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| Pulp - Sheffield: Sex City |
Pulp - Sheffield: Sex City Lyrics and Youtube Music VideosAlbum:
Babies B-Side Released:
1992 Intake, Manor Park, The Wicker, Norton, Freshville Hackenthorpe, Shalesmoor, Wombwell, Catcliffe Brincliffe, Attercliffe, Ecclesall
Woodhouse, Wybourn
Pitsmoor, Badger, Wincobank, Crookes, Walkley Broomhill, Oh!
[Candida, quoting from some book]
"I was only about eleven when this happened.
We were living in a big block of flats with a central courtyard.
All the bedroom windows opened onto this court,
And sometimes in the middle of the night,
In that building it sounded like a mass orgy.
I may have only been eleven,
But no-one had to tell me what all that moaning and yelling was about.
I'd lie there mesmerised, listening to the first couple.
Invariably, they'd wake up other couples,
And like some kind of chain reaction,
Within minutes the whole building was fucking.
I mean, have you ever heard other people fucking, and really enjoying it?
It's a marvellous sound.
Not like in the movies, but when it's real.
It's such a happy, exciting sound.'
The city is a woman
Bigger than any other
Oh, sophisticated lady
Yeah, I wanna be your lover (not your brother, not your mother, yeah)
The sun rose from behind the gasometers at six-thirty a.m.
Crept through the gap in your curtains
And caressed your bare feet poking from beneath the floral sheets.
I watched it flaking bits of varnish from your nails
Trying to work it's way up under the sheets.
Jesus! Even the sun's on heat today;
The whole city getting stiff in the building heat.
I just want to make contact with you
Oh that's all I wanna do
I just want to make contact with you
Oh that's all I wanna do
Now I'm trying hard to meet her but the fares went up at seven
She is somewhere in the city, somewhere watching television
Watching people being stupid, doing things she can't believe in
Love won't last 'til next installment
Ten o' clock on Tuesday evening
The world is going on outside, the night is gaping open wide
The wardrobe and the chest of drawers are telling her to go outdoors
He should have been here by this time, he said that he'd be here by nine
That guy is such a prick sometimes, I don't know why you bother, really.
Oh babe oh I'm sorry
But I had to make love to every crack in the pavement and the shop doorways
And the puddles of rain that reflected your face in my eyes.
The day didn't go too well.
Too many chocolates and cigarettes.
I kept thinking of you and almost walking into lamp-posts.
Why's it so hot (Peace garden!)
The air coming up to the boil; rubbing up against walls and lamp-posts trying to get rid of it.
Old women clack their tongues in the shade of crumbling concrete bus shelters.
Dogs doing it in central reservations and causing multiple pile-ups in the centre of town.
I didn't want to come here in the first place
But I've been sentenced to three years in the Housing Benefit waiting room.
I must have lost your number in the all-night garage
And now I'm wandering up and down your street, calling you name, in the rain
Whilst my shoes turn to sodden cardboard.
[Jarvis:] Where are you?
[Candida:] (I'm here!)
[Jarvis:] Where are you?
[Candida:] (I'm here!)
[Jarvis:] Where are you?
[Candida:] (I'm here!)
[Jarvis:] Where are you?
[Candida:] (I'm here!)
[Jarvis:] Where are you?
[Candida:] (I'm here!)
[Jarvis:] Where are you?
[Candida:] (I'm here!)
[Jarvis:] Where are you?
That's all I wanna do.
I'm still trying hard to meet you, but it doesn't look like happening
'cause the city's out to get me if I won't sleep with her this evening
Though her buildings are impressive and her cul-de-sac's amazing
She's had too many lovers and I know you're out there waiting
And now she's getting into bed he's had his chance now it's too late
The carpet's screaming for her soul, the darkness wants to eat her whole
Tonight must be the night it ends
Tomorrow she will call her friends and go out on her own somewhere
Who needs this shit anyway?
And listen, I wandered the streets the whole night crying, trying to pick up your scent
Writing messages on walls and the puddles of rain reflected your face in my eyes.
We finally made it on a hill-top at four a.m.
The whole city is your jewellery-box; a million twinkling yellow street lights.
Reach out and take what you want, you can have it all.
Gee it's so hot tonight!
I didn't think we were gonna make it.
It was so bad during the day, but now I'm snug
And warm under an eiderdown sky.
All the things we saw:
Everyone on Park Hill came in unison at 4.13 AM,
And the whole block fell down.
The tobacconist caught fire, and everyone in the street died of lung cancer.
The grunts from the T-reg Chevette; you bet, you bet, yeah, you bet. Mmmmm, yeah.
All I wanna do is make contact with you. Tomorrow, are we gonna
That's all I wanna do...
I was trying hard to meet her but the fares went up at seven
She was somewhere in the city somewhere watching television
Watching people being stupid doing things she can't believe in
Love won't last 'til next installment ten o'clock on Tuesday evening
The world was going on outside
The night was waiting open wide
The wardrobe and the chest of drawers were telling her to go outdoors
He should have been there by that time, he said that he'd be there by nine
That guy is such a prick sometimes
Yeah Jesus!
Oh baby babe I wanna I wanted to tell you that there's nothing
There's nothing to worry about because we can, we can, we can, we can get it together oh yeah
Oh we got it together tonight, we didn't wait
Yeah we made it.
Writer/s: BANKS, NICK / COCKER, JARVIS BRANSON / DOYLE, CANDIDA / MACKEY, STEPHEN PATRICK / SENIOR, RUSSELL
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by
LyricFindSheffield: Sex City Song Chart This song deserves a mention as it remained fairly constant in the band's live show, from conception in 1992 on the first release of "Babies" as a single through to the final show at Motorpoint Arena in December 2012 - starting the encore, no mean feat as it had to follow "Common People" in the set. The song itself is an interesting mix of spoken-word narrative, sung lyrics and sexual innuendo/noises. Part of the song sees keyboardist Candida Doyle reading a section from the 1973 book My Secret Garden, a compilation of female sexual fantasies. Jarvis Cocker explained this unique song's conception in a 2003 interview with Mojo magazine: "Sometimes you write a song and you can't think of a tune but you like the music. So that's a cue for me to write a long stream of whatever, a few grunts and a little bit of singing at some point. It's OK, but it could have been done better. We got some good bass on it though 'cos this Rasta guy Zeebee, the house mixer at Island, was smoking a lot of dope and got that bass turned up.
Was I actually having sex? Probably wasn't, actually, 'cos when I first came down to London my girlfriend went away for a year. You might think, young man in London at college? Gotta be getting some shagging. But for some reason I didn't really get it on. Sex isn't really written about much except in very clichéd or caricatured terms, rather than as a part of everyday life." 
