Latest news with #CandidaDoyle
Daily Mail
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
ADRIAN THRILLS reviews Pulp: More (Rough Trade): Britpop for grown-ups...it's a perfect Pulp album for 2025
Breaking into a music scene then dominated by glum American grunge bands, Pulp were the Britpop outsiders who became massive. Fronted by a witty English eccentric in Jarvis Cocker, the Sheffield group secured their first Top Ten album with 1994's His 'n' Hers, and became front-page news two years later when Cocker wiggled his backside onstage during a Michael Jackson performance at the BRITs. Like their 90s contemporaries Oasis and Blur, they are returning to find themselves as big as in their Cool Britannia heyday. Their 2023 tour, This Is What We Do For An Encore, included headline shows at Finsbury Park and Latitude – and they've now come up with their first new album in 24 years. With Jarvis, 61, joined by a trio of fellow Pulp veterans – keyboardist Candida Doyle, guitarist Mark Webber and drummer Nick Banks all excel here – More is a perfect Pulp album for 2025. Out in a week's time, it revisits the disco-infused, keyboard-driven pop of yesteryear while adding more assured musicianship and age-appropriate lyrics: Britpop played by grown-ups. It's a record front-loaded with its catchiest anthems. It opens with Spike Island, a track inspired by a Stone Roses gig on the Mersey estuary in 1990, but in reality a song that examines why Cocker put Pulp on hold in 2001 and then got them back together in 2011 and 2023. 'I was born to perform, it's a calling,' he sings. 'I exist to do this: shouting and pointing.' He delivers lyrical zingers as the LP progresses. The orchestral Tina is a stalker-ish song about unrequited desire for a woman he sees on his morning commute; Farmers Market, a pithy portrayal of middle-aged love. He addresses ageing again on the stomping, Madness-like Grown Ups: 'So you move from Camden out to Hackney, and you stress about wrinkles instead of acne.' The quality dips on ballads Slow Jam and Partial Eclipse, but More otherwise finishes strongly. The swirling disco-pop of Got To Have Love is bound to be a highlight of next month's UK arena shows. There's also, on The Hymn Of The North, a celebration of Sheffield's resilience despite the decline of its manufacturing industries. 'Northern lights will guide you home,' sings Jarvis, capping a warm, rewarding comeback with a hometown homage. He insists that 'no AI' was involved in making the album, and that feels right. Artificial intelligence would struggle to replicate the quirky genius of Pulp. More is out on June 6. Pulp start a UK tour on June 7 at OVO Hydro, Glasgow (
BBC News
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Common People: Pulp's 'rubbish' riff that became a Britpop anthem
Thirty years ago today Pulp let loose their biggest hit. In just five minutes and 51 seconds Common People shone a light on class, politics and Britain in the 90s. Three decades on the song remains as popular as ever, but how did a riff Jarvis Cocker's bandmates initially dismissed as "a bit rubbish" become one of the defining records of the Britpop era?Early 1995; John Major's Conservative government is faltering, Eric Cantona is serving an eight-month ban for kicking a supporter, rogue trader Nick Leeson has brought Britain's oldest bank to its knees and Britpop is the same time in the Town House recording studio in west London, the members of Pulp were scratching their heads at what to do with their latest song."It didn't really go anywhere, it felt a bit one dimensional," drummer Nick Banks told the BBC ahead of the song's 30th keyboard part at the centre of Common People had been written by frontman Cocker the previous year with little fanfare."It seemed kind of catchy, but I didn't think too much about it," the singer revealed in a 2004 BBC documentary."I didn't think 'wow, that's a masterpiece' I just thought it could come in handy for something."Bass player Steve Mackey - who died in 2023 - was a little more scathing: "It sounded pretty rubbish."Only keyboardist Candida Doyle saw its potential, remarking in the documentary how she thought it was "great straight away". "It must have been the simplicity of it, you could just tell it was a really powerful song," she said. 'It built like a runaway train' However, when it came to rehearsing the song Banks said the band kept naturally speeding up, building to a final crescendo when they actually wanted to maintain a consistent he said, when they managed to keep the tempo down "everyone was bored to tears" by the halfway point, and the track became "slow and ponderous".Making it faster didn't work either, he said, so the band decided to embrace the change of speed and set a "timed framework" that gathered momentum as it went on."It was my inaccurate time keeping that created a happy accident," Banks said."It built like a runaway train, and that was the mystery secret of the song." But it is more than just the driving energy of Common People that has made it an enduring lyrics and narrative also captured people's the intrigue surrounding the mystery student who inspired the opening lines - "She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge/She studied sculpture at St Martin's College" - to the acutely observational reflections on working-class in 2004, Cocker, who grew up in the Intake area of Sheffield before going to study film at St Martin's in 1988, said: "It was [written] not that long after I had moved down to London and so the sensibility is definitely that of somebody moving from up north to down south."You just see more of society, there's more extremes in London. For a start you see people with money."As to who was the muse of the piece, in 2015 the Athens Voice claimed they had identified her as Danae Stratou - the wife of the Greek finance minister, Yanis an interview with BBC World News Mr Varoufakis said: "Well, I wouldn't have known her back then."But I do know that she was the only Greek student of sculpture at St Martin's College at that time. And, from personal experience, she is a very fascinating person." Despite the popularity of the song, Common People was beaten to number one by former Soldier Soldier actors Robson Green and Jerome Flynn and their rendition of Unchained Melody and White Cliffs of the moment the band learned their fate, Banks said they had been booked to take part in a live BBC Radio One chart rundown in Birmingham's Centenary the rain lashing down, the band sat waiting backstage as one by one the other acts left, until only they were left and just two names remained in contention."Robson and Jerome hadn't actually bothered to turn up, but we were announced number two," Banks said."We went out, Jarvis was wearing his usual quite stacked heels and promptly went arse over apex on the slippery flatbed lorry and ended up lying flat on his back miming along to Common People on the radio."Pop historian Jonathan Rice said the song was among an "eminent list" of hit singles that never reached number one."Strawberry Fields by The Beatles never made the top," he said."Vienna by Ultravox was kept off number one by Shaddupyaface by Joe Dolce."[But] these are songs that stood the test of time and are much more memorable than the songs that beat them to number one."As the author of The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles, Rice said Common People "defined a generation"."It was a song that just summed up the atmosphere at the time felt by younger generation. It reflected the class barriers in such a witty and clever way." Prior to 1995, Pulp had failed to trouble the upper echelons of the charts, only reaching number 33 with their 1994 track Do You Remember The First Time?So why did Common People catch on in a way that previous Pulp material had failed to?Eric Clarke, a former Professor of Music at the University of Oxford, said it was in part the band's ability to reflect the mood of the country mixing "a genuine energetic, celebratory quality" with "anger and a sneering quality"."Common People is the most brilliant single from the 1990s"It was coming to the end of the Thatcher and Major period, people were sick to the back teeth of years of Tory government."There was a general upwelling of feeling that surely things could be different."It mixes thin, cheesy synth sounds with a really driving beat that seems to always be accelerating, the whole song is driving on to that incredible anthemic chorus at the end, which feels, to my ears, like an outpouring, a genuine release of frustration." Nicola Dibben, now music professor at the University of Sheffield, was herself a student in the city in 1995."What's really striking and meaningful is how the song captures what it means to be poor," she said."Common People sends up class tourism. I love the anger and glee that Jarvis deals with through his acerbic witticisms."His confessional breathy lyrics, he's so close to the mic - you can hear the lip smacks - it draws you in to the story right from the start." Perhaps the moment that cemented Common People's place in history was the band's last-minute headline appearance at Stone Roses guitarist John Squire broke his collar bone falling off a bike, the Sheffield band were drafted in to plug the followed was arguably one of Glastonbury's most famous headline moment was not lost on the enormous crowd, he said: "If you want something to happen enough then it will actually happen. I believe that. That's why we are stood on this stage today."If a lanky git like me can do it, then so can you."Now, 30 years on, as the band prepare to tour again - their first since the death of bassist Mackey - Banks said he believed Common People was "still a song that gets you going"."To me it still sounds fresh, vibrant and immediate and a worthwhile social commentary," he said,Reflecting on the songs enduring success in 2004, Doyle said: "I remember at one point thinking I wish we could write a song that would be fantastic for ever and ever and ever - and then I thought 'oh, we have'." Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North
Perth Now
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Pulp keyboardist Candida Doyle says joining band was a case of 'do or die' amid rheumatoid arthritis battle
Pulp keyboardist Candida Doyle says joining the band was a case of "do or die", after being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis as a teen. The 61-year-old Irish musician put up a fight after being told she had the chronic autoimmune disease and refused to let the condition stop her. She told Mojo magazine: 'It was kind of, do or die. And I did. I fought it. They said, you know, I could be in a wheelchair in my thirties and in my head, I was instantly like, 'No, I'm not having this.'' Candida – sister of Magnus Doyle, who was Pulp's drummer between 1983 and 1986 – said that despite being 'constantly uncomfortable' and her body being 'sore', she 'still went to nightclubs and stayed up 'til 2am'. She continued: 'I just went about living my life without a care.' Candida joined Pulp in 1984 and instantly clicked with her bandmates. She recalled: 'I knew the band anyway, because in Sheffield, if you were a bit unusual, you all kind of went to the same clubs.' Candida was training to become a nursery nurse at the time, and kept quiet about being in the band - because she thought her colleagues would judge her. She admitted: 'I'd see posters for Pulp concerts, and think, 'Oh, my God.' The people I worked with thought I was pretty weird anyways. 'I mean, it was very rare for a woman to be in a band in Sheffield. That's partly why I stayed. I thought, 'I've got to stay in because there's hardly any women doing it.'' Pulp would go on to achieve widespread success nearly 11 years later after their defining Glastonbury Festival performance in 1995. The Britpop rockers are set to release their first album in 24 years, 'More', this June, and will also embark on a UK tour.
