Common People (song)

"Common People" is a song by English alternative rock band Pulp, released in May 1995 as the lead single of their fifth studio album Different Class. It reached number two on the UK Singles Chart, becoming a defining track of the Britpop movement and Pulp's signature song in the process.

The song is about those who were perceived by the songwriter as wanting to be "like common people" and who ascribe glamour to poverty. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as slumming or "class tourism". The song was written by the band members Nick Banks, Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Steve Mackey and Russell Senior. In 2004, a Ben Folds-produced William Shatner cover version brought "Common People" to new audiences outside Europe.

Inspiration

The idea for the song's lyrics came from a Greek art student whom Pulp singer/songwriter Jarvis Cocker met while he was studying at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Cocker had enrolled on a film studies course at the college in September 1988 while taking a break from Pulp. He spoke about the song's inspiration in NME in 2013:

Commoner

The terms common people, commoners, or the masses denote a broad social division referring to ordinary people who are members of neither the nobility nor the priesthood. Since the 20th century, the term common people has been used in a more general sense to refer to typical members of society in contrast to highly privileged (in either wealth or influence).

History

In Europe, a distinct concept analogous to common people arose in the Classical civilization of ancient Rome around the 6th century BC, with the social division into patricians (nobles) and plebeians (commoners). The division may have been instituted by Servius Tullius, as an alternative to the previous clan based divisions that had been responsible for internecine conflict. The ancient Greeks generally had no concept of class and their leading social divisions were simply non-Greeks, free-Greeks and slaves. The early organisation of Ancient Athens was something of an exception with certain official roles like Archons, magistrates and treasurers being reserved for only the wealthiest citizens – these class-like divisions were weakened by the democratic reforms of Cleisthenes who created new vertical social divisions in contrasting fashion to the horizontal ones thought to have been created by Tullius.