational, misfit alternative. If people took Pulp as representative of simple blue-collar "authenticity" then they were only listening to one song, and misunderstanding it to boot. It's bizarre to single out Pulp, of all bands, as responsible for boring landfill indie.

Britpop and class is v complicated. I recently read an old Manics interview in which Nicky Wire says he wrote Design for Life ("we don't talk about love/we only want to get drunk") in part as a response to Blur's Girls & Boys, which he thought was loathsomely condescending. In fact, you could read Common People as a sly attack on Damon Albarn in his mockney, dog-racing phase. But then he would claim he was misunderstood… It's the worthwhile side of Britpop anyway - a fistful of top 5 hits about class identity.

I'm not saying that Pulp were lad culture, quite the reverse. But THAT SONG was definitely mis-used by middle class ppl who wanted to rep for a really one dimensional take on "working class authenticity".

But you seem determined to misunderstand everything I say (probably because you really like the song, fair enough) but also it is really hard to make nuanced points on an iPhone on a crowded bus.

I find this song really hard to separate from negative contexts, bad ppl who have used it to justify stuff I think Cocker never intended.

K - that was what i thought you meant, and was gonna reply to dorian, but i felt you were capable of stating your case.

i don't know much about this song but this thread has sucked out any of my desire to listen to it cuz then i'll have to post here :/

I just listened to it - it's not even particularly enjoyable. Not sure how it ever attracted that much attention.

waht

Half-heartedly trolling on a Friday afternoon, Dan. Don't mind me.

it's really shapeless, formally, but it still works, there's a kind of constant acceleration feeling that really fits the lyrics. and there's a lot of lyrics! you'd have to go to rap to find a hit song with as many words crammed into it.

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.

― zvookster, Friday, September 3, 2010 6:08 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark

most of them didn't have (didn't think they had) that safety net. getting a haircut, getting a job, renting a flat -- these are not exactly unknown to middle-class folk. it's only the very rich, the top 5–10% of the population, who are really so rich that their dad could -- what? pay their rent? so it was quite easy for middle-class alts to participate in the hatred of rich greek girls that the song enacts.

wait what if the girl is actually greek.

i assume the first line means, just back from 'holiday' before starting school.

lol xp IS SHE GREEK THIS IS CRUCIAL

Thing that's really annoying is, I would really like the droney propulsion if the song if it weren't for Jarvis & the lyrics. :(