Thoughts on Pulp's "This Is Hardcore"
One of the best things about the album This Is Hardcore is the way it critically reassesses the preoccupations of Pulp's earlier albums, specifically His 'n' Hers and Different Class. The Pulp of those albums was concerned with drugs, with parties, with sex - all as sordid as possible, thank you very much. But then Jarvis Cocker sees the party ending, and this is where Pulp make their masterpiece: an album that examines the excesses their songs had discussed and finds them inadequate. Few songs on This Is Hardcore encapsulate this new sensibility as much as the title track.
The setting is created by a slinky trumpet, looped drums, bar piano. Strings come in, sudden and ominous, foreshadowing Cocker's lyric by countering the smell of cheap sex.
Then Jarvis sings. And he systematically deconstructs the myths of the lust-centered worldview he'd previously glorified, empties it and finds it without meaning. The song takes its imagery from porn, and I hope you'll indulge me as I discuss a few of my more favorite lines.
Bear with me...
"You are hardcore, you make me hard./You name the drama and I'll play the part./It seems I saw you in some teenage wet dream."
Jarvis begins the song from the perspective of someone who enjoys porn, who needs only to have someone (the pornographer, who the narrator chooses to ignore - instead he addresses himself to the woman onscreen, as if she's playing just for him) set the stage for him. She "names the drama," and he projects himself into the role. This is easy for him to do: she's the continuation, the successor of his immature, pubescent dreams about sex. To him, she's only another in a long line of women who exist only to please him.
"I want it bad./I want it now./Oh can't you see/I'm ready now."
Here's we're still with the same perspective - he's talking to the woman onscreen, but perhaps to himself as well. Convincing himself that he wants "it," acting surprised when she can't "see" he's ready.
"I've seen all the pictures, I've studied them forever./I wanna make a movie so let's star in it together./Don't make a move 'til I say "Action."/Oh here comes the Hardcore life."
Cocker moves us on here, perhaps to a later point in the same character's life. The character's been obsessing over porn "forever," but now feels the need to bring his obsession into his actual life - by replicating the movies with a real woman. "Here comes the Hardcore life," he thinks; his fixation has made him feel that he "can't be a spectator" and that he's got to "make [his dreams] whole - by living them.
"It's what men in stained raincoats pay for/but in here it is pure. Yeah."
Now, up to this point, Cocker is painting the scene for us - showing us the subtle trap that has caused the subject of the song to develop an entirely unhealthy view of sex. With the sarcastic "Yeah" in this line, Cocker brings his derision to the forefront and takes over the narration of the song.
"This is the end of the line./I've seen the storyline played out so many times before./Oh that goes in there./Then that goes in there./Then that goes in there./Then that goes in there./And then it's over."
Cocker's seen this "storyline" many times before indeed - it's part of the culture he took such pride in being a part of during his earlier days. It's a dehumanizing culture, a pornographic one (in the sense meaning lurid). And in perhaps the simplest and most effective lines in the song, Cocker exposes it: "that goes in there/then that goes in there/then that goes in there/then that goes in there," he sings, showing this "Hardcore" sex as the mechanical, repetitive, meaningless act that it's become. The repetition is key, and it dumbfounds me. Van Morrison, for instance, repeats words and phrases in a playful, lyrical way - and I love it. But here, the repetition serves a thematic purpose, and is one of the marks of genius in the song - the disgust in Cocker's voice is one of the others. "Then it's over," he sings - an appropriately abrupt ending to this section of the song.
"Oh, what a hell of a show/but what I want to know:/what exactly do you do for an encore?/Cos this is Hardcore."
As the muted trumpet works its way back into the song, Cocker delivers the closing lines, the closing indictment of the lifestyle the song has examined. Once sex has been reduced to almost nothing, once it's been made as sordid and mercenary and meaningless as it has been - by the song's main character, by the culture in which he lives and the pornography it produces - what else can be done? The momentary thrill can't be reproduced, and sex has been robbed of any greater significance that might be relied on. This, says Cocker, this is Hardcore. It's not the girl of the main character's opening lines, representing his every dream and fantasy. It's an empty culture, empty relationships, empty fucking.
"This Is Hardcore" isn't a song that strikes an emotional chord in me like most of the rest of This Is Hardcore does, but in a catalog of intelligent lyrics, it's one of Cocker's most intelligent. I could keep going into some of the other lines, into further/other interpretations of the lines I did go into. There's a lot there. But I doubt anyone will even read what I have, so I'm leaving it at this.
PS I actually do like sex, don't get the wrong idea. Jarvis is talking about a particular kind of sex, and I suppose I agree with him or I'd be annoyed by the song, but it's not as if he stopped having sex after writing the song. Or as if I stopped after listening to it. So don't get the wrong idea.
The setting is created by a slinky trumpet, looped drums, bar piano. Strings come in, sudden and ominous, foreshadowing Cocker's lyric by countering the smell of cheap sex.
Then Jarvis sings. And he systematically deconstructs the myths of the lust-centered worldview he'd previously glorified, empties it and finds it without meaning. The song takes its imagery from porn, and I hope you'll indulge me as I discuss a few of my more favorite lines.
Bear with me...
"You are hardcore, you make me hard./You name the drama and I'll play the part./It seems I saw you in some teenage wet dream."
Jarvis begins the song from the perspective of someone who enjoys porn, who needs only to have someone (the pornographer, who the narrator chooses to ignore - instead he addresses himself to the woman onscreen, as if she's playing just for him) set the stage for him. She "names the drama," and he projects himself into the role. This is easy for him to do: she's the continuation, the successor of his immature, pubescent dreams about sex. To him, she's only another in a long line of women who exist only to please him.
"I want it bad./I want it now./Oh can't you see/I'm ready now."
Here's we're still with the same perspective - he's talking to the woman onscreen, but perhaps to himself as well. Convincing himself that he wants "it," acting surprised when she can't "see" he's ready.
"I've seen all the pictures, I've studied them forever./I wanna make a movie so let's star in it together./Don't make a move 'til I say "Action."/Oh here comes the Hardcore life."
Cocker moves us on here, perhaps to a later point in the same character's life. The character's been obsessing over porn "forever," but now feels the need to bring his obsession into his actual life - by replicating the movies with a real woman. "Here comes the Hardcore life," he thinks; his fixation has made him feel that he "can't be a spectator" and that he's got to "make [his dreams] whole - by living them.
"It's what men in stained raincoats pay for/but in here it is pure. Yeah."
Now, up to this point, Cocker is painting the scene for us - showing us the subtle trap that has caused the subject of the song to develop an entirely unhealthy view of sex. With the sarcastic "Yeah" in this line, Cocker brings his derision to the forefront and takes over the narration of the song.
"This is the end of the line./I've seen the storyline played out so many times before./Oh that goes in there./Then that goes in there./Then that goes in there./Then that goes in there./And then it's over."
Cocker's seen this "storyline" many times before indeed - it's part of the culture he took such pride in being a part of during his earlier days. It's a dehumanizing culture, a pornographic one (in the sense meaning lurid). And in perhaps the simplest and most effective lines in the song, Cocker exposes it: "that goes in there/then that goes in there/then that goes in there/then that goes in there," he sings, showing this "Hardcore" sex as the mechanical, repetitive, meaningless act that it's become. The repetition is key, and it dumbfounds me. Van Morrison, for instance, repeats words and phrases in a playful, lyrical way - and I love it. But here, the repetition serves a thematic purpose, and is one of the marks of genius in the song - the disgust in Cocker's voice is one of the others. "Then it's over," he sings - an appropriately abrupt ending to this section of the song.
"Oh, what a hell of a show/but what I want to know:/what exactly do you do for an encore?/Cos this is Hardcore."
As the muted trumpet works its way back into the song, Cocker delivers the closing lines, the closing indictment of the lifestyle the song has examined. Once sex has been reduced to almost nothing, once it's been made as sordid and mercenary and meaningless as it has been - by the song's main character, by the culture in which he lives and the pornography it produces - what else can be done? The momentary thrill can't be reproduced, and sex has been robbed of any greater significance that might be relied on. This, says Cocker, this is Hardcore. It's not the girl of the main character's opening lines, representing his every dream and fantasy. It's an empty culture, empty relationships, empty fucking.
"This Is Hardcore" isn't a song that strikes an emotional chord in me like most of the rest of This Is Hardcore does, but in a catalog of intelligent lyrics, it's one of Cocker's most intelligent. I could keep going into some of the other lines, into further/other interpretations of the lines I did go into. There's a lot there. But I doubt anyone will even read what I have, so I'm leaving it at this.
PS I actually do like sex, don't get the wrong idea. Jarvis is talking about a particular kind of sex, and I suppose I agree with him or I'd be annoyed by the song, but it's not as if he stopped having sex after writing the song. Or as if I stopped after listening to it. So don't get the wrong idea.
posted by Odorless Boatman at 8:35 PM
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