Remember the weird musical melting pot of 1995? The most significant genres of that year can basically be broken down into gangster rap, grunge, Euro pop, and Hootie and The Blowfish.
Pulp’s ‘Different Class’ with a droll story-telling dandy for a front man in Jarvis Cocker and his weekend tales of rich girls, casual drug taking, and the futility of middle-class suburbia, was exactly what the well-educated white-collar kids needed to feel part of a music scene.
Pulp’s ironic, coffee-drinking smugness became the voice for skinny white academics that were too sheltered from real ghettos to really get rap and longed for more-melodic respite from the disorganized noise of grunge. It was Britpop with a self-deprecating alternative edge. When you look back now it’s like the band could not have chosen a more apt title for their fifth and, what is generally considered, most influential record. Even though Jarvis Cocker had established a reputation as a charismatic front man and astute songwriter prior to ‘Different Class’, his biting wit and observations in songs like “Bar Italia” and “Mis-Shapes” had people fawning over him as a true modern day poet.
Likewise the singles (“Common People”, “Disco 2000”) remain awesome 20 years on. The sleeve art of the album was inscribed with the words: "We don't want no trouble, we just want the right to be different. That's all."
That difference that Pulp spoke of and embraced is the reason the album is a classic.
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