Was listening to the Bandsplain podcast and Yasi reports this as something that actually took place....of course, this obviously didn't happen as we all must know - Common People and Underwear were played in 1994, Pencil Skirt and Monday Morning materialised in early 1995, plus Glastonbury introduced Disco 2000, Sorted, Mis-Shapes and we got Live Bed Show (I WAS THERE OMG) at Leeds just a few weeks later. Something Changed was an old song and may have been rewritten extensively, but it certainly wasn't some new jam that they had to knock into shape, so they must have known what to do with it by then, I'd reckon... So obviously if Jarvis had to do some kind of writing binge to finish the album, it would presumably involve the remaining songs, which would still be a fair amount of work, but isn't it a bit odd it's getting reported that he wrote the entire album this way? How has this passed into folklore anyway?
-- Edited by PaulTMA on Friday 23rd of May 2025 09:03:30 AM
Because it makes a good story. Even in current interviews, Jarvis is mentioning Common People being a hit with no album ready and having to quickly write it which is not totally accurate as your say - they had recorded half of it by then.
But they did demo the second half of the record when CP was in the charts - which I assume is when he wrote the lyrics over a couple of nights to all those songs plus some of the B-Sides and songs that didn't come out until the deluxe edition.
I imagine the music had been written for that batch already but they were waiting for Jarvis to come up with the words and vocal melodies (which he probably was humming and la-lahing in rehearsals - see the clip on the Hits DVD of him doing that on Have You Seen Her Lately on the HisNHers sessions clip).
I seem to remember a bit in the interview they did with Steve Lamacq in 2011: Lamacq suggest to Jarvis that he spent all night writing lyrics the week before Glastonbury in his mum's kitchen with a bottle of whisky and he replied "It was my sister's kitchen and it was brandy". As Eamonn points out, that is clearly not all the lyrics, but presumably the songs that were debuted there. I've even heard tales that he was still scribbling away in the tent at Glastonbury.
__________________
We'll use the one thing we've got more of, that's our minds.
Every band invent their own history and they need stuff to say in interviews that's not ordinary. So Jarvis probably wrote a couple of new lines, edited some, and it became "i wrote all the lyrics in 48h"
The following songs are the ones that were demoed in Sheffield in the week of 5th-12th June 1995:
Mis-Shapes Sorted for E's & Wizz Something Changed F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E. Disco 2000 Live Bed Show I Spy Ansaphone Paula Don't Lose It Catcliffe Shakedown We Can Dance Again
So I think the essence of the story is that he wrote the lyrics to all those over a couple of nights that week. So seven songs from Different Class (the rest having been written earlier), plus five extras.
He's said that he already had a few fragments and ideas as they'd been working up the songs before that. So it was maybe more a case of knocking it all together and finalising things rather than doing it ALL from scratch.
We Can Dance Again of course existed before that, but the lyrics from the earlier live version are pretty different to the demo. As for Something Changed, I know it's based on a much earlier song but those are NOT lyrics from 1983.
So yeah, I think the story is essentially plausible, even if it's been embellished a bit over the years.
__________________
"Yes I saw her in the chip shop / so I said get yer top off"
I seem to remember a bit in the interview they did with Steve Lamacq in 2011: Lamacq suggest to Jarvis that he spent all night writing lyrics the week before Glastonbury in his mum's kitchen with a bottle of whisky and he replied "It was my sister's kitchen and it was brandy".
I've always liked the anecdote because it implies that he thought to include in I Spy the line "drinking your brandy" because he was literally drinking brandy at the time.
