The famous Pitchfork Magazine has released a top 200 list of tracks (or more like bands since a band could just feature once on the list) from the 90's. Pulp is on place 2. Second place!
This Is Hardcore came 16th in their recent Best Music Videos of the 90's feature.
Pulp excel as video artists when they remove themselves from the equation. "Disco 2000", "Bad Cover Version", and "A Little Soul" all either exclude the group from the action or needle them. In the "Mis-Shapes" clip, Jarvis Cocker gets mileage out of tormenting himself as a townie doppelganger. And although the group is front and center in "Babies", the real star is the way the song's narrative is played out with the video's clip-art look.
In "This Is Hardcore", everyone is a character and the impressive set piece references classic film genres like detective noir, Sirkian melodrama, suspense, and Busby Berkeley musicals. (The song itself is about another type of film-- homemade porn.) Lush, seedy, dramatic...the video captures all the artifice and scale of the cinema but suggests that when the cameras are turned off and we stop using lust or drama as a costume, the emotions we're left with are dark and empty.