Pulp’s ‘Different Class’ Turns 20: a look back at one of Brit-pop’s best albums  on its 20th anniversary-from a band who came late to the party. 

Although I grew up in Texas, I’ve been an anglophile as long as I can remember-always fascinated by life across the pond.

Music fueled that fire: high school started my obsession with UK bands like The Cult, Depeche Mode, and countless others. So it was only logical I would get sucked into the Brit-pop vortex.

But while I was neutral on Blur and Oasis and their silly feud, my faves were the underdogs: the melodramatic Suede, and Pulp, a group that fused self-deprecating humor with Glam/Electro hooks in smashing fashion.

My first exposure to Pulp (besides seeing them on the cover of imported British music magazines) was their electrifying performance of Common People on The Late Show With David Letterman.

I grabbed their album Different Class (which celebrates its 20th anniversary on October 30th) the next day, and I was transported to a modern Dickensian world bogged down in class struggle while its characters keep defiant stiff upper lips.

Pulp were treated like an overnight success, but they had slogged it out far longer than their contemporaries. Way longer. Like 1978 longer.

And Different Class spoke volumes about that struggle, as well as their upbringing in the working class town of Sheffield where you could get your ass kicked just for being different.

Opening track Mis-Shapes makes their misfit struggle palpable:

Mis-shapes, mistakes, misfits,
We’d like to go to town but we can’t risk it, oh
’cause they just want to keep us out.
You could end up with a smack in the mouth
Just for standing out, Oh really.

But never the defeatist, he lays out his plans for world domination.

We’re coming out of the side-lines.
Just put your hands up, it’s a raid yeah.
We want your homes,
We want your lives,
We want the things you won’t allow us.
We won’t use guns,
We won’t use bombs,
We’ll use the one thing we’ve got more of, that’s our minds.

Common People expanded on this idea, hitting on some cosmic nerve that made it a mega-hit. Fueled by a catchy keyboard riff that sped up every verse, the frontman railed against rich folks slumming to feel more authentic.

But given that sentiment is coming from a college girl who came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge…who just smiled and held my hand- his diatribe is likely directed inwards so as not to spoil his romantic chances:

You’ll never live like common people,
You’ll never do whatever common people do,
You’ll never fail like common people,
You’ll never watch your life slide out of view,
And dance and drink and screw,
Because there’s nothing else to do.

The lyrics cut like a scalpel, proving Cocker was the most brilliant wordsmith since Morrissey, and the song is one of the best chill-inducing rock anthems of the 90’s-or any decade.

The band’s sense of mischievousness also reared its head on Disco 2000, which stole the guitar riff from the cheese-tactic 1982 hit Gloria. But somehow it fit for a tune where Cocker gets stuck in the “Friend Zone” to a (real-life) unrequited crush:

Well we were born within one hour of each other. Our mothers said we could be sister and brother. Your name is Deborah. Deborah. It never suited ya.

Cocker became a rockstar Lothario with his newfound fame, but he never forgot those days of frustrated adolescence, making him a hero to awkward adolescents and twenty-seomthings the world over.

The dynamic Underwear is a brilliant example, where an emasculated Cocker fantasizes about spying on a woman who spurned his affections, even if she’s with another man.

I couldn’t stop it now, there’s no way to get out
He’s standing far too near and how the hell did you get here?
Semi-naked in somebody else’s room
I’d give my whole life to see it
Just you, stood there only in your underwear

Like most rock wordsmiths, sex and romance are Cocker’s primary lyrical inspirations-but no one explored them in the messy, awkward and intimate ways like he did. F.E.E.L.I.N.G. C.A.L.L.E.D. L.O.V.E.  is a prime example, where over glacial keyboards, he lays bare his fearful reaction to the first pangs of a romantic entanglement.

But this isn’t chocolate boxes and roses. 
It’s dirtier than that, like some small animal that only comes out at night….
It doesn’t make no sense no. It’s not convenient no. 
It doesn’t fit my plans no. 
It’s something I don’t understand oh. 

Cocker’s vocal delivery and lyrical genius often unfairly overshadow the musicianship of his former band, so let’s give credit where its due. As enjoyable as his solo efforts are, there’s a magic to the Pulp sound that’s irreplaceable.

Their sound is unique in that most members were multi-instrumentalists. Cocker shared guitar duties with Steve Webber and Russell Senior. And Senior provided the band’s most unique element, an aggressive electric violin-which cut through Common People in grand fashion.

Keyboardist Candida Doyle deserves credit for the unusual textures that color the band’s sound: she employed unique tonalities that gave each song a cinematic quality on tracks like Bar Italia and the indie wedding classic  Something Changed.

Since the band showed up late to the Brit-pop party, its only proper that they address it on Sorted For E’s and Wizz, where they feel numb and indifferent to England’s 90’s rave culture-but hey, if everyone else was along for the ride, why not?

Oh is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel?
Or just 20, 000 people standing in a field.
And I don’t quite understand just what this feeling is.
But that’s okay ’cause we’re all sorted out for E’s and wizz.
And tell me when the spaceship lands ’cause all this has just got to mean something.

Different Class’s UK success let the band imbibe in the rock star excess that had eluded them for so long. They also felt enormous pressure for the follow-up, 1998’s This Is Hardcore.

That album’s dark tone (which described Cocker’s emotional fallout from over-indulgence in celebrity lifestyle) alienated many fans, and couldn’t replicate Different Class’s success. But time has favored that bleak masterwork, which rivals Different Class for many fans.

But it’s the earlier album that cemented Pulp’s status as one of England’s best bands-and Cocker as a modern poet. And for “Yanks” like myself-they offered a peek into a romanticized foreign world, where we kinda wanted to live like the “common people” too.

Different Class’s liner notes encapsulates why the album hit such a nerve with oddballs the world over: We don’t want no trouble, we just want the right to be different. That’s all.

That says it all doesn’t it?

You can own Pulp’s Different Class via iTunes or Amazon below. Do you have any from memories from that album? Tell us in the comments.