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Pulp - Bad Cover Version

Pulp - Bad Cover Version Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: We Love Life
Released: 2001

Bad Cover Version Lyrics

The word's on the street; you've found someone new
If he looks nothing like me
I'm so happy for you

I heard an old girlfriend
Has turned to the church
She's trying to replace me
But it'll never work

'cause every touch reminds you of
Just how sweet it could have been
And every time he kisses you
It leaves behind the bitter taste of saccharine

A Bad Cover Version of love is not the real thing
Bikini clad girl on the front who invited you in
Such great disappointment
When you got him home
The original was so good
The one you no longer own

And every touch reminds you of
Just how sweet it could have been
And every time he kisses you
You get the taste of saccharine

It's not easy to forget me
It's so hard to disconnect
When it's electronically reprocessed
To give a more life-like effect
Oh come on

Ah, sing your song
About all the sad imitations
That got it so wrong

It's like a later Tom And Jerry, when the two of them could talk
Like the Stones since the Eighties
Like the last days of Southfork
Like Planet Of The Apes on TV
The second side of Til The Band Comes In
Like an own brand box of cornflakes:
He's going to let you down, my friend

Writer/s: COCKER, JARVIS BRANSON / MACKEY, STEPHEN PATRICK / BANKS, NICK / DOYLE, CANDIDA / WEBBER, MARK ANDREW
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Bad Cover Version Song Chart

This song was the last single to be released by the band in their original phase before their hiatus in 2002 through to 2011, and the band's penultimate single released to date before "After You" in January 2013. It was released in April 2002 and charted in the UK at #27.

The lyrics are a lengthy attempt by the narrator to explain that his former partner's new/current relationship is a pale shadow of what they used to have in comparison. He uses a string of metaphors to compare how this relationship compares poorly to what they used to have, including how Tom and Jerry ended up talking in later series, the Rolling Stones' career post-1980s, and the TV adaptation of Planet of the Apes - the meaning being that all of the above mis-stepped badly and failed to recapture past glories, much like his ex-partner.

Humourously, one of the many metaphors used to talk down the narrator's ex-partner's new relationship includes a reference to Scott Walker's 1970 album 'Til The Band Comes In, which featured original compositions on the first side and cover songs on the second side - perhaps this is where the title "Bad Cover Version" partially came from. Either way, Jarvis Cocker wrote these lyrics in advance of the album recording, and later found out that Scott Walker himself would be producing the album and therefore this song.

Cocker explains: "Doing [this song] was probably the most embarrassing moment on the record, for me, because the song had been written a long time before we knew we were gonna work with Scott Walker, and in the end section of the song there's a list of inferior things, but unfortunately in this litany I included Scott Walker's fifth solo LP, 'Til the Band Comes In. Because that record's always mystified me, because it starts off with original material, and it's pretty good, and then suddenly on the second side he just does six cover versions, and it's like he just kind of gets sick of the whole thing and just gives up halfway through the record. So I've always found it a very strange album for that. Then of course when we were working with him, this became a problem for me, because I felt that I had to mention it to him. I didn't want him to suddenly realize it himself, and then come and punch me or something. So I was thinking about it, and it was coming closer to the day when I was gonna have to do me vocal, and I was really trying to find the right moment to broach the subject, but it never seemed to come along. And then one morning, it was getting to be a bit of a problem for me actually, so I was traveling there on the train and thinking: 'Right, first thing, as soon as I get into the studio, I'm gonna have it out with him, I'm gonna tell him, I'm gonna tell it how it is.' So I was thinking to myself: 'Yeah, gotta do it, gotta do it, gotta do it.'

Got off the train, walked into the studio... pinned him up against the mixing desk, and just kind of blurted it all out: "Er, Scott well, I've just got to apologize for something, because, like, okay, at the end of the song, like, I make a reference to 'Til the Band Comes In, right, in a list of crap things, and, what I was trying, y'know, obviously..." And just kind of said all this stuff. And he just kind of looked at me in a very mystified way, of like, 'What is this nutter ranting on about?,' and then it kind of clicked with him what I was on about, and he just laughed and said: 'Well, gee thanks guys, that's the way you repay me.' I think he doesn't actually own any of his old records so I think he'd kind of forgotten that he'd made that one. But for me, it was embarrassing."

Ultimately it was fairly moot, as Walker has since admitted he shares the same view on 'Til The Band Comes In, considering it one of his weaker works - so Cocker was entirely justified to criticize it in the song.

The tune itself Cocker credits to Candida Doyle, the band's keyboard player. "The main tune came from Candida. I wrote the words at night, then I went to bed, woke up in the morning and thought, 'I bet they're really s--t, them words'. But then when I sang them they worked alright. When we recorded it with other people it never sounded right - it sounded like a pastiche of something. It's just a pop song but I find it quite emotional."

In a pastiche perhaps of the Scott Walker 'Til The Band Comes In debacle, the CD release of this song came in a 2-CD format, with the first CD comprising of the song and 2 B-sides, and the second CD comprising "bad cover versions" of Pulp songs - specifically a version of "Disco 2000" by Nick Cave (of the Bad Seeds) and a Roisin Murphy cover of "Sorted for E's and Whizz."

The music video becomes a hilarious send-up of charity singles, in particular "Do They Know It's Christmas?," with a huge litany of popular artists being impersonated and filmed singing their parts a la the original Band Aid single. Ironically, Jarvis Cocker is one of the many artists impersonated (along with Tom Jones, Craig David, Kyle Minogue, Kurt Cobain, Phil Collins and MANY more), yet Cocker himself appears in the video - impersonating Queen guitarist Brian May!

Pulp - The Trees

Pulp - The Trees Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: We Love Life
Released: 2001

The Trees Lyrics

I took an air-rifle, shot a magpie to the ground & it died without a sound.
Your skin so pale against the fallen Autumn leaves &
No-one saw us but the trees.

Yeah, the trees, those useless trees produce the air that I am breathing.
Yeah, the trees, those useless trees; they never said that you were leaving.

I carved your name with a heart just up above - now swollen,
Distorted, unrecognisable; like our love.
The smell of leaf mould & the sweetness of decay
Are the incense at the funeral procession here, today.
In the trees, those useless trees, etc.

You try to shape the world to what you want the world to be.
Carving your name a thousand times won't bring you back to me.
Oh no, no I might as well go & tell it to the trees.
Go & tell it to the trees, yeah.

Writer/s: MYERS, STANLEY/SHAPER, HAL/COCKER, JARVIS/MACKEY, STEVE
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

The Trees Song Chart

"The Trees" is the other half of the double A-side released in October 2001 as a lead-up to the release of Pulp's then-latest album We Love Life - the other side was the track "Sunrise." The single as a whole charted at #23 in the UK.

Jarvis Cocker talks frankly about the song's genesis, noting that it was all spawned from a sample of the song "Tell Her You Love Her" by Stanley Myers and Hal Shaper. Said Cocker: "I'd had (that song) for about four or five years and wanted to write a song around it. I'd had loads of goes. We were getting to the end of the sessions, so we had one more go and we nailed it."

The initial lines of the lyrics explain how the narrator "took an air-rifle, shot a magpie to the ground and it died without a sound." Cocker was keen to explain that this was hardly an autobiographical reference: "I'd like to point out that I've never shot an animal with an air rifle! There was an air pistol at my granny's when I was growing up and I was allowed to play with it without any pellets in it. As soon as I got to an age where I might have wanted to go out and shoot creatures, it was hidden. So I've never shot even a magpie... even though they are one of my least favorite because they bully other birds and they spoil their nests and stuff like that. They're a bit of a pest actually."

The lyrics paint an evocative picture of lust and a dark surrounding of forests and woodland - this was specifically in order to paint a picture of the mysterious world between the trees where any number of things could end up happening. Cocker explains: "The idea of the lyrics in that song is just... the idea of the trees being there and all the kind of human dramas that could happen in a forest: people meeting for an illicit affair or whatever, like that. But the trees are impassive to that. And the way that people will carve their name on the bark of a tree, thinking that's some kind of mark of permanence in a relationship, but then you go back a year or two later and try and read it, it'll be all like [twisted], because the tree doesn't grow in a linear way."