The 10 funniest Pulp lyrics
In the battle of Britpop, it was always Blur this, Oasis that. But in the war of witty lyricism, Pulp would come out on top every time. Led to victory by Jarvis Cocker’s signature silly and sarcastic stylings, the words of a Pulp tell the stories of everyday goings on with a sharpness that genuinely coaxes a giggle out of its listener. Just as likely to laugh as you are to sing along, Cocker is just as much a comedian as he is a legendary frontman.
“I never intended to be a lyricist,” Cocker told The Guardian, but as he stepped up to the post of the singer from an early age, he reasoned he probably should write some songs. But he admits that his thoughts towards the craft have always been “this kind of ‘Aw, mum, do I really have to do my homework?’ attitude”. Anyone would think that would lead to some really, really poor or lazy tunes. But in Cocker’s case, that laissez-faire attitude instead took the pressure off, creating tracks that perfectly capture his voice and mind without overthinking or overdoing it.
Luckily, that mind is a sharp one. Across his songs, books and interviews, it’s clear that Jarvis Cocker is a funny guy with a quick wit and the sort of easy humour that feels born into northerners. Throughout Pulp’s discography, his dedication to writing it as he thinks it and singing it how he feels has led to no end of liners that bring a smile or a giggle. His mission to write about the scenes and all the characters and going on he sees lend themselves to that too, busying his songs with the odd behaviours of local celebrities, adds a relatability that only makes the humour even better.
Amidst it all, Cocker’s voice sits like a savage narrator, delivering his cutting takedowns or social commentary with just the kind of perfectly timed observational comedy that jokes are built on. Sure, Oasis and Blur can write anthems, but Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher could never write a joke like these…
The top 10 funniest Pulp lyrics:
‘Pencil Skirt’
“But I’ve kissed your mother twice
And now I’m working on your dad”.
Jarvis Cocker is the king of a classically British and classically petty ‘your mum’ joke, proving it best here. There’s perhaps no singular line to more perfectly sum up Pulp’s distinctly English styling as they pull out the joke that any secondary school boy has made about a million times. But it’s really the second line that wraps it all up with a nice, utterly stupid bow and gives it the signature Cocker’s flare.
It feels like that limbo between shock and silliness always made Pulp operate on a different plane from their Britpop peers. While Blur were no stranger to a dose of humour in their lyrics, Damon Albarn could never pull off this blunt, straight-faced delivery like Jarv can.
‘I Spy’
“My favourite parks are car parks
Grass is something you smoke
Birds are something you shag
Take your ‘Year in Provence’ and shove it up your ass”.
Throughout ‘I Spy’, Cocker positions himself as a kind of working man’s David Attenborough, observing the upper classes like it’s a nature documentary. As the song rolls on, he witnesses their habits and vices, digging his fingers in and picking apart each one with razor-sharp wit.
For his ultimate ‘Us vs Them’ anthem, the song’s humour is like a wink and a nudge to those who get it and a mocking laugh at those who don’t. Then, as the bridge kicks in, he delivers his final blow with his signature northern stylings, giving a middle finger to the posh kids and all their pointless gap years.
‘Sheffield: Sex City’
“I kept thinking of you and almost walking into lamp-posts
Why’s it so hot?”.
‘Sheffield: Sex City’ is a very different kind of Pulp song. It steps outside of their usual anthemic indie rock to instead sound more like a spoken word tour of their home city’s seedy underbelly. Beginning by simply listing off the dodgy parts of town, an almost Madonna-like pop beat comes in as the narrative expands with different voices, stories and several sordid tales to follow.
But even in the band’s most on-the-nose and outright seductive hit, Cocker’s writing style is front and centre as he reads his sprawling tale. Amongst the various explicit sights and scenes, there remains a level of ridiculousness and silliness, as if highlighting how absurd the act itself is.
‘Sorted for E’s & Wizz’
“And you want to call your mother
And say ‘mother, I can never come home again
‘Cause I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere
Somewhere in a field in Hampshire, all right’”.
Like an episode of This Is England 90, or any other film or documentary made about the mad days of the 1990s, Cocker presents his dispatches from the rave. Trapesing their listen out into a field, amidst the crowd, the song tracks us from the excited start of the night through to the rough morning to follow.
All told, with their signature melodrama and comedic edge, they pinpoint the exact moment when a trip goes south. Merging pathetic desperation with straight-faced sarcasm is a perfect recipe for a perfect depiction of that 5am dread.
‘Underwear’
“If fashion is your trade
Then when you’re naked
I guess you must be unemployed yeah”.
If you read into the lyrics of ‘Underwear’ too closely, it becomes a little worrisome as a sexual encounter is painted out as a kind of entrapment with no escape. Cocker himself said of the song, “This is about going home with someone, which seems like a good thing to do when you decide to do it. But when you get to the actual nitty-gritty, when you are actually standing in your underwear you think I can’t good through with this, but how do you get out of that situation?”
But amidst the lyrics stands perhaps one of his finest-ever lyrical quips. This section about fashion and nudity is so satisfyingly silly, so sharp, and so perfectly delivered that it’s easily one of Pulp’s crowning moments.
‘Common People’
“I said, ‘Pretend you’ve got no money’.
She just laughed and said ‘Oh you’re so funny’.
I said ‘Yeah?
Well, I can’t see anyone else smiling in here'”.
Really, the entirety of ‘Common People’ could make this list. Once again, Cocker takes up his post as the working class witness to the upper echelon. The whole song is like one long stand-up routine full of observational humour about out-of-touch rich kids.
The comedy toes the line between scathing and silly, coming back to the ‘us vs them’ mindset that delivers laughs for his kind and a scoff towards the other. But most of all, it’s a masterclass in Cocker’s delivery as he weaves between straight-faced spoken word liners into the song’s big anthemic hooks.
‘Glory Days’
“We were brought up on the space race,
Now they expect you to clean toilets
When you’ve seen how big the world is
How can you make do with this?”
Cocker could have just said, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen”, but that wouldn’t have been enough. Instead, ‘Glory Days’ is a self-deprecating nostalgic trip for an entire generation. Considering the ways in which our early adulthood is always sold as the best times of our lives as if nothing will ever compare, Pulp is arguing back.
Talking about cleaning toilets, paying the electricity meter, waiting for pay cheques and killing time in cafes, the joke is on them now as they own up to their vices while complaining about those who promised them it all. But with the stark flip-flops between the glorious and the gloomy, the humour is in the contrasts.
‘Razzmatazz’
“And now you’re going with some kid
Who looks like some bad comedian”.
Leave it to Jarvis Cocker to write perhaps the most specific and niche insult possible, but get it absolutely spot on. ‘Razzamatazz’ is full of them, delivering not only some of his funniest moments but his most savage as he takes jabs at an ex-partner who’s clearly dropped their standards.
“You started getting fatter / Three weeks after I left you,” he sings as perhaps his most direct insult that, naturally, didn’t go down too well with the ex in question. “I was kind of embarrassed, I bumped into her a few years later and she twigged that it was about her and it wasn’t very complementary,” he admitted later on, but they worked it out as he said, “Actually, we ended up laughing about it; it was all right”.
‘Bad Cover Version’
“It’s like a later ‘Tom & Jerry’ When the two of them could talk
Like the Stones since the eighties”.
Another lesson in humorous insults comes from ‘Bad Cover Version’, a song full of them. This time around, Cocker revisits the idea of an ex-girlfriend levelling down post-breakup, but rather than going for her gullet, he goes for her new relationship.
Likening his ex’s new flame to a series of “bad cover versions” of him, he strings together a series of lame or lesser redoes as the insults keep on coming. It seems that nothing is safe as he takes digs at cartoons and bands alike, even daring to drag Mick Jagger into the fray. It also comes along with the band’s most ridiculous music video, as they ditch their own song to have a series of celebrity lookalikes sing it for them instead…
‘Mile End’
“Nobody wants to be your friend
‘Cause you’re not from round here
Oh, as if that was something to be proud about”.
No space is sacred, too, as Cocker, the patron saint of Sheffield, takes shots at the lesser-loved areas of London. The city is no stranger to being the butt of his jokes. As the singer picked up and moved to the capital, it was the culture shock that first prompted him to turn his pen to local characters and class differences in the first place.
But on ‘Mile End’, he switches his critique from the posh kids to the scary teenagers gathered in the rougher parts of town. He writes a theme tune for the area that sounds more like a horror movie soundtrack but still somehow manages to summon the bravery to deliver one solid, silly dig.
