PULP - This Is Hardcore (1998)
In this post I will express my feelings and thoughts on 1998 Pulp album This Is Hardcore. It will be a mixture of my own thoughts and also things I have read about it in different places, a way to put it all together to sum up the general idea of This Is Hardcore, and more particularly, my own idea of This Is Hardcore. I really love Pulp’s music and they inspire me with so many ideas it’s very possible I won’t be able to write them all down here and leave some out, or maybe my own ideas are very different from the ones the people that read this may have, but I’ll try to do my best.
First of all, though many of you know about it, I will explain the context of the record, in case some of you don’t. Basically, Hardcore is “the sad Pulp album” and it was written in one of the most difficult periods of their career: the period after they finally got success after years and years of not being a successful band. It may sound strange because, didn’t they want to be famous? Yes, they did. But sucess was not the beautiful thing that they had expected it to be. It turned out to be rather dissapointing once that they got to experience what the vacuous world of fame was all about, for it was not only about their artworks being appreciated by the people and inspiring them. They also had to face the hypocrisy, the yellow press, the loneliness, the negative effects of drugs and the fear of failure.
After the success of their previous album, Different Class (1995), Pulp were expected to continue their career as one of the most successful British bands back then, but This Is Hardcore didn’t sell as many copies as Different Class had. The songs were no longer happy-sounding, easy-listening music about misfits, social classes and supermarkets. Now it was all about heavy dissonant guitars and unhappiness. This is the reason why many people consider Hardcore to be a concept album about sadness, loneliness and fear.
The album cover depicts a naked woman lying face down. According to Jarvis Cocker, the singer with the band, it was supposed to be an appealing, attractive image when you see it from a distance - but once you get closer to it you realise that the woman, whose eyes appear to be lifeless, could be dead or for the worse, she could even not be a real woman. This way, which at first made you feel attracted makes you feel repulsed once that you get to know it, which is how the band, and particularly Jarvis, felt about fame.
I’ll continue this writing with a track-by-track analysis of the album:
The opening track of the album is “a song about a song”. The lyrics of the song speak about the song itself as an excuse to express the feeling of loneliness and fear. As the song says, it’s “the sound of loneliness turned up to ten”. According to Jarv, there is a paralellism between the song speaking about itself and the sadness of a person that gets them to be so obsessed with themselves and their own sadness that they cannot communicate with other people properly.
Morevorer, there is also the topic of turning human feelings into art to which other human beings can relate, and the strange feeling of hearing a crowd singing something that you’ve created because their feelings may relate to yours (”when you can’t even define what it is that you are frightened of this song will be here”).
As in the whole album, there is a feeling of hope for all the sadness to be over at the end (”if you ever find the thing that you lack”).
I believe this song is a respose to the BRIT Awards in 1996 incident (in which Jarv went on stage in order to protest against an artist -we all know who it was, don’t we?- that was presenting himself as a god-like figure with the power to heal others). The first line of the song “I’m not Jesus, though I have the same initials”, just like the whole song, is, I think, a reflection on the comparison between the artist and god, for the artist has the ability to create worlds just like a god would.
Nevertheless, Jarv admits that the artist, despite their ability to create, has a limited power and can’t make miracles happen because they can’t avoid bad things to happen to themselves or others even though they wish they could. In fact, he stated in an interview that he thought that the real heroes were the ones that did small good things for others every day, without expecting to get any recognition.
Towards the end of the song there’s a line that says “I’m not worried that I’ll never touch the stars ‘cause the stars belong up in heaven and the earth is where we are”. I think that this may be some sort of acceptance of the situation, of assuming one’s limitations instead of always aiming for something more, but it also has a special meaning because Jarv had always been fascinated with the idea of space and travelling to it, like it could be a way to express acceptance of the situation in a way that was very personal for him.
I think this song is about the negative aspects of partying and taking drugs, yet still doing it in order not to feel like an outcast, to feel like you’re part of something, as we can appreciate in lines like “entertainment can sometimes be hard when the thing that you love is the same thing that’s holding you down” or “why do we have to half kill ourselves just to prove we’re alive?”.
Towards the end of the song (”when the party’s over will you come home with me?”) the fear of being an outcast develops into a sort of fear of loneliness, for the narrator of the song insists on not wanting to be alone after the party has come to an end.
As the sleeve note on the album says “It’s ok to grow up - just as long as you don’t grow old. Face it, you are young.”, this song deals with the topic of being afraid of becoming old, rather mentally than physically. As Jarvis often said, we live in a very youth-oriented society that makes you think that the older we grow, the less fun we’ll have - and then we die.
It is also a reflection on how everything in life comes to an end so we try to keep ourselves entertained (through love, through art, through whatever) to forget time’s passing.
Towards the end of the song, as in many songs of this record, there is a moment in which attention is drawn to the necessity of accepting things as they are instead of trying to disguise them (”you can dye your hair but there’s one thing you can’t change - can’t run away from yourself”).
I believe that this song is about the role of sex in society and its importance in people’s lives. In my opinion, the narrator of the song is a teenager that is experiencing sexual attraction for the first time. All this person knows about sex is what they’ve been taught by the media (mostly by films) and is rather focused on the way sex is supposed to look than the way it is supposed to feel. They want it to be just like it is in the movies, like a love scene. The comparison between films and real life happens very often in Jarv’s lyrics, supposedly influenced by the fact that he studied Film at university and often spoke about the unreal way in which things are depicted in art.
The widespread belief that “losing your virginity” turns you into this whole new adult person and things are never the same since the moment you “do it” is very present throughout the whole song (”oh, here comes the hardcore life”), as well as the pressure on people to have sex (”you can’t be a spectator, you gotta take these dreams and make them whole” or “this is me on top of you and I can’t believe that it took me this long”). Nevertheless, there’s a hint of deception after the “climax” of the song, which is, I think, supposed to represent the first sexual experience of the narrator (”that goes in there, then that goes in there, that goes in there, then that goes in there and then it’s over”), but at the same time, despite the deception the narrator wants to do it again because it makes them feel mature and special (”but what I want to know: what exactly do you do for an encore? ‘cause this is hardcore”).
I think that this song is, once again, a metaphor for Jarvis wanting to be famous for a huge part of his life and feeling dissapointed once that he achieved it, yet still not being able to escape it.
In this song, life is being compared to a movie again. But this time it has little to do with love scenes, it’s rather a comparison between a boring life and a bad, boring movie on TV that the spectator is watching just because they’re bored and has nothing else to do. The person that’s watching the film just wants the film to end or to become interesting (notice the ambiguity, you don’t know if they refer to their life or to the movie, or both).
The song ends with the narrator facing the truth once again (”why pretend any longer?”) and revealing their fear of loneliness and their need to have someone by their side because watching a boring film on TV only makes them realise how boring their life is.
This song is about a father that doesn’t want his son to become like him because he knows he hasn’t been a good father. It surely was influenced by Jarvis’ experience with his father, who left home when he was a child. When he became famous, his father contacted a newspaper so that they could meet each other again, but he refused to do it at first (”you don’t wanna know me, that’s just what everybody’s telling me”) and then travelled with his sister to meet him on his own account and they made up and started having regular contact again.
This song is a whole criticism against the concept of masculinity and how harmful it is for men. Jarv, due to the fact his father left home when he was a child, grew up surrounded by women and didn’t have any strong masculine influence in his childhood, which would influence his behaviour very deeply and also his interest in female psychology (in fact, may of the songs he’s written are written from the perspective of a woman or speak about women’s feelings).
In one interview, he stated that he didn’t know he was supposed to “act like a man” until he first entered a relationship with a woman and in a different interview he expressed that men are nothing but “grown kids that want to brag about the car that they own and the money they have”. In lines like “I’ve learned to drink and I’ve learned to smoke and I’ve learned to tell a dirty joke - if that’s all there is then there’s no point for me” he expresses how even though masculinity is harmful, all men take part in it one way or another because it’s something they can’t fully escape.
The song both starts and ends with a female voice, instead of with Jarvis’ voice, which is what we’re used to. The reason for this is that it’s a song about sex, and Jarv was tired of all sex songs having solely a male voice adressing a completely passive woman. It is acknowledged that the woman is fundamental and without her things wouldn’t be the same, so she fairly has a part in the whole thing.
The reason for Jarvis’ voice to be distorted in this song is quite sad. His depression had got to a point that he hated sounding like himself so he decided his voice to be distorted on this track.
The song, like every Pulp Sex Song, is not an usual sex song. It is about having the bravery and the courage that it takes to face the object of desire. Many people say very lightly that they’d sleep with whatever person they find attractive that they see on the TV or in a magazine, but they’d probably feel frightened and frozen if they happened to be in a room with that person.
Jarv is comparing sex to his experience with fame again, with having the bravery to face something that you’ve been wanting for years, but in this case he doesn’t mention the element of deception. Nevertheless, the visual film-like aspect of the thing is again very present (”let’s make this the greatest love scene from a play no one’s thought of yet”).
I think that there’s a line towards the end (”you showed it all but you still kept a little piece back just for me”) that refers not only to the whole “facing the object of desire” thing but also to the relationship between the artist and the spectator, for everybody can witness an artwork but each individual will always find “a little piece” in it that the rest of people cannot see. The song ends with a comparison between real life and fantasy (”if this is a dream then I’m gonna sleep for the rest of my life”) and how we often use our imagination to escape the cruel aspects of reality.
I think this song is actually a letter Jarv wrote to himself (”so keep believing and do what you do, I can’t help you but I know things are gonna get better”) but he’s again using the female perspective to express his point. There are some lines in the song that particularly catch my attention, which are “who’s this man you’re talking to? can’t you see what he wants to do? he thinks if he stands near enough then he will look as good as you - and he don’t care about your problems, he just wants to show his friends” and here comes the plot twist: “I guess I’m just the same as him, I just didn’t know it then”. This is literally amazing. Like Jarv is there talking about seeing another man trying to chat up with the girl he’s talking to and knows he only wants to show her off, but instead of acting like a hero that excludes himself from those attitudes he admits he has tried to do the same in the past, recognising that no man is excluded from sexism and that it is very rooted in culture and affects every man.
This song seems paradoxical, in a way. The “glory days” for Pulp were supposed to be the days in which they were famous, but instead those were very unhappy days for them. The song starts with the line “come and play the tunes of glory, raise your voice in celebration of the days that we have wasted in the café in the station” which is a situation that has nothing to do with fame or success. It makes me think that maybe the real glorious things are the things that we see everyday and don’t pay enough attention to, instead of in getting praise and recognition that can often be fake.
12. The Day After The Revolution
Jarvis used to be obsessed with a revolution happening in music in the years before the making of this record. That revolution was for outsiders and nerds to have a chance so that their voices could be heard in mainstream culture and for pop to carry a deep message. Nevertheless, that’s not the kind of revolution that’s expressed in this song.
The revolution in this song happens inside of a human being (”the revolution begins and ends with you”), and it is the process through which they overcome their sadness and start a new life leaving all the bad things behind. Jarv says goodbye to all those things saying they are over because I think he hopes not to see them anymore in the same way he used to.
At the end of the song, a recording from the radio can be heard. They wanted to turn on the radio and record whatever it said at the end of the song and it happened to be a religious recording about the creation of the world, that added the idea of “rebirth” that puts an end to the album.
This has been it, if you’ve read all of it thank you, if you’ve only read your fav song thank you as well. I hope you have enjoyed, I tried to do my best 💖
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