“This Is Hardcore” by Pulp

Pulp sent the title track of This Is Hardcore, their sixth album, out as its second single in March 1998, and it finds Jarvis Cocker writing about fame through the lens of pornography. He owned up to a mix of revulsion and attraction toward the stuff, much of it caught on hotel TVs on tour, and wondered what becomes of the older performers once they've been used up. Swap porn for pop and the song's point comes clear.

Chris Thomas produced it and Anne Dudley arranged it, both of them adding piano, and the music is credited to Cocker, Nick Banks, Candida Doyle, Steve Mackey and Mark Webber. It samples the Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra's "Bolero on the Moon Rocks". It reached 12 in the UK and went top 40 in Finland, Iceland and New Zealand, and both the song and its video have drawn acclaim since.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.