Described in its sleevenotes as the bits that Hello! leaves out, Razzmatazz swaps the breathless, urgent, romanticism of O.U. (Gone, Gone) for contemptuous, derisive misogyny.
According to Jarvis Cocker, the lyrics of Razzmatazz are about a former college girlfriend of his. He described it at the time as the most bitter song Pulp had ever done, and he certainly goes in with both feet on the girl and those closest to her by throwing around accusations of incest, unplanned pregnancy, ignorance, stupidity, shallowness, mental instability and - most damning of all - getting fat while she goes out with someone uglier than him.
It took me a couple of listens before I decided to include Razzmatazz here. I’ve had to confront a personal truth about Pulp that I’d only vaguely suspected back in the 90s, but which I have clarity on now. Quite simply, they were too difficult for me to embrace as a favourite band. There’s great humour in their music, and in my late teens, they seemed to be the only band I heard during the Britpop era, who acknowledged the desperate hunt for sex in a pre-internet world. But there was always an underlying bitterness to their material which kept me at a distance from them. They could certainly do warm material, as O.U (Gone, Gone) and 1996’s Something Changed confirmed, but I’ve come to feel that the tone of Razzmatazz is far more indicative of the type of band that Pulp were, and that doesn’t make them an easy band to love, either then or now.
What’s undeniable about Razzmatazz though, is that it’s the sound of a band who were starting to find greater confidence in themselves and were turning more heads and minds towards them. I suspect that this would have found its way on to the metaphorical mixtape in an attempt to, if not follow the herd, then at least trail along at a quizzically interested distance from it.
Cocker revealed in subsequent interviews that, to his embarrassment, he had bumped into his ex-girlfriend and that she had worked out that she was the subject of Razzmatazz. Apparently, she had taken it in good humour, perhaps feeling, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, that when it’s the opinion of one of the most famous British men of the mid-1990s, it’s better to thought of as a twat than not to be thought of at all. I also like to think the female verses on Ciao! by Lush, which Cocker guested on two years after the release of Razzmatazz, offer his ex some form of right of reply.
Video courtesy of Pulp.
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