Latest news with #CommonPeople
Wales Online
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Pulp's Jarvis Cocker says his writer's block ‘led the band to grind to a halt'
Pulp's Jarvis Cocker says his writer's block 'led the band to grind to a halt' The Britpop band, best known for their hit song Common People, will release their first album in over two decades, More, on June 6 Jarvis Cocker performs during the Pulp concert at Kings Theatre on September 14, 2024 in New York (Image: Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone via Getty Images ) Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker has said his writer's block "led the band to grind to a halt". The Britpop band, best known for their hit song Common People, will release their first album in over two decades, More, on June 6. The frontman, 61, said he wrote the lyrics before going into the studio to "make things easier". Speaking to the Big Issue, Cocker said: "It's weird because we don't hang around with each other outside of the band any more, but I was aware of what the others were up to with various projects. But when you've made music with people for that many years, you have an unspoken understanding. "I tried to make things easier by writing my lyrics before we went into the studio, for the first time ever. Because that's what kind of led the band to grind to a halt in the first place. "It was taking me so long, I just felt embarrassed that the rest of the band were hanging around waiting for me to get my finger out." Article continues below The group split in 2002 but got back together for occasional live performances including headlining Wireless Festival in Hyde Park and playing at Glastonbury in 2011. They reunited again in 2023 for a series of UK and Ireland dates, but months before the tour was due to start bassist Steve Mackey died at the age of 56. Cocker added: "It sounds a bit crass, but Steve passed away just before our last tour and it made me realise that we only have a finite amount of time to do the things you want to do. And for Steve, it was no longer an option, but it was for us." Speaking about raising his son amid conversations about toxic masculinity he said: "Women brought me up. All the males in our family just disappeared, and that had a significant effect on me. "As for Andrew Tate, I did worry when my son first got his phone that he would encounter weird ideas about stuff. I thought, 'If I don't discuss certain subjects with him, then who will he learn from?'" The Sheffield group formed in 1978 and is currently made up of singer Cocker, keyboard player Candida Doyle, drummer Nick Banks and guitarist Mark Webber. The band struggled to find success in their early days, releasing It (1983), Freaks (1987) and Separations (1992), before finding their audience during the 1990s Britpop era with their first UK top 40 single, Do You Remember The First Time? and subsequent His 'N' Hers album, in 1994. In 1995, they gained nationwide fame with the release of the single Common People and the critically acclaimed Different Class album as well as their Glastonbury performance. They have since had five UK top 10 singles and two number one albums. Article continues below The new album More is dedicated to bassist Mackey and is due to be released on June 6.
The Guardian
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pulp: More review – anthems and rage for the next life stage
Time has been particularly kind to Pulp. As Jarvis Cocker points out on Spike Island, the lead single from their first album in 24 years, their 2002 split went largely unlamented: they had already succeeded in considerably reducing the size of their audience with 1998's claustrophobic album This Is Hardcore and 2001's Scott Walker-produced We Love Life. An ostensibly valedictory greatest hits album spent a single week in the lower reaches of the Top 75. And the year after their demise, John Harris's Britpop history The Last Party noted tartly that Pulp's music had 'rather dated'. 'The universe shrugged, then moved on,' sings Cocker, which is a perhaps more poetic reiteration of what he said at the time: the greatest hits album was 'a real silent fart' and 'nobody was that arsed, evidently'. But subsequent years significantly burnished their memory. It was frequently noted that, besides the Manic Street Preachers' A Design for Life, Common People was the only significant hit of the Britpop years that might be described as a protest song, a bulwark against the accusation that the era had nothing more substantial to offer than flag-waving and faux-gorblimey. At a time when ostensibly 'alternative' rock bands had seemed suddenly desperate for mainstream acceptance, Pulp had become huge by sticking up for outsiders and weirdos. Mis-Shapes, for example, hymned the kinds of people one suspected some of Oasis's fans would have happily thumped. They had also been quick to call time on rock's disastrous association with New Labour, releasing the scathing Cocaine Socialism a year after Tony Blair was elected. If there weren't a huge number of takers for Cocker's musical solo projects, his national treasure status seemed to grow and grow. Pulp reformed in 2011 to general rejoicing, and again in 2022, by which point they could reasonably claim to be the only major Britpop band exerting an obvious influence on current artists (clearly Sports Team and, latterly, Welly both have Pulp in their DNA) and note that their infamous flop greatest hits collection had finally gone platinum. But there's a huge difference between playing the old favourites live and making a new album. If you don't want to sully your catalogue with a photocopy of past glories, you'd better have something new to say, something the oddly equivocal tone of Spike Island and indeed the Cocker quote accompanying More – 'this is the best we can do' – seems to acknowledge. In fact, like Blur on last year's acclaimed The Ballad of Darren, Pulp have found a way to successfully apply their longstanding approach to a very different stage of life when, as Cocker puts it on Slow Jam, 'you've gone from all you that could be to all that you once were'. A man who once fantasised about cuckoldry as an act of class rage-fuelled revenge now finds himself addressing how divorce impacts on your potential to find love again on Background Noise (in a characteristic touch, this existential meditation takes place in the middle of a shopping centre). Tina effectively transposes the kind of Pulp song that ruminates on missed romantic opportunities – Babies, Disco 2000, Inside Susan – into middle-age, the frustration sharpened by the fact that it's 40 years since that particular opportunity sailed. Similarly, Cocker was always exceptionally skilled at drawing confused, youthful relationships and at making capital from the grubby mundane aspects of sex. He still is, although on Grown Ups, the relationship is depicted as taking place on a planet now out of reach, 'because the rocket doesn't have enough fuel' to get back – to youth, presumably – and on My Sex, all the grubby mundanity has taken on a pressing tone as libido dims: 'Hurry 'cos with sex, we're running out of time.' Given how strong the imprint of their frontman's voice is, it seems almost pointless to note that the contents of More sound like Pulp – if Cocker was unexpectedly recruited as lead singer of Cannibal Corpse, they'd probably sound like Pulp too – but suffice to say the music here does all the things a longstanding fan might expect. There are melodies derived from Gallic chanson, tinny electronics, rhythms that lean towards disco, sprechgesang verses that build into anthemic choruses and a lot of flourishes that recall 70s pop (there's also a surprising amount of violin redolent of long-departed member Russell Senior). More importantly, it does these things really well: the epic A Hymn of the North is as heart-rending a Scott Walker-influenced ballad as Pulp have ever recorded, while if they had released the joyous Got to Have Love as their post-Different Class comeback single in 1998, rather than Help the Aged, their commercial fortunes might have taken a different shape. More certainly isn't going to convince anyone who doesn't already like Pulp to change their mind, but then anyone who expects a reformed band's first album in nearly 25 years to do that is perhaps grappling with wildly unreasonable expectations. It's more likely that a reformed band's new album might be a placeholder, filled with songs that pad out the hits live, but provoke a rush on the bars and loos in the process. That definitely isn't the case with More. If this is the best Pulp can do, it's more than good enough.
Rhyl Journal
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Rhyl Journal
Pulp's Jarvis Cocker says his writer's block ‘led the band to grind to a halt'
The Britpop band, best known for their hit song Common People, will release their first album in over two decades, More, on June 6. The frontman, 61, said he wrote the lyrics before going into the studio to 'make things easier'. Speaking to the Big Issue, Cocker said: 'It's weird because we don't hang around with each other outside of the band any more, but I was aware of what the others were up to with various projects. But when you've made music with people for that many years, you have an unspoken understanding. 'I tried to make things easier by writing my lyrics before we went into the studio, for the first time ever. Because that's what kind of led the band to grind to a halt in the first place. 'It was taking me so long, I just felt embarrassed that the rest of the band were hanging around waiting for me to get my finger out.' The group split in 2002 but got back together for occasional live performances including headlining Wireless Festival in Hyde Park and playing at Glastonbury in 2011. They reunited again in 2023 for a series of UK and Ireland dates, but months before the tour was due to start bassist Steve Mackey died at the age of 56. Cocker added: 'It sounds a bit crass, but Steve passed away just before our last tour and it made me realise that we only have a finite amount of time to do the things you want to do. And for Steve, it was no longer an option, but it was for us.' Speaking about raising his son amid conversations about toxic masculinity he said: 'Women brought me up. All the males in our family just disappeared, and that had a significant effect on me. 'As for Andrew Tate, I did worry when my son first got his phone that he would encounter weird ideas about stuff. I thought, 'If I don't discuss certain subjects with him, then who will he learn from?'' A post shared by Pulp (@welovepulp) The Sheffield group formed in 1978 and is currently made up of singer Cocker, keyboard player Candida Doyle, drummer Nick Banks and guitarist Mark Webber. The band struggled to find success in their early days, releasing It (1983), Freaks (1987) and Separations (1992), before finding their audience during the 1990s Britpop era with their first UK top 40 single, Do You Remember The First Time? and subsequent His 'N' Hers album, in 1994. In 1995, they gained nationwide fame with the release of the single Common People and the critically acclaimed Different Class album as well as their Glastonbury performance. They have since had five UK top 10 singles and two number one albums. The new album More is dedicated to bassist Mackey and is due to be released on June 6.
South Wales Argus
a day ago
- Entertainment
- South Wales Argus
Pulp's Jarvis Cocker says his writer's block ‘led the band to grind to a halt'
The Britpop band, best known for their hit song Common People, will release their first album in over two decades, More, on June 6. The frontman, 61, said he wrote the lyrics before going into the studio to 'make things easier'. Speaking to the Big Issue, Cocker said: 'It's weird because we don't hang around with each other outside of the band any more, but I was aware of what the others were up to with various projects. But when you've made music with people for that many years, you have an unspoken understanding. 'I tried to make things easier by writing my lyrics before we went into the studio, for the first time ever. Because that's what kind of led the band to grind to a halt in the first place. 'It was taking me so long, I just felt embarrassed that the rest of the band were hanging around waiting for me to get my finger out.' The group split in 2002 but got back together for occasional live performances including headlining Wireless Festival in Hyde Park and playing at Glastonbury in 2011. Jarvis Cocker on stage at Finsbury Park in London (Victoria Jones/PA) They reunited again in 2023 for a series of UK and Ireland dates, but months before the tour was due to start bassist Steve Mackey died at the age of 56. Cocker added: 'It sounds a bit crass, but Steve passed away just before our last tour and it made me realise that we only have a finite amount of time to do the things you want to do. And for Steve, it was no longer an option, but it was for us.' Speaking about raising his son amid conversations about toxic masculinity he said: 'Women brought me up. All the males in our family just disappeared, and that had a significant effect on me. 'As for Andrew Tate, I did worry when my son first got his phone that he would encounter weird ideas about stuff. I thought, 'If I don't discuss certain subjects with him, then who will he learn from?'' The Sheffield group formed in 1978 and is currently made up of singer Cocker, keyboard player Candida Doyle, drummer Nick Banks and guitarist Mark Webber. The band struggled to find success in their early days, releasing It (1983), Freaks (1987) and Separations (1992), before finding their audience during the 1990s Britpop era with their first UK top 40 single, Do You Remember The First Time? and subsequent His 'N' Hers album, in 1994. In 1995, they gained nationwide fame with the release of the single Common People and the critically acclaimed Different Class album as well as their Glastonbury performance. They have since had five UK top 10 singles and two number one albums. The new album More is dedicated to bassist Mackey and is due to be released on June 6.
Glasgow Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
Pulp's Jarvis Cocker says his writer's block ‘led the band to grind to a halt'
The Britpop band, best known for their hit song Common People, will release their first album in over two decades, More, on June 6. The frontman, 61, said he wrote the lyrics before going into the studio to 'make things easier'. Speaking to the Big Issue, Cocker said: 'It's weird because we don't hang around with each other outside of the band any more, but I was aware of what the others were up to with various projects. But when you've made music with people for that many years, you have an unspoken understanding. 'I tried to make things easier by writing my lyrics before we went into the studio, for the first time ever. Because that's what kind of led the band to grind to a halt in the first place. 'It was taking me so long, I just felt embarrassed that the rest of the band were hanging around waiting for me to get my finger out.' The group split in 2002 but got back together for occasional live performances including headlining Wireless Festival in Hyde Park and playing at Glastonbury in 2011. Jarvis Cocker on stage at Finsbury Park in London (Victoria Jones/PA) They reunited again in 2023 for a series of UK and Ireland dates, but months before the tour was due to start bassist Steve Mackey died at the age of 56. Cocker added: 'It sounds a bit crass, but Steve passed away just before our last tour and it made me realise that we only have a finite amount of time to do the things you want to do. And for Steve, it was no longer an option, but it was for us.' Speaking about raising his son amid conversations about toxic masculinity he said: 'Women brought me up. All the males in our family just disappeared, and that had a significant effect on me. 'As for Andrew Tate, I did worry when my son first got his phone that he would encounter weird ideas about stuff. I thought, 'If I don't discuss certain subjects with him, then who will he learn from?'' The Sheffield group formed in 1978 and is currently made up of singer Cocker, keyboard player Candida Doyle, drummer Nick Banks and guitarist Mark Webber. The band struggled to find success in their early days, releasing It (1983), Freaks (1987) and Separations (1992), before finding their audience during the 1990s Britpop era with their first UK top 40 single, Do You Remember The First Time? and subsequent His 'N' Hers album, in 1994. In 1995, they gained nationwide fame with the release of the single Common People and the critically acclaimed Different Class album as well as their Glastonbury performance. They have since had five UK top 10 singles and two number one albums. The new album More is dedicated to bassist Mackey and is due to be released on June 6.
