ArrGee wrote:

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Stephen wrote:

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I think Grown Ups, Tina and Got To Have Love are as good as anything that Pulp have done

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Got To Have Love definitely is.  Every time I hear it is sounds better. And, dare I say it, was the best song in the set at Glastonbury.   There are some good songs on the LP, but Got To Have Love is great.  Had it been released in 1990s, it would have been #1 (assuming the likes of Robson & Jerome and Simply Red didnt banjax it).

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For me it was the song that i was waiting for the most. Of course it could never be as huge as it is in my mind after 20 years or so of patience. And that shows how good that album is, coz it's great but is far from being my favorite.

I guess they did not release this (or We Can Dance Again) to depart from the Different Class sound. And also because of the sample. Don't think it would have been well received back then to have a song with a main chorus lifted from another song. 

Eamonn wrote:

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Why not? Mobile was doing it all the time back then...

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Moby ? Not the same crowd. Not the same music. Not britpop (if not Moby, i never heard about Mobile sorry) 

Remember the Don't Look Back in Anger intro, which is to some a ripp off Imagine (which it is not  ) and it became  Don't Look Back in Anger = 100% Imagine in people's mind. It generated a lot of bad press. 

I can see the headlines in 1999, when everyone was trying to shoot britpop bands, about a band trying to recreate the success of Common People or Disco 2000 but not finding their own chorus and lifting it from another band. 

-- Edited by andy on Sunday 29th of June 2025 12:05:04 PM

Eamonn wrote:

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Yes, I meant Moby, not Mobile, but my mobile phone autocorrected to mobile.

I dunno...GTHL is a fairly direct, stomping tune. Just like DLBIAnger is a brilliant anthem so I'm not sure any criticism would stop it from being popular.

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Well Moby was kind of in the "electronic" music side of things, and samples are well accepted in that genre, they're one of the root of the genre even. It then got ridiculous in the 00s by the way. 

In the Britpop era that put songwriters on a pedestal, I bet it could have raised some concerns. Maybe not. But I'm sure there was some discussions within the band about that. I know i would have, but i'm not Pulp !  

Eamonn wrote:

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Yes, I meant Moby, not Mobile, but my mobile phone autocorrected to mobile.

I dunno...GTHL is a fairly direct, stomping tune. Just like DLBIAnger is a brilliant anthem so I'm not sure any criticism would stop it from being popular.

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 Yes.  Imagine a world where PULP. released Got To Have Love as a single rather than the more challenging Help The Aged or This Is Hardcore.  Aside from the "jerking off inside someone else" (which would have been sanitised) it is pretty life-affirming. It would have been played on the hour every hour. Blur's Song 2 was riding high at a similar time. 

FWIW, I don't think it sounds like it was from the Different Class era.  Pulpwiki suggests the first instrumental recording was in 1999, but was the song conceived of earlier?

lipglossed wrote:

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GTHL would've fitted neatly onto Different Class, perhaps where Monday Morning is (not that I'd want to lose Monday Morning, which is one of my favourites from that record). But as a more sample-heavy song, it still is more tellingly post-DC, I think.

-- Edited by lipglossed on Sunday 29th of June 2025 02:22:33 PM

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Agreed. That's kinda my view on this. Britpop was on the way over, and other way of making music were "acceptable" for the band. This is Harcore sample, and then you got Jarvis on his solo album using the backing track of "Crimson and Clover" (not sampling i think though) for Black Magic. Times changed after This Is Hardcore, But I doubt they would have gotten away with it in 95 or 96. 

andy wrote:

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ArrGee wrote:

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andy wrote:

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ArrGee wrote:

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Stephen wrote:

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I think Grown Ups, Tina and Got To Have Love are as good as anything that Pulp have done

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Got To Have Love definitely is.  Every time I hear it is sounds better. And, dare I say it, was the best song in the set at Glastonbury.   There are some good songs on the LP, but Got To Have Love is great.  Had it been released in 1990s, it would have been #1 (assuming the likes of Robson & Jerome and Simply Red didnt banjax it).

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For me it was the song that i was waiting for the most. Of course it could never be as huge as it is in my mind after 20 years or so of patience. And that shows how good that album is, coz it's great but is far from being my favorite.

 

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Luckily, I pay no attention to unreleased songs   Bowie's Tired of My Life and King of The City were interesting early recordings of what became It's No Game and Ashes to Ashes but I'm glad I never knew they existed prior to the Scary Monsters LP.  Lots of artists have songs that never were really worked on that they return to and re-record in a very different way.  I do suspect PULP. have a lot from the late 20th/early 21st century that hopefully will come to light.    Besides, there is still a 30th anniversary of Different Class that needs releasing.

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 you are strong  cant think i would have waited all those year without listening to those demos heavily. Some that might never be released. When i love a band, i wanna hear everything, even the bad demos. I like how bands build their sound. 

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 Well, neither of them saw the light of day before 1980, so it wasn't an option.  Even if there were demos out there they would have been impossible to source. I was only 16 when Scary Monsters was released in 1980 and as far as I know King of The City only surfaced in 2022.   

So now we've had the album for a couple of months, some of my opinions have changed albeit slightly. I'm not normally one to rate songs out of 10 but here we go:

Spike Island (9) - solid enough opener and comeback single. I am not sure what could be done to improve on it to be honest

Tina (7) - I like the arrangement and backing vocals. It also sits well alongside 1990s Pulp

Grown Ups (7) - without being told in advance, we would not know that this was a recycled song from 1997, it fits in really well on the album. 

Slow Jam (9) - this is the one I was least looking forward to as I never really rated the live Jarv Is versions. The part where it goes boom in the middle is a particular highlight.

Farmers Market (8) - as a fan of Scott Walker, I was always going to rate this one highly

My Sex (6) - I really like the bulk of the song and it gains bonus points for sounding like "The Professional". I am still not a fan of the chanting towards the end, it would have scored higher otherwise.

Got to Have Love (9) - Pulp's chartstorming 2001 comeback single sounds very fresh in this context

Background Noise (8) - I was a bit unsure of this at first because it had the potential to be a pop song but they slowed it down. However, I think this is the song that has grown on me most

Partial Eclipse (10) - this was immediately my favourite song from the album and has remained as such 

Hymn of the North (7) - I really like it but I think that it falls a little short of its full potential. It could have been as big as "This is Hardcore" and the short bursts of discordant music in the middle could have been fleshed out

A Sunset (4) - nice song but really doesn't do much for me. It hasn't grown on me at all. 

Overall, I would say that the album is a solid 8/10, definitely up there with their best.

That's why I'm not a fan of giving marks out of 10. 4 roughly translates to "it's alright but nothing remarkable for me". 

On "This is Hardcore", "Seductive Barry" would be a 9 and "A Little Soul" a 1. Please feel free to block me