Are Pulp Britpop?
Short Answer
Technically, yes. Spiritually, they were always gatecrashers at a party they made interesting.
Long Answer
Pulp were Britpop in the way Jarvis Cocker was a sex symbol. Oddly, briefly, and almost in spite of himself. They’d been at it since Thatcher was learning to smile, long before Camden decided irony was the new sincerity. By the time Different Class hit the top of the charts in ’95, Blur and Oasis were scrapping like sixth formers outside a Wetherspoons and Loaded magazine had mistaken laddishness for liberation.
Pulp didn’t fit. They were too clever for tribalism. Too self-aware to play the “Cool Britannia” game without pulling faces behind its back. While others sang about cigarettes and alcohol, Jarvis gave us kitchen sink drama set to disco. Social mobility. Voyeurism. The grinding mediocrity of middle England. Not quite the stuff of terrace chants, but it stuck in your head just the same.
Yes, they got lumped in with the lot. But Britpop needed Pulp more than Pulp needed Britpop. They gave the scene its conscience. And, more importantly, its eyebrows.
