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Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker picks his favourite Paul McCartney song
It’s very difficult to find a musician to have reached prominence over the past five decades that wasn’t touched by at least a few of The Beatles’ songs or their subsequent solo efforts. Over the 1960s, the songwriting partnership of Paul McCartney and John Lennon changed Western culture with progressive artistic approaches and a trend-setting image.
The Beatles’ dominion wasn’t confined merely to music, however. Consequentially, even those uninterested in the band have been affected by the domino-pushing ripple of the four lads from Liverpool. As for Jarvis Cocker, the zany frontman for Britpop era group Pulp, he was a big fan of The Beatles in his youth. While his songwriting style doesn’t directly descend from McCartney’s, he was heavily influenced by the octagenarian’s impressive knack for hit-making.
Born in Sheffield in 1963, Cocker grew up to the sound of British invasion-era music. Spearheaded by The Beatles, the era triggered a surge of musical inspiration in the northern counties of England. The four mop tops from Liverpool gave fellow British youngsters from modest backgrounds license to follow a dream in pop music.
This tsunami of influence not only carried through The Beatles’ tenure of the 1960s but can still be felt in rock music up to the modern day. As with most other musicians of his generation, Cocker was influenced by The Beatles as a cultural presence; when they finally split up in 1970, this power was seemingly diced into less than four quarters.
In a recent interview with Stereogum, the Pulp frontman explained the difficulty he encounters when asked to pick a favourite McCartney song. For Cocker, it would have to come from The Beatles years, but there’s still so much to choose from.
He said: “It’s difficult to pick out a single song by Paul McCartney because, as a member of the Beatles, he was responsible for a general atmosphere of benevolence that I benefitted from as a child.”
Continuing, Cocker illustrated how The Beatles’ music seemed to punctuate his early years. “‘She Loves You’ was number one the week I was born and they split up the year my dad left home (in my seven-year-old mind it was the very same day but I’m sure it wasn’t really). Between those two dates it was the Golden Age — thank you Paul.”
Concluding, Cocker bit the bullet and settled on a McCartney composition that remains a prominent influence as he casts his mind back to childhood. “The song that most vividly brings back that Golden Age is ‘Martha My Dear’ from the [eponymous] White Album. There isn’t a specific memory attached to it — it’s something to do with the sound of that song. The piano and McCartney’s voice blend together to create an acoustic effect that I can only describe as ‘sunlight shining through French windows in a wood-lined room’ and, for as long as the song is playing, I am in that room and everything is right with the world. That’s the McCartney Magic.”
After the profound impact of The Beatles through his youth, Cocker was inspired by a host of different styles and developmental phases of rock music. As he emerged into the public eye with Pulp in the mid-90s, Cocker showed a unique lyrical style with articulate imagery and often humorous themes. While this is a far cry from McCartney’s ‘Martha My Dear’, if one follows the evolutionary trail far enough back, all roads lead to The Beatles.
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