Are we in danger of turning this into an "Unpopular Blur Opinions (off-topic)" thread?

I am probably in a minority but I think that those short instrumentals that are often scattered throughout their albums add absolutely nothing.

I prefer the version of "Far Out" that appeared on the album. I vaguely remember Damon saying it was "too Pink Floyd" or something to be any longer.

What was the original "Modern Life is Rubbish" tracklist?

lipglossed wrote:

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Eamonn wrote:

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I like Parklife the album, but I don't think it's got the emotional, lyrical or even musical range of Different Class which is just a smarter pop record.

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 Couldn't agree more.

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Agreed too. 

I don't think Little Girl is that good.

[ducks for cover]

Not a fan of Running The World, for similar reasons to not being a fan of Cocaine Socialism. Just too on the nose and horribly crass with it. I mean, I agreed the fuck out of it but don't love it like most others appear to. I thought it was a bit beneath him.

joemc5054 wrote:

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lipglossed wrote:

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I don't think Little Girl is that good.

[ducks for cover]

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 [throws rotten tomato] 

Its a lovely little ditty. I suppose i havent really got any unpopular Pulp opinions apart from that i prefer Hardcore, HnH, Intro and Separations to Different Class.

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 I dont think that is such an unpopular opinion as I tend to agree.  And prefer We Love Life on the whole.  Different Class is a great LP, but I dont listen to it as much as the other five. 

I vaguely remember someone mentioning that they thought the real Pulp ended at Auto and the last reunion was more like an afterthought. I agreed with this. However, this reunion feels like Pulp are really back with us and on top form. Maybe this is because I couldn't attend any of the previous reunion shows due to personal reasons but there's certainly a different vibe this time. I'm sure.

Seductive Barry is a stupid name for a song, they should've called it Love Scenes or Sex Symbols.

Eamonn wrote:

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Yep, it's definitely "clever working title, crap final name".

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 You'd really think that it's one of the things they'd have changed, having had an extra winter to work on the album! One of the quirks of Hardcore you can never quite iron out. It's a bit like having Maxwell's Silver Hammer on there, but if the song were itself really sophisticated and just had a silly name.

Sturdy wrote:

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F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E. is a bit boring, musically underdeveloped with rather trite lyrics that aren't nearly as profound as they wish they were.

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 Wowzers. Cat among the pigeons there.

TBH, it's very lyrically similar to Something Changed - they're both all "wow, I'm in love - this is a surprise! - wasn't expecting this - fancy that, eh?"

I enjoy the drum riff, and I think it was absolutely incredible in Glasgow, the strings turning it into a monstrous Bittersweet Symphony. I don't think the lyrics think they're particularly profound, and I do really like some of them ("I see flashes of the ... and the... "etc, also "I've got that taste in my mouth again") - but songs where you're spelling out words with letters, it's a little bit cheap.

I must confess, I love and admire FEELING yet there's also a slight feeling that it leaves me cold, it worms its way into my brain but it doesn't satisfy me as much as I think it will when I press play. A bit of empty space, a little cold air drifting around the sonic space. Live it's amazing, on the record I think it's the song that suffers most from Chris Thomas's production. I wonder how it'd be if it were Bullerised.

My Legendary Girlfriend holds my interest all the way through, and Happy Endings breaks up the album well, but otherwise... yeah, I'm perhaps inclined to agree with you. Just a bit too long, sadly.

Can I be really controversial and say that I really like Something Changed, it was a lovely change-of-tack after the previous Different Class singles, and it's no less artistically strong a statement than F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.?

They got a gentle, subtly string-driven love song with outrageously perfect lyrics into the Top 10, and I know that their stock was high at the time, but it's still a bit of a miracle that the song has had the staying power that it has had. In the top five Pulp songs on streaming (beating out Sorted, Mis-Shapes, Hardcore, Underwear), folk play it at their weddings, it might be mawkish or syrupy for some but Pulp have always had ballads to rival the disco-pop and glam-stomp.

Even Russell - its hater-in-chief - said that when they went back to it in 2011, he liked it a lot more than he remembered. Yes, perhaps releasing F.E.E.LI.N.G. or Mile End would've been a bigger statement, but really that's the fault of the album that followed it, its delays and choice of singles. As a kiss-off to Pulp's imperial era, it's pretty good. Something Changed is a very polished pop song, it has the first solo Mark wrote for Pulp on his own, it has an excellent video, it balances out the other singles.

For me, the question mark hangs over Sorted for E's and Wizz. I guess it's a lost moment in time that I wasn't there for - maybe you had to be there, with rave culture and whatnot - but the song is a bit dated, isn't it? I know it kicked up controversy, and there's no such thing as bad promotion, but then it was a harmful media circus for the bandmembers, what with drug setups and stuff like that. Someone over on the swapping out singles thread suggested that Sorted would've done better on its own, but I'm not so sure. Mis-Shapes is the stronger song.

Anyway, the double A-side was probably the best thing Pulp could've done at the time. But if only they hadn't thrown Underwear away - it and Mis-Shapes as a double-A could've been just the ticket for that #1 spot.