Setlist prediction...

I Spy
Babies
Spike Island
Something Changed
Slow Jam
Sorted for E's and Wizz
Disco 2000
Partial Eclipse
This Is Hardcore
Got to Have Love
Do You Remember the First Time?
Sunrise
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Farmer's Market
Underwear
Common People
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More song - potentially rotating through several options
Razz/Riders/Lipgloss/OU/Mis-Shapes/Acrylic/Monday Morning/Glory Days/BCV/etc/etc/could be anything really
A Sunset / Hymn of the North

Hoping for a little more variety than that though tbh - not that bothered about Sorted, Babies or Underwear if there's the likes of Seconds on the table!

I am going to London on 13th June. I had to download some o2 app to view my tickets but nothing is showing. Is anyone else having this problem?

I'm trying to figure out what I paid a booking fee for 

lipglossed wrote:

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I honestly think they might start rotating between Babies and First Time, or Sorted and FEELING, to free up setlist space!

 

Although maybe FEELING's done for anyway. GTHL is nailed on, and that'd mean two songs that both spell the word 'love'.

 

Weeds is probably out. Pink Glove I hope stays at least rotationally. Like a Friend I'd also miss. But it's a necessary sacrifice - can't have everything!

-- Edited by lipglossed on Thursday 29th of May 2025 03:00:04 PM

-- Edited by lipglossed on Thursday 29th of May 2025 03:00:39 PM

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 Love the song on the album but I'd happily never hear Weeds II live again.  Mind you that's the perfect time to go for a wee

nightsonthetown wrote:

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Im so happy to hear youll be queueing Pip! Cant wait to chat in the Birmingham and Manchester queues!

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 And me, it's been too long! Looking forward to hearing tales of your travels :)

@Eamon - but it's nice to dream eh!!   I don't believe for a moment that Deep Fried would be played, but would be great to hear.  If we're going for a what would be a realistic arena gig set list, then we might as well just go for the IOW festival set list.  But where would the fun in that be!?

I hope so and from what Mark has hinted at, and the choice of songs played at the Beeb, fingers-crossed that will happen.

It would be all too easy to go the other way. Apologetically play half the new album and make-up for it with most of Different Class and the obvious other singles.

****, my memory is better than i thought: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/pulp/2001/octagon-centre-sheffield-england-2bd16c22.html

lipglossed wrote:

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Eamonn wrote:

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OU really should be a staple. It's fun, immediate (even those who don't know it dance along at the outro wig-out) and it's not too long.

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 Lipgloss is the one that really should be a staple especially as it's one of the more well-known Pulp songs. Mystifying it doesn't get more plays...

OU is great, though, and also welcome although if I can't have Lipgloss, I'm taking Monday Morning over OU.

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I prefer Lipgloss to OU too, and it's really been terribly under-represented in Pulp sets since 1995.

The reason I say OU should be a staple is not because the crowd will know it but that it's so easy to get into. That violin riff is infectious and the Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah!'s carry the last half of the song with a rhythm that is impossible to ignore. And since Jarvis has invented a participatory element for the crowd "You half go 'O' - the other half go 'U'", it's a real easy win for an obscurity but also a respectful nod to the single that really started Pulp's imperial era.

Violin Thing wrote:

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Wonder if the support money has gone on paying the large amount of supplementary band?

My O2 ones for London are on the app, just FYI.

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Mine still aren't. Of course, they don't make it easy to speak to a real person so I used their chatbot. It said to wait until 3 working days of the event before contacting them. 

Dublin to start a bit later at 8.30 due to the support. Don't gigs have to be over by a certain time nowadays? Hoping it's the same full set at Dublin. I did think 6.30 doors sounded very early.
And an interval. I see people joking about a raffle...I'd bloody love a raffle. Raffle off a bit of merchandise

So what are the predictions? The whole of the new album and then hits. A performance of 2 halves

Ian wrote:

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Violin Thing wrote:

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Wonder if the support money has gone on paying the large amount of supplementary band?

My O2 ones for London are on the app, just FYI.

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Mine still aren't. Of course, they don't make it easy to speak to a real person so I used their chatbot. It said to wait until 3 working days of the event before contacting them. 

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I got a notification from Co-op Live this morning, something about keeping my tickets safe, so I tried to open the app, which it insists you have to use, to see if this meant my tickets had appeared and it just crashes every time I try to open it now. Just uninstalled and reinstalled it and it's currently frozen trying to connect to Ticketmaster or something. 1.1* on the app store with many tales of woe, so not encouraging. Co-op Live were selling the tickets through Gigs and Tours, is that all part of the Ticketmaster empire now?

On a more positive note, I had a nice cycle down to Rough Trade this morning to pick up my album: blue and white marble, very pretty

Have one spare standing ticket for Friday at the 02. Send me a message if interested. Was £83.50 and will transfer on AXS.

As if they nearly played

Spoiler

59 Lyndhurst Grove

Hard luck guys.

They should have a rest now, shouldn't they? They'll have learned from past mistakes. Mark and Candida look like they're having a great time in the live clips, but both are hinting they want to stop (for a bit at least). Would be good of them to play Australia for the fans out there, if there's enough demand, and surely there's still enough of a following in France and Japan for dates there in 2026.

That 'Patchwork' rumour's still going around - unless that's been refuted now?

legohairjordan wrote:

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Me and my friend will be in Manchester for the final stop of the tour, definitely up for a meet up and a few drinks if anyone on here fancies!

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 Sorry, I'm pretty unlikely to be able to be friendly this time, which is a shame. We enjoyed meeting up with Eamonn and lipglossed in Brid. I'll have my husband with me and my mum went into hospital in York today, so who knows what back and forth we may be up to, assuming we make it at all.  

Eamonn wrote:

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Bootlegs aren't really a thing anymore but someone must be recording all the audio of these gigs. Ian's FEELING CALLED LIVE site demands new content!

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 RAISE YOUR HORNS on YouTube has shared the whole show on their channel across three videos, wouldn't be too difficult to strip & stitch together the audio.

Eamonn wrote:

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Bootlegs aren't really a thing anymore but someone must be recording all the audio of these gigs. Ian's FEELING CALLED LIVE site demands new content!

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I'm happy to upload anything that comes my way. I have always found ripping from YouTube a bit hit and miss and although there are some people who prefer the audio to be in a lossless format, I think that it's more important to preserve it in case it is removed from YouTube. 

Ian wrote:

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A couple of reflections on the tour:

The band seem to have retained (regained?) the energy that they had in the 1990s. This year certainly feels like the 1990s "Pulpmania" period is happening all over again although it feels very fresh rather than just a rehash of past glories.

The set is more varied compared to last time and I think that the song choice thing is a good idea. Hopefully it will carry on. It is great to hear some of the new songs being performed, "Spike Island" is a great opener and "Grown-ups" comes across better live. Hopefully some others such as "My Sex" and "Hymn of the North" will make appearances soon.

My only criticism is that, from a "been there, done that" perspective, I think that they could drop a couple of bigger hits in favour of others. For example, "Sorted For E's and Wizz" and "Babies" don't appeal to me as live songs anymore as I have heard them too many times. Perhaps songs like "Lipgloss" and "Bad Cover Version" could become regulars, they were still hits after all. "Common People" still rocks live though.

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Agree with all of this. I think 'Babies' is never leaving the setlist, but god I'd love it if they ditched 'Sorted'. There's just so many more interesting songs! But that'll never happen - it's part of their joint highest-charting single. I can see why they keep it:

1) it's a setlist-balancing 'slow' song, but still well-known enough to get casual fans on their feet in their seats, so a win-win
2) the set lighting is impressive and the Elysians clearly have fun, waving rattles and blowing whistles - there's a character to the performance
3) it segues really nicely into the next track - 'What if you never come down?' is an excellent ending in that track
4) all in all it's just an 'easier' one really

I have to admit though, I'd happily swap it for anything else off the Different Class album. 

I obviously agree about 'Lipgloss' too, agh, it really should be a live staple, there's no excuse! One of their more iconic hits, and now that they're playing 'Help the Aged', it's even more conspicuous by its absence, as probably the one other really well-known song - one of the verbal shorthands for Pulp that gets used in press articles - that they don't do. (I suppose also 'Underwear' seeing as it was, until More came out, #5 on streaming, but they've already played that umpteen times in recent years, while 'Lipgloss' has only been done twice - I'm so glad I was centre barrier for it in Edinburgh, I can die happy now!). As for 'Bad Cover Version', well, I love it but I'd love for more of the We Love Life album to be played in general, too! 'The Trees', 'The Birds in Your Garden', 'I Love Life', 'Minnie Timperley' - all wonderful songs that I doubt we'll get live ever again...

I am very happy they've shaken up the setlist. And I'm fortunate that I was at the three gigs where they revived songs - I got 'Seconds', 'Party Hard', and '59 Lyndhurst Grove', jammy bastard that I am! Six Pulp gigs I've been to now and I've been very fortunate with the luck of the draw when it's come to setlist variation.

The set they've played lately has a very strong spine to it. 'Help the Aged' and 'Acrylic Afternoons' are both INCREDIBLY welcome changes - two real live highlights, just in the performance, the quality of the sound, they're both HUGE tunes. 'Acrylic' gets the crowd going as much as 'First Time' and 'Babies'. Barrier were bouncing up and down like utter lemons, you would've thought it was a rave!

'OU' and 'The Fear' are slightly lower down my list of Pulp faves but you can't deny the sensational Pulp performance, they both go off so hard live. 'Mis-Shapes' has also made itself really, really essential - it was such a highlight of the London gigs, although it also seems to be one where the non-mis-shapes churn quite a lot - some of my mates said they'd thought they were in the music video what with the amount of Britpop Boys jostling them about!

They've been touring for two years and the new regulars sound so incredible, they're really so so good - this is clearly a highly confident Pulp, properly monstering these songs. But maybe it's just a teensy bit of a shame that the setlist rotation couldn't have started slightly earlier, because then the likes of 'I Spy' and 'Weeds' and 'Like a Friend' would've still felt so fresh and special. I remember being so happily surprised at Bridlington that they'd uncovered so many treasures, it seemed like a very adventurous setlist at the time, 'Glory Days' had been such a treat in particular. They could've mixed things up a little earlier I suppose? We know from the Mojo CD that they were turning out an exceptional 'Trees' back then, for example.

But if they were writing new songs at the time, then it kind of explains it, doesn't it? With hindsight, we now know: they were preoccupied. If you're working out 'My Sex' or 'Background Noise', you're probably not going to go and focus your efforts on, say, rehearsing and relearning 'She's a Lady'. All the same, if Jarvis had bitten the bullet and mixed in some less certain choices, instead of, like, very occasionally they'll do 'Joyriders' or 'OU', then there'd have been a lot less insufferable moaning, from me at least!

I mean, it's all worth it to hear 'Seconds'. Bloody hell.

It's interesting that the three "main" albums each contain a problem child of three key singles.

Lipgloss seems to be a hard song for them to nail live - only ever played at Brixton during the 2011/12 reunion and once in Chile a year later when the set was very varied at non-festival shows. It needed Mark, Leo Abrahams and our Hawley to pull it off at the Brixton show. And as mentioned, only once revived this time round. A real shame.

Misshapes was banished for years due to the band not feeling it anymore after '96, ridiculously relegated on Hits for Underwear. Restored in 2011 but not a staple in the way some of its less successful siblings were.

Help The Aged was their last hit. It did feature at a handful of stand-alone shows towards the last hurrah of the 2011-2012 reunion but it was never on the Festival A-List. And of course totally ignored last year.

I get that each artist has their faves and goes off some of the hits but the above three songs are all really key tracks from their respective eras including one that got to number two (Misshapes) and their last ever top ten single ('Aged - which, I repeat myself, but it would have probably have gone top three if they hadn't restricted themselves to a 1CD single release at a time when every artist took advantage of multi-fornatting to bring our 2CD singles).

Just seems a bit of a shame that these aren't stalwarts as it feels logical plus, importantly, they're all bangers.

Eamonn wrote:

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I get that each artist has their faves and goes off some of the hits but the above three songs are all really key tracks from their respective eras including one that got to number two (Misshapes) and their last ever top ten single ('Aged - which, I repeat myself, but it would have probably have gone top three if they hadn't restricted themselves to a 1CD single release at a time when every artist took advantage of multi-fornatting to bring our 2CD singles).

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Not only that, but there was very little promotion for it. I vaguely remember Jarvis saying that he wanted to ease back into things by simply putting a single on the shelves. It obviously got a lot of radio and TV play but the promotion certainly seemed about as "in your face" as it was for "Something Changed" i.e. not very.

Another thing, and I'm certainly not suggesting that Pulp would attempt to cash in on a tragedy, but the whole music scene seemed to be very downbeat following the death of Princess Diana which is when this single was released (about 8 weeks after). It was quite obvious that they weren't going to release anything else at that point as the album wasn't finished but "Help the Aged" certainly fit into the world around it at the time. 

I have just realised that this is the first time I saw them play "Acrylic Afternoons" and I agree with the above comments that it was fantastic.

Rather embarrassingly, I forgot about "Glory Days". The 2023/4 version was fantastic. 

I agree with the idea of rotating certain hits. Not sure if the choice thing would work with them as they would likely get similar reactions but only having to hear either "Babies" or "Do You Remember the First Time?" for example would be great as it means something else could be played. I also find "A Sunset" to be a rather weak closer so would bring it forward and finish on "Common People". That would keep more people in their seats until the end. 

Perhaps the set could be something like:

Spike Island
Grown Ups
Slow Jam
Sorted for E's & Wizz or Mis-Shapes
Disco 2000 or Party Hard
F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.
Tina
Help the Aged or Bad Cover Version
Farmers Market
This Is Hardcore
Sunrise

Interval

Something Changed (acoustic)
The Fear
O.U. (Gone, Gone) or Lipgloss 
Choice
Acrylic Afternoons
Do You Remember the First Time? or Babies
Background Noise
Got to Have Love
Glory Days
A Sunset

Common People