Maybe Pulp just won the battle of Britpop.
If you were born after 2000, you probably missed the most overhyped cultural standoff of all time. The last time music truly dominated the headlines, since the BBC banned Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Relax’ and it still went to number one. Blur versus Oasis. A chart duel that saw art school pop about a rich man living in a very big house in the country outsell a derivative rock standard about what to eat with your soup.
For one brief moment in August 1995, this really mattered. One side had a video directed by Damien Hirst, with Keith Allen being chased by Page 3 models. The other had a single cover featuring the band watching TVs on the beach in Weston-super-Mare.
Blur won the battle. Oasis won the war.
But while they were throwing punches, Pulp were doing something else. Anthems that spoke to the masses. Songs written in bedsit cupboards and sleazy cinemas. Formed in Sheffield in 1978, the charity shop chic misfits never really played the same game. And they’re still not playing it.
Now, 24 years since their last album, they’re in the middle of their first UK arena tour. They’ve even made their debut on the US Billboard airplay chart with lead single Spike Island from the new album More.
Spike Island, the legendary 1990 gig, that maybe marked the end of Madchester and the start of something new. A shambolic, iconic mess. A moment. A myth. Or as Noel Gallagher put it, "a sh*t gig." Poor sound. Bad planning. But somehow a blueprint for his band. I saw one of Oasis’s final shows at Wembley in 2009. Equally shambolic. So, yes a blueprint.
So, how did we get from then to now? Not being able to give the tickets away to Oasis gigs to more than a billion pounds being spent by fans on gigs at this summer’s reunion*, the Oasis bandwagon is taking over the UK cultural landscape once again.
But Pulp have taken the early advantage with More, (recored in 3 weeks by legendary indie producer James Ford). A fantastic new album full of wry humour, awkward honesty, and the dramas of adolescence, adulthood and life. Wrestling with coat hangers. Rhyming ‘agenda’ with ‘a gender’. Spelling out L.O.V.E. All the familiar tropes are there. It’s just Jarvis being Jarvis.
That’s what makes Pulp, Pulp.
And that’s why after nearly 50 years in the business they’re finally winning.
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose big f**king TVs.
Choose bucket hats. Choose battered corduroy.
Choose Fred Perry.
Choose to meet up in the year two thousand and twenty five.
Choose More.
Either way, roll on the 90s.
Listen to Pulp, More (2025), on Spotify here >>
