Lyrically Speaking: Pulp’s ultimate ‘us vs them’ revenge fantasy, ‘I Spy’
“I spy a boy.” A pause for tension, a moment for breath. “I spy… a girl.” Jarvis Cocker begins with the facts as if they are simple. As the song that Pulp kick off with on their latest tour dates and a track that perfectly defines them as a group, ‘I Spy’ is anything but simple. When the piece bursts to life but keeps the tension building, it’s as though the listener can’t walk away. Presented as their own kind of social nature documentary, Pulp dare to take on class as the dog-eat-dog thing that it is, painting themselves as the predator rather than the prey for once.
As suggested by the album title, Pulp’s 1995 record Different Class delivers a glaring class commentary, all told with Jarvis Cocker’s recognisable lyrical wit. The band had been around for a long time before this moment, but it feels like they only gained their voice when disconnected from the city that gave them it. It wasn’t until Cocker moved away from his native Sheffield and headed to London to attend Central Saint Martins that he found the right topic and words.
For any working-class northerner in the capital, the story of Different Class is a known one. It’s a tale of moving to a big city and suddenly being smacked around the face by a world that isn’t built for you. It’s especially a story of working-class creatives, reckoning with the fact that wealthier counterparts not only have an easier route to making it but will want to play around in your lane, testing the waters and making believe that they’re broke for a laugh.
“You’ll never live like common people,” they sing on their anthemic hit ‘Common People’ as the most outright commentary. But in almost every track on the record, some line continues their observations of spheres they feel they don’t belong in or are locked out of. On ‘Mis-Shapes’, their existence in London’s creative world is depicted like a break-in, singing, “Just put your hands up, it’s a raid”. Or on ‘Live Bed Show’, they considered a kind of privileged boredom they’ll never get to access, writing about a sad little rich girl that “doesn’t have to go to work”. As they found themselves right in the heart of Britpop, Pulp reflected the class divide in music in a way that no one else dared to do. Sure, there was Blur vs Oasis as a kind of south vs north, rich vs poor fight, but Jarvis Cocker would put it into words and dare to take the mick.
That’s precisely what ‘I Spy’ is all about. If Different Class is their observations from their viewpoint, this track turns Cocker into a David Attenborough figure if Attenborough dared to get in there, break into lions’ houses or go up against the mighty beasts he’s talking about. “It may look to the untrained eye / I’m sitting on my ass all day / I’m biding time until I take you all on,” he sings, with Cocker looking the rich right in their eyes with a pointed finger as a threat. As the music then kicks up a notch with his theatrical delivery and a streaking guitar, it’s like the singer then dives into this world he’s watching from the outside, breaking into their world and preparing to mess it up.
“I know the ways your minds work; I’ve studied,” he continues. Throughout the song, Cocker seems to be presenting his findings. If the rest of the album is him witnessing the world around him and taking notes on the class divide he sees, ‘I Spy’ is everything coming to fruition like a plan booming into action. Just like any working-class figure is forced to look at how the world works for people with wealth, the piece presents this as literal spying, gathering intel for an overthrow.
And that overthrow comes around. Rather than just being content to witness here, Cocker is involved in the action as the predator, writing a cathartic revenge fantasy for the lower classes. “It’s definitely the most vindictive,” he said of the track. “Sometimes, if you’re in a real cocky mood, you can walk down the street and kind of despise people from above. You know, that kind of superior hate. There you are, walking down the street, and everyone just thinks you’re this useless, jobless piece of crap. But inside, you feel really strong.” As a song, ‘I Spy’ is a statement that says ‘watch out, I’m coming for you’, born out of a desire to one day be able to do that. “Their hatred sort of helps you feel that way. You know what’s going on, you’ve got their number, and you know you’re gonna get your own back someday,” Cocker said.
But what makes ‘I Spy’ such a quintessential and defining Pulp track is the wittiness and pettiness of it. When it comes to that vengeance, it’s not some huge political statement. In fact, it’s pretty small, more like a middle finger up and a laugh than any grand social leveller. “You see, you should take me seriously, Very seriously indeed,” Cocker teases and threats, but all it really comes down to is silliness as he continues, “Cause I’ve been sleeping with your wife for the past 16 weeks / Smoking your cigarettes / Drinking your brandy.” In the most literal way, he paints himself as having fucked the elite, breaking into their world by placing himself in their home and helping himself to their life. Without the need for an outright statement, this image alone is the band’s unique and brilliant class commentary.
“You see, I spy for a living,” Cocker sings as he returns to his observation post. Pointing out the minute details of things that are fine for the rich but not for the poor, he’s making big comments through the smallest things, knowing he doesn’t need to add any more to it because the people who get it will get it. Take, for example, the hi-octane middle eight as he described in detail the classic “Ladbrook Grove looks” of “roach burns in designer dresser”; it’s something that is chic for the rich but would be scruffy on a poorer woman, in the same way that the wealthy invented ‘thrifting’ to separate themselves from the lesser ‘charity shopping’. As he paints his occupation or even his life’s work as merely observing these things, even that is a comment on how the working class will always be locked out of this world, only ever really able to break in for a romp but never truly belonging.
“And every night I hatch my plan, It’s not a case of woman vs man / It’s more a case of haves against haven’ts,” he says, returning to that opening image of a boy and a girl. Because it was never that simple, it never is. In this world, with its various inequalities and subtle ways that certain sects are held back while others race ahead, with the many losing out to the few, it never can be that simple. But for five minutes, Cocker turns that fact into a thrilling event as he paints us vs them as an exciting competition that his villainous and dastardly voice will win. Mark his words, “My Lords and Ladies, I will prevail, I cannot fail ’cause I spy.”
