‘Cocaine Socialism’: The Pulp anthem that attacked Britpop’s New Labour leaning
Pop music has often been a platform for political rebellion and a sense of anti-authority, ranging from the anti-war anthems of the 1960s to the abrasive anti-establishment punk of the 1970s. At the same time, however, there have been more than a few politicians and establishment figures co-opting pop music as a means of connecting with the masses. During the 1990s, New Labour leader Tony Blair courted the approval of the nation’s blossoming Britpop scene, something that never sat right with Sheffield’s finest export, Pulp.
Although Pulp found mainstream success during the Britpop era, thanks to groundbreaking records like His ‘n’ Hers and Different Class, the band was actually founded in the late 1970s by Jarvis Cocker, in the age of punk rock. Subsequent years saw the Sheffield outfit grow from high school punks to indie experimentalists and pop masters. However, the songwriter always maintained the anti-establishment attitude ingrained in him by the music of the punk age.
Some of Pulp’s most recognisable tracks either had overt political themes or, at the very least, a sense of resistance and unity running throughout. Their defining smash-hit ‘Common People’ is a prime example of this fact, focusing on the tale of a privileged class tourist who wants to pretend to be poor, without any knowledge of the true ‘common people’ experience. In a similar vein, ‘Mis-Shapes’ could be interpreted as a call for class consciousness and resistance to the unjust power of authority and the establishment.
Inevitably, this streak of left-leaning anthems, along with the colossal success of Pulp during the 1990s, soon put them onto the radar of Tony Blair’s Labour Party. In the run-up to the 1997 general elections, Blair courted the young vote by pandering to the Britpop scene and the ‘Cool Britannia’ slogan. Groups like Oasis were drawn in by this political hijack of a grassroots musical movement, but Pulp weren’t so easily convinced.
“Before Tony Blair got elected, they kept ringing me up and asking me if I could count on their support, which I didn’t like,” Cocker once recalled. From this frustration came the track ‘Cocaine Socialism’, a stand-out from the band’s masterpiece record This Is Hardcore. According to the songwriter, the song came to him “in the Groucho Club, when everyone was off their heads from snorting loads of coke”.
It was not that Cocker necessarily disagreed with Blair’s policies, but the phoney courting of the Britpop scene seemed to strike the songwriter as disingenuous. After all, it wasn’t as if this gaggle of coked-up musicians represented the wider electorate, or the people in Britain who were genuinely struggling to make ends meet. “They were probably going to vote Labour, myself included,” the songwriter admitted.
Nevertheless, the idea of ‘Cool Britannia’ was laughable to Cocker. “It wasn’t even champagne socialism any more,” he said, “It was cocaine socialism, and where do socialist principles fit into the most egotistical drug that makes you not give a shit about anyone else? You don’t even want to listen to anyone else talk.”
‘Cocaine Socialism’, as a result, is among the most defiant songs ever penned by Cocker—perhaps rivalled only by his solo effort, the equally disenfranchised ‘Cunts are Still Running the World’. Lyrics like “You must be a socialist, because you’re always off out on the piss” perfectly satirised that time-period, when rich young musicians cosplayed as socialist revolutionaries, in a typically Pulp fashion. The song also established the fact that Cocker’s vote could not be won over by free drugs and a handshake with Tony Blair; take notes now, Noel Gallagher.
