Song of the Day: Pulp “Last Day of the Miners’ Strike”

Pulp ran into a conundrum with their 2002 Hits compilation. Though singer Jarvis Cocker was on the cusp of departing the band for a solo career, the group discovered that they were contractually obligated to contribute a new song for the compilation album. Cocker wanted the song to be something good: a song that could proudly sit aside the group’s collection of brilliantly iconoclastic singles that it had released over the previous decade and a half. The band also wanted to conclude the disc with a soaring ballad rather than a rock rave-up to end on a note of calm. The music for the song had already fallen into place, with keyboardist Candida Doyle unearthing the Burt Bacharach sample that underpins the song, but Cocker continued to struggle with the words.

One night, Cocker dreamed he had been listening to a John Lennon song about the 1984-85 miner’s strike that ran across Northern England and the Midlands. Realizing that the song was his own, (with Lennon having been murdered in 1980, well before the strike). Cocker had his subject and though he was at the time far more apolitical than he would become, his impulses remained in solidarity with the striking workers. After a little research, he was able to craft a song that remained pointed while staying more allusive than it was specific. The song combines a hearty dose of not quite nostalgia for 1980’s Britain while, despite the strike having failed in the end, finding a note of hopefulness for what the collective action achieved. The lyrics do include Cocker‘s regular dose of irony, but it doesn’t overwhelm the song. The song really deals with the dissolution of solidarity movements, but seems to imply that, despite the departure of a collective consciousness, the North of England would one day rise again.

Kids are spitting on the town hall steps and frightening old ladies
I dreamt that I was living back in the mid 1980s
People marching, people shouting, people wearing pastel leather
The future’s ours for the taking now
if we just stick together

And I said: “Hey, lay your burden down
seems the last day of the miners’ strike was the Magna Carta in this part of town”

Well, my body sank below the ground
it became as black as night
overhead the sound of horses’ hooves
people fighting for their lives
Some joker in a headband was still getting chicks for free
And Big Brother was still watching you
back in the days of ’83

And I said: “Hey, lay your burden down
seems the last day of the miners’ strike was the Magna Carta in this part of town”

Well by 1985, I was as cold a cold could be
but no-one was underground to dig me out and set me free
’87 socialism gave way to socialising
so put your hands up in the air once more:
the north is rising

And I said: “Hey, lay your burden down
seems the last day of the miners’ strike was the Magna Carta in this part of town”

Oh, sing Hallelujah
Oh, sing Hallelujah
Don’t let them fool you again
Oh, sing Hallelujah

By now I’m sick and tired of just living in this hole
so I took the ancient tablets
blew off the dust
swallowed them whole
Oh come on, let’s get together
Oh come on, the past is gone
Well, the very first commandment: Come on, come on, let’s get it on
Come on, let’s get it on
Get it on!
Oh, get it on

“Hey, lay your burden down
seems the last day of the miners’ strike was the Magna Carta in this part of town”