Sheffield, UK · britpop

Pulp

1 upcoming festival

Jarvis Cocker's common people, still uncommon — Britpop's sharpest wit in glorious late-era form, 'Common People' still detonating class rage.

Pulp formed in Sheffield around 1978, founded by Jarvis Cocker while he was still at school, and spent well over a decade in relative obscurity before breaking through in the mid-1990s. The line-up that found success included Cocker, Candida Doyle on keyboards, Russell Senior, Steve Mackey and Nick Banks.

The band's music combined glam and disco elements with cheap synthesisers and Cocker's spoken-sung narratives about sex, class and suburban boredom, delivered with a novelist's eye for specifics. His Different Class and the single "Common People" made them central figures in Britpop, though Pulp's tone was more sardonic and uneasy than most of their contemporaries. The group split in the early 2000s and has since reunited for further live work.

britpop