Pulp have announced details of an album playback and Q&A in London, celebrating the 30th anniversary of ‘Different Class’.
It comes as last month saw the legendary Sheffield band announce a reissue of their classic 1995 album, which will include the first ever release of their Glastonbury 1995 performance.
That album saw them take home the Mercury Prize for that year and top the charts – becoming their most successful album and selling over a million copies in the UK. It included hit singles ‘Common People’, ‘Disco 2000’ and ‘Sorted For E’s & Wizz’, and was named as the sixth greatest album of all time by NME back in 2013.
Now, the band have unveiled details of an album playback and Q&A session taking place in London next week.
Taking to Instagram, the band confirmed that the event will be held between 6pm and 8pm on Thursday October 30 at a “secret location” in East London. Frontman Jarvis Cocker, keyboardist Candida Doyle, and guitarist Mark Webber will be in attendance for a conversation with Miranda Sawyer, and taking questions from the audience.
The date marks 30 years to the day since the album was first shared, and tickets will be free and allocated on a first come, first served basis.
You can sign up for tickets here, and registration begins tomorrow (Friday October 24) at 10am local time.
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Tomorrow also marks the release of the new 30th anniversary edition of the album, which will be released as both a quadruple LP set and as a double CD. Visit here to pre-order.
The release will include the full performance the band gave as Pyramid Stage headliners at Glastonbury 1995, an iconic set that came several months before the release of ‘Different Class’, after they were asked to fill in for The Stone Roses with just 10 days notice.
To mark the 20th anniversary of the album back in 2015, NME looked back at the legacy the LP had on indie culture and highlighted how while Blur and Oasis helped develop the ‘Britpop’ label, Pulp’s ‘Different Class’ was the release that “perfected it”.
Speaking about the inspiration behind the huge hit ‘Common People’ at the time, Cocker said it was inspired by the different values he saw between people when he came to London.
“I used to think class was a myth. I always got really irritated when people went on about it. Then I came down to London and I had to admit it did exist. And it wasn’t a money thing, it was more about people’s expectations from life,” he shared.
“If you come from a certain background, if you’re intelligent and you want to do something other than go out every Friday and Saturday night and get pissed, then have a curry and fight or a shag, if you can get one, then its pretty difficult. Creative aspirations aren’t what’s expected of you.
“You see all these fucking idiots with flash cars in London, and you think of all these people in Sheffield with so much about them, but who were slowly going out of their minds because there’s no outlet for what they wanna do. So if there [was] a war to be waged, then it [was] creative people trying to invade the mainstream.”
Earlier this summer, the singer also opened up to NME about why Pulp continue to resonate with younger audiences over time.
“It might be because I was obsessed with pop music from a really young age, and I tried to learn about the world from it,” he pondered. “The time I started to write my own songs was around the same time I started trying to have my own relationships. I realised that a love affair was nothing like a love song. I felt like I’d been duped a bit by the way that love had been presented to me in pop songs.”
“That gave me the blueprint for what I was going to try and do in Pulp as the lyric writer: to write words to love songs, but more to how I thought it was. It’s stayed the same,” he added. “Maybe that’s why younger people listen to Pulp songs: because I was an adolescent when I came up with that concept. I still look for meaning in music. Some people say it’s just entertainment, but for me it’s always been more than that.”
In June, Pulp released their eighth album ’More’ – their first full-length record in 24 years. In a four-star review, NME concluded: “Just as Blur did with ‘The Ballad Of Darren’ and Suede have managed on their immaculate run of post-reunion albums, Pulp have retained their original spirit and flair into a statement of middle age without feeling any less vital. As Cocker pines on the cinematic closer ‘A Sunset’, all things end, so just make the most of the time you have. It’s strangely beautiful, now they’re all fully grown.”
They went on to play a ‘You Deserve More’ UK arena tour this summer, as well as a triumphant and badly-kept “secret” set at Glastonbury 2025, and kicked off the North American leg of the tour last month.
NME was at the Glastonbury set, awarding it five stars and noting: “These legends capture the spirit of these hallowed grounds with a little peace, love and joyous wonky-pop hedonism. One for the books? Sure, but as Cocker puts it: ‘History and stuff like that doesn’t matter because it’s all about now and what we can do right now’.”
The band caught up with NME again at the 2025 Mercury Prize in Newcastle, where they were shortlisted for ‘More’, alongside the likes of CMAT, Wolf Alice, Fontaines D.C., Pa Salieu and the eventual winner Sam Fender.
Opening up about if we can expect any more new music soon, keyboardist Candida Doyle responded: “No, we’re not itching. An EP, maybe, or a single. An LP…”
Drummer Nick Banks added: “It’s a big undertaking,” Banks explained. “You have to do all this kind of malarkey.”
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