The writing was on the wall for Pulp. Exacerbated and burnt out by the furore of the mid to late 1990s, the band was beginning to crack. Understandably so, particularly after a period of halving their audience and their sales with This is Hardcore. They had become, in the eyes of some, a sour version of the Britpop fallout. It paved the way for a relaxed and nature-focused feel to their final album, We Love Life. Cementing this intent of garden-gazing fixtures and birds being likened to sexual encounters was a sense of copycat syndrome. Bad Cover Version laments the lost loves which stormed through Different Class and bust up on This is Hardcore. In turn, the final Pulp album and its respective singles (particularly Bad Cover Version) are more about making peace with the past than it is about coaxing jealousy out of past lovers, which Jarvis Cocker and company do almost instinctively here.
Have we heard the last from Pulp? We Love Life as a final note wraps up the lucidity and reawakened passion which comes after the shockwave of a high. Bad Cover Version maintains this form. There is no greater experience than the source. Cheap imitations may follow but the original cut is still there. With teases of new material on their Encore tour with Background Noise, there may be life yet. But it is an inevitable reflection filled with the references and callbacks which saw The Professional and Cocaine Socialism shelved. With Bad Cover Version comes a knock at producer Scott Walker and all the other half-baked, post-high projects which cemented the souring of a cultural period. Chimes and whirring, smooth instrumentals make for a charming introduction to the expected heartbreaks found in Cocker’s lyrics. Could it begin any other way?
Bad Cover Version could be useful as a comparison to their heyday. The public has found some new plaything to console themselves with, and the former flame is left to kindle itself. Whether this dynamic holds any water, where the sentimental taste of saccharine lay, is unprovable. But it reflects a deeper movement in the band which would see them drift to a natural conclusion. It feels only right their final work is filled with reflections of original works, the ones their audience no longer had claim to. Those B-Sides, too. What a rush. Yesterday and Forever in My Dreams show the band was still working at their usual, respectable high. But the lights were dimming and the satisfaction of hitting it big, like any route through pop for the sharp lyricist or passionate instrumentalist, was not enough. An achievement like that does not satiate the dream.
In comes Yesterday and Forever in My Dreams as confirmation of that. The former becomes an assimilation of better tomorrows, a promise of grand new experiences if only you can shed the skin of your past. With guitar work like this, it feels possible. Both songs have the potential to be big hitters. Pop music is more luck than skill. Bad Cover Version is a masterful farewell. A final single, or what was the last hurrah, for a band who earned their spot at the top and managed the comedown, in hindsight, with a unique, jagged grace. Bad Cover Version and the tracks on this We Love Life single brush off the melancholy expected of a band on the farewell circuit and manage to block out hints of a final note. They continued, didn’t they? Thankfully so.
