Let’s hang out with the “Common People” and Pulp today. Press play and dive in with me, as I come up with my Top 5 things for Pulp’s “Common People”, one of my all-time favorite songs of theirs.

Do you have a favorite Pulp song? Favorite album?

“You’ll never live like common people.
You’ll never do whatever common people do.
You’ll never fail like common people.
You’ll never watch your life slide out of view.
As you dance and drink and screw,
because there’s nothing else to do.”

“Common People” by Pulp
from the album, Different Class (1995)
My Top 5 – March 10, 2011

1. This song reminds me of some of the people I knew when I was in college. The ones who came from money, but acted as if they had none. I remember how irritatingly fascinated they were with “poverty”. Not that any of them had ever really lived in poverty, or ever really struggled at all in their lives. But, they certainly liked to wear the trappings of “poor” and try to mimic the lifestyle. They wouldn’t have liked it so much if it was ever their reality.

2. I guess when you have grown-up struggling your entire life there is nothing bohemian, or romantic, or quaint about living paycheck-to-paycheck, and struggling all the time.

3. I have a longstanding crush on Jarvis Cocker.

4. I have a strange fascination with supermarkets. Walking through them is very soothing and very zen to me. Perhaps it is the colors, the rows, the click-click rhythm of the cart wheels going down the aisles. I don’t know exactly. All I know is it’s always been one of those strange favorite places of mine.

5. This is one of my favorite “Brit Pop” songs from the 90’s, without a doubt.