My favourite albums - Different Class

Not long before I put this blog on hiatus, a phrase which implies a degree of planning that certainly did not exist, I had decided to do a series of posts about my favourite albums. It's still something I want to do, now I'm going to do it.

A few ground rules first:

I'll be choosing 99 albums. Obviously, this won't be a short term project.

I'm going to limit myself to three albums per band/solo artist. This is to avoid filling the list with just the discographies of my favourite bands and seek albums that I love rather than just come up with the easy answers.

I'm going to avoid Best Of albums with the exception of some older jazz and blues artists who didn't really record albums, just singles.

These albums are not in any ranked order, I'll just write about them in the order I want to.

That's it, let's move on to the first album, Different Class by Pulp.

Different Class came out in October 1995 in between 1994's His 'N' Hers and 1998's This Is Hardcore, two other albums that will eventually feature on this list. All three of those albums were nominated for the Mercury Prize and the three albums together, in my opinion at least, form a cohesive whole about changing views and experiences of life.

Back to Different Class. Even though His 'N' Hers broke Pulp through to mainstream success Different Class made them absolutely huge. As good as His 'N' Hers was, and I think it's a great album, Different Class improves significantly on it. There's a maturity to the songs. A sense that these aren't just kids anymore but reflective adults, looking backwards to the past and forward to the future as well as recognising the present. Different Class came out in the midst of Britpop, it is very much a Britpop album, but it's also much more. It's not just about the present, about modern life in 1990's Britain and when it does talk about those subjects it isn't just about the perils of the rat race or the fun to be had at parties and festivals. It has major themes of working class life and sex running through it. It is, as I've said, an album of people who have become adults and are starting to have adult worries.

Live Bed Show by Pulp

The most well known song from the album, and from Pulp's career, is of course Common People. A song that pretty perfectly sums up the album. A song about cultural tourism the song is Jarvis Cocker's definite statement, at least it seems to me, about the class system in Britain. All done in a way that is funny and never boring. It's also covered by William Shatner if you want a really weird experience.

Common People by Pulp 

At the heart of it all Common People is an album about identity and belonging. It doesn't lionise or demonise the culture it's part of, it never sneers at it or tries to excuse it. It's full of sarcasm, piss taking and self-awareness It's about belonging regardless of how valuable or not the thing you belong to is. It's about creating something of your own to belong to, about not being afraid of life or living it your way. Not better or worse than the alternative ways and cultures, but truly yours.

Mis-Shapes by Pulp