This Is Hardcore

33⅓ Main Series #181

by Jane Savidge

This Is Hardcore is Pulp's cry for help. A giant, sprawling, flawed masterpiece of a record, the 1998 album manages to tackle some of the most inappropriately grown-up issues of the day – fame, ageing, mortality, drugs, and pornography – and still come out crying and laughing on the other side. The subject of pornography dominates the record – from its controversial artwork to the images conjured up by songs like "Seductive Barry" and the title track – after Pulp's main man, Jarvis Cocker – who'd spent most of his teenage and adult life chasing celebrity, only to be cruelly disappointed when it finally arrived in spades – hit upon the grand notion of using pornography as a metaphor for fame. The album's commercial failure as a follow-up to the band's Britpop-defining, Different Class , also symbolizes a death knell for Britpop itself.

Dark, right? Except just like Pulp themselves, Jane Savidge's book is playful and sometimes very funny indeed. Kicking off with an imaginary conversation between Jarvis Cocker and the people who run the Total Fame Solutions helpline, Savidge expertly guides us through the trials and tribulations of an album that begins with the so-called Michael Jackson Incident, when Cocker got up on stage at the 1996 Brit Awards and waggled his fully-clothed bum at the King of Pop. Pulp's This Is Hardcor e may be a sleazy run through porn and mental demise, and an album that chronicles Cocker's continuing disillusionment with his newfound lot in life, but Savidge's book assesses the cultural and historical context of the album with insider knowledge and a sharp modern lens, ultimately making a case for it as one of the most important albums of the 1990s.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, British Literature

150 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2024

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is that just after I finished reading it Pulp announced a tour that I appear to have willed into existence. My pleasure, world.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jane Savidge's 33 1/3 series on Pulp's fascinating "failure" of an album is both a great assessment of the "death" of brit-pop as well as a fan's clear-eyed assessment of the twelve tracks as well as the cover art, which received its fair share of criticism.

As per most of the 33 1/3 series, I judge its success on how much it makes you want to listen to the source material, and Savidge's insightful essays made me want to dive back into the seedy, murky, and beautifully depressing environment that Pulp created with their follow-up to "Different Class." If "Different Class" was the party, then "This is Hardcore" was the hangover. If you haven't heard the album, pick it up. If you have the album, you owe it to yourself to rediscover it by picking up Savidge's 33 1/3 entry.

[Kaoru · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good read on what is (almost) my favourite Pulp album. Personally, I wish it would have made more of the fact that it changes its tone and mood so drastically after its angsty first half, but eh, you still get a lot of interesting facts and anecdotes about the making and the reception of the record.

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read my thoughts on Pulp's This Is Hardcore here: https://open.substack.com/pub/tosh/p/...

[Gloomy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"All of my life I've been an observer, not only of films and TV, but of life, and then as soon as you get that germ of public acceptance, then you're somebody else's show. You're actually part of the action on the screen."

[cerys · Rating 2 out of 5]

For such an incredible album, I thought that this analysis was lacking. Unlike Furman’s ‘Transformer’ (my favourite 33 1/3), the book felt unstructured and rambling, which often meant Savidge was repeating phrases. She could have made more of her own personal connection to the band and the fictional interludes didn’t appeal to me. Saved from failure by the wealth of interviews with band members (although could have been more judicious) and the fact that This Is Hardcore is a masterpiece.

Although maybe a bit concerning that my favourite part was other people’s words… Disappointing.

Read Transformer instead 😘

[Ivy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is everything I love in a book, can we please have at least one of these for every pulp album? 🥹

[Darren Cormier · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the newest entries in the 33 1/3 series, and also my favorite album by one of my favorite bands. (What does that say about me that this is my favorite Pulp album?) The album is dark, cynical, angry, and ultimately scathing take on society's quest for fame, surface-level success, masculinity, anxiety, depression, aging, and general performative nonsense: that we should want this meaning of success and fulfillment because we're told to want this meaning of fulfillment. You know, the normal topics of pop and rock songs. It's not an emotionally feel-good album, but it's ultimately rewarding and tracks the process of going through your own rock-bottom and the efforts of genuine self-reflection and attempts at improvement.
Allmusic had a review to the album many years ago, claiming that lines to the opening track "The Fear" inadvertently provided the review to the album itself: "This is the sound of someone losing the plot/ you're going to like it, but not a lot." They aren't wrong.
But the book, written by one of Pulp's publicist's is really good, providing insights and interview excerpts into the making of the songs, the lyrics, and the publicity of the album, and where mentally and emotionally the band members were at the time.
It's a recontextualization of the album in Pulp's oeuvre, showing that the best works aren't those that made the most money, sold the most records, or that made you feel good, but it's the one that caused you to genuinely change and improve as a person, and maybe, just maybe, helped others to, too.

[David Abravanel · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorites of the 33 1/3 series. Jane Savidge presents a great balance between her own recollections (having been a major PR architect of Britpop), short fictional anecdotes, and citations from a variety of interviews and reviews. Being close to the material has the unexpected effect of making Savidge less prone to reverence for an album now considered a classic - instead, she wrestles in real-time with her conflicted thoughts about the artwork and whether each song succeeds in what it might have been trying to do.

Writing about a capital-s "Serious" album, a "fame is a drag" album, a "the party's over and now I'm aging" album - there are numerous ways a book about This is Hardcore could have become a slog, an unnecessarily bitter polemic, or an exercise in superficial fandom. Savidge threads the needle for a book that appropriately matches the dry wit of Jarvis Cocker's lyrics and the eclectic musical explorations of Pulp. A somehow breezy read that also confronts mortality, drug abuse, abandonment, pornography, celebrity, and watching a movement peter out.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having already written about Pulp, plus running one of the big British PR firms, Savidge brought an excellent amount of energy to the opening pages of This Is Hardcore. Think that as much as I dove into it, the storytelling and perhaps being too much on the inside led the book to peter out after a bit. There's a lot of inside jokes or knowledge, and that doesn't translate to the storytelling or the concept of the album as a whole. Respect her work and insight, but think that a lot of times she crossed over into just being part of the PR team.

[Bridie · Rating 4 out of 5]

""And you? Well, I think your initial pursuit of fame was a noble one: you realised that it is impossible to change the world without first being recognised by other people. Surely, without people like you, it is conceivable that the great minds of our time might simply slip through history unnoticed. There's a great quote from Nietzsche: 'Some are born posthumously'!"
"Well, perhaps, I was born post-humorously!" our recipient quips, in a rare attack of whimsy.
The voice makes a noise like a laugh. Although it could just as easily have been a cough or a sob." – p.125

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Different Class had the bigger singles, I've long considered This Is Hardcore to be Pulp's crowning achievement and an album that continues to be criminally underrated, so I was thrilled to see it was getting an entry in this series. Although I could do without the odd framing device at the beginning and end, I really do like how Savidge digs into the songs and expands on Jarvis Cocker's life.

[Sean Denizen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for any fan of Pulp.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pulls its punches here and there but a very good, unromantic and appropriately 90s-gossipy account, rightly firm on some of the ways in which it is problematique.

[Dominique · Rating 4 out of 5]

Justice for Party Hard!!!

[Emanuel Sanabria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sooooo many mistakes, don't these books get reviewed by an editor?? Jeez. Very few insights honestly, quite superficial treatment.

[Dusan Zaric · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my first 33 1/3 book. I love This Is Hardcore but the writing was too cute for its own sake.

[Lukas Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The answer in the Blur vs. Oasis debate is Pulp. This is Britpop’s crushing hangover.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Empty bottles strewn
across surfaces catching
dawn's pink arrival

[Joseph McHale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book, read it in one sitting. Mixture of interviews and experiences, this is the story of This Is Hardcore and the end of Britpop really. It provides an insight not just into Jarvis’ life at the time, but also other band members perceptions of what this era was like. It provides that brief but informative album story many forget that was so consequential and influential in making one of the darkest albums the fallout of Britpop produced. Whilst a lot of books are Cocker-centric, and this one does feature a lot about Jarvis and his experiences during this period, i enjoyed the branching out not just of Pulp members interviews and thoughts when it came to TIH, but also Russell Seniors departure that many overlooked when this album came out, and therefore missing a key part of the reason the album is like it is.

[Alex Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good and easy read. Jane Savidge clearly loves the album (and rightfully so) and the books all the better for it