First, last

Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.

I wrote once before (twelve years ago, somehow) about my love of Pulp's album His'n'Hers. It may be an unfashionable view but I prefer it to Different Class, good though that also is. With His'n'Hers, Pulp were getting there but still not massive; they still felt like they belonged to "us" rather than "them". Take the song below, Do You Remember The First Time?, extracted from the album as a single and released in March 1994, whereupon it peaked at number 33 in the chart. A career best for the band, to that point, but hardly setting the world alight, which seems crazy in retrospect: were there really 32 better songs being bought at the time? I'll save you a click, Doop by Doop was #1 that week, which tells you all you need to know (sorry but I'm not linking to that on principle).

Pulp even had a cracking video, though it seems slightly odd now to see Jarvis without glasses.

Fun fact, that (the song, not the video) was produced by Ed Buller, perhaps most famous, at that point, for his knob-twiddling activities with Suede. Anyway, fourteen months after the magnificence of the above, Britpop anthem (© every lazy music journalist, 90s club-night promoter and compilation compiler, ever since) Common People soared to #2 in the charts, and something changed (see what I did there?) But I still remember the first time...

P.S. Another fun fact: Pulp, like The Who, never had a number one single: Common People was held off the top spot by that anodyne cover of Unchained Melody by Robson & Jerome, for crying out loud; almost as hard to believe, double A-side Sorted For E'z and Wizz/Mis-shapes entered the chart at #2 but was held off by Simply Red's Fairground. Chart injustices to rival Joe Dolce...)