[Modern music recommended]
It became increasingly apparent during 1995 that the answer to the question "Blur or Oasis?" was, in fact, "Pulp". Different Class was the sound of a band so on "it" that they defined "it". Thirty years of fury, frustration, sexual longing, class angst and observations about girls' skirts was rammed into the grand Brechtian/Brel-like drama of "Live Bed Show", "I Spy" and, of course, "Common People"; and sure enough it has the impact of crashing head-on into someone's entire sordid, suppressed secret life. When Jarvis hisses "I can't help it / I was dragged up / Grass is something you smoke/ Birds are something you shag / Take your 'Year In Provence' and shove it up your ass," it sounds like mustard gas escaping over the trenches in the class war. And he wins. If music had a class system, this would be our ruler.