Song 142 - Common People by Pulp

I will make no apologies for putting all these brilliant songs in the jukebox because I know half of you who are reading the blog will  be dancing around to these tracks. Common People is magical and if you aren't bopping around dancing to this song within the first few lines of this song, never come dancing with me.

Whilst Britpop brought out the rivalry between Oasis and Blur, Javis Cocker, together with his band, Pulp seemed to bring their own style to the 1990s. Surprisingly for me (and I am learning about music as I am writing this blog), Common People was their lead single from their 5th album, A Different Class.  Now I went to university with someone who hated the commercial success of bands like The Verve as I think he thought the bands lost their edge, I wonder if he felt that way about this song.

I don't really have to explain that the song is about class tourism as the lyrics speak for themselves and Pulp captured the concept perfectly in their lyrics. Cocker came up with the original tune on a small MT 500 keyboard that he had and received mixed reviews from his band member when he played it them. However, Pulp's keyboardist Candida Doyle praised Cocker for the tune's simplicity and could see that there was potentially for the tune to make a powerful song, with the right lyrics, which were then written by Cocker afterwards. Debuting it at the Reading Festival in August 1994, Pulp started to realise that they had written something that could turn into an anthem.

With this knowledge they recorded the track in over a fortnight at The Town House in London, using all 48 tracks of the recording studio to try out different ideas with their song. It is amazing that they managed to kept the final single version down to 4 minutes. The single was released in May 1995 and peaked at number 2 in the UK charts and with its success, created one of the most iconic songs of the Britpop era.

It is said that Common People moved away from the rose-tinted glasses of the working class lifestyle that had been used by other Britpop bands and appeared on numerous compilation albums  since its released. One of the most famous covers of the songs was by William Shanter in 2004. When Cocker heard that Captain Kirk was covering the song he was thrilled as he was a big Star Trek fan as a lad.

To hear Common People

Common people by Pulp

Written by Pulp
Released May 1995
Album A Different Class

Song 92 - Changes by David Bowie

It is really interesting looking back on the career of David Bowie and researching the songs to realised how some songs which I think are massive hits didn't really perform in the chart when they were first release. Changes, released in 1972 as single, falls into this category and maybe demonstrates that Bowie was ahead of his time and perhaps the mainstream of 1970s pop didn't embrace him fully when he was first releasing material.

One of the quotes that I've seen on social media and news sites this week given by Javis Cocker from Pulp is "Bowie made people feel that it was alright to be a bit different and try things out", and when you think about how much there is today in today's society about conforming to a certain life or look, perhaps it would be healthier for younger people to be encouraged to be more like Bowie in their outlook. He walked his own path, he didn't feel it necessary to fit into one particular image and because of this he created a legacy in music and film that I think will be there forever.

Changes, taken from the 1971 album Hunky Dory album, was almost a prescript to Bowie's career as it is based on the idea of an artistic continual reinvention and distancing themselves from the rock and roll mainstream. It was the first track on the album and the album was hailed by Rolling Stone as "Bowie's most engaging album musically, but also finds him one more writing literally enough to let the listener exam their ideas comfortably without having to withstand a barrage of seemingly verbiage before  getting at an idea."

Perhaps when listening to the track today you can think what changes there are to be made by you
Changes by David Bowie

Written by David Bowie
Album - Hunky Dory
Released - 1972.