Eamonn wrote:

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I don't think they felt like playing the (pop) game anymore and that seeped into the writing. And just as well. Who wanted an album of songs trying to capture some of Different Class' razzmatazz like You Are The One or Street Operator? They're pretty reductive and diminishing returns sets in quickly based on their examples.

Unlike Radiohead or The Verve, Pulp had boxed themselves in as a witty pop band with hooks and a funny-looking front man with quips and soundbites that were lapped-up by light-entertainment media.
Jarvis was never going to be taken seriously as a "proper" rock star like Yorke or Ashcroft despite This Is Hardcore (the song) being as good and as challenging as anything on OK Computer or Urban Hymns.

I'm not surprised Island struggled managing Pulp commercially in the last five years of their relationship together. Bloody hard to pin down. I saw the new Sparks doc in the cinema last week (highly recommended) and I got a similar vibe. Quirky popsters will quickly outlive that tag if they have brains and ambition. It makes them hit and miss when it comes to labels getting a return on them. In the end you belligerently go your own way like Sparks (easier for them as there are only two in the 'group') or you get disenchanted by the whole thing and give-up (like Pulp, unfortunately for us).

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This. All of this. Very well put indeed.

They were hard to pin down post-DC because, in part, I don't think they were quite sure what they wanted to be themselves. The only band who really nailed what Pulp should've been able to achieve (although I don't like them as much) was Blur. They somehow managed to go wherever they wanted on their albums from 1997 onwards, including much more out-there stuff than Pulp ever did, but still sell by the bucketload and get all over the radio. I guess they cracked that formula of having one or two absolutely massive hits per album, somehow without selling out, which meant no one could complaint about the rest of the record!

Jarvis in 2009, looking back: 

We were never millionaires. We did very well with Pulp, but the money was (and very rarely so) split between all six members of the band. We were all friends that was always how we were going to split it.

At the height of Pulp, we were about to go out on a big tour and Island Records sent me along to a doctor because they wanted to get me insured in case I died of a drugs overdose or something. I asked if I was also insured as me and they said no, this insurance was them protecting their investment.

I had become a commodity, a cash cow for the label. When it got to that stage, I just thought fuck it. Pulp had been completely tied up with who I was as a person. I hated the idea that something I had invented and nurtured along with my friends this little thing I had which was precious to me that it had become a product.

I took a perverse enjoyment in fucking it up, in spending close to a million pounds on a record ( This Is Hardcore) which was very unpopular and a further quarter of a million pounds on a video for a song which was seven minutes long and never got played on the radio.