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This Is Hardcore is the sixth album by English band Pulp. Released in March 1998, it came three years after their breakthrough album, Different Class, and was eagerly anticipated. In 2013, NME ranked it at number 166 in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[4] Rolling Stone declared that it "is arguably the first pop album devoted entirely to the subject of the long, slow fade", which it heralded as "a bold move because it breaks one of rock's oldest songwriting taboos".[5] The Chicago Tribune hailed it as "a smashing album about midlife crisis".[6]

This Is Hardcore
Studio album by Pulp
Released	30 March 1998
Recorded	November 1996–January 1998[1]
Studio	The Townhouse, London Olympic, London
Genre	Alternative rock art rock[2] Britpop[3]
Length	69:49
Label	Island
Producer	Chris Thomas
Pulp chronology
Countdown 1992–1983 (1996) This Is Hardcore (1998) Freshly Squeezed... the Early Years (1998)
Singles from This Is Hardcore
"Help the Aged" Released: 11 November 1997 "This Is Hardcore" Released: 9 March 1998 "A Little Soul" Released: 8 June 1998 "Party Hard" Released: 7 September 1998

Background and release

Friction grew in the band in the years following the massive success of Different Class, "culminating in the notable departure of guitarist and violinist Russell Senior; Cocker left for New York alone to decompress and write in isolation from the rest of the band."[7]

As with the band's previous album,This is Hardcore reached No. 1 in the UK Albums Chart, but with far fewer sales, [8] and was well received critically, earning Pulp a third successive nomination for the 1998 Mercury Prize.[9]

The cover photo was art directed by Peter Saville and the American painter John Currin who is known for his figurative paintings of exaggerated female forms. The model photographed is Ksenia Sobchak[10] and the images were further digitally manipulated by Howard Wakefield, who also designed the album.[11] Currin was also the art director for the "Help the Aged" video, based on his painting "The Never Ending Story". Advertising posters showing the album's cover that appeared on the London Underground system were defaced by graffiti artists with slogans like "This Offends Women"[12] and "This is Sexist" or "This is Demeaning".[13]

The music video for the title track was directed by Doug Nichol and was listed as the No. 47 best video of all time by NME.[14] A bonus live CD entitled "This Is Glastonbury" was added to the album later in 1998. A deluxe edition of This Is Hardcore was released on 11 September 2006. It contained a second disc of B-sides, demos and rarities.

Commercial performance

The album had first-week sales of just over 50,000, 62% fewer than Different Class first-week sales of 133,000.[15] The album was certified gold by the BPI April 1998 for sales of 100,000.[16] As of 2008, sales in the United States have exceeded 86,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.[17]

Reception and legacy

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[18]
Chicago Tribune	[6]
Entertainment Weekly	A−[19]
The Guardian	[20]
Los Angeles Times	[21]
NME	7/10[22]
Pitchfork	7.8/10[23]
Q	[24]
Rolling Stone	[5]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[25]
Spin	8/10[26]

Nick Hornby, writing in Spin, proclaimed that on the album "England's unofficial poet laurete Jarvis Cocker perfects his poetry of the prosaic".[26] Rolling Stone noted that This is Hardcore was "less bright and bouncy" than its era-defining predecessor, but praised it as being "even more daring and fully realized", noting that "it plays like a movie, a series of scenes from a life".[5] The review concluded, "In midlife oblivion, Pulp have found a strange kind of liberation. Desperation never sounded quite so entertaining." Other reviews in the States adopted a similar tone, with the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette all awarding three and a half stars out of four.[6][21][27] The Tribune found that "[the] music is sumptuous lounge-lizard rock augmented by strings and noisy disruptions - a clever, catchy '90s take on the Bowie/Mott/Roxy glam rock of the '70s."[6]

In a retrospective assessment of the album's impact, Matthew Horton wrote in NME that "in its sense of surrender, regret and flashes of panic, it captured the time to a tee." In an article entitled, "How Pulp’s This Is Hardcore Brought Britpop To A Halt", Horton maintained that it was "a sloughing-off of fame’s skin, a rejection of the Britpop monster".[28] He concluded, "It’s an end, a hard-wrought epitaph to a band’s jaunt in the limelight and a suitable jump-off point for what had been a rare old few years – for us, at least." Another review found the song "A Little Soul" to be "Cocker’s most disconsolately beautiful", drawing "from the musical blueprint of Smokey Robinson’s “Tracks of My Tears.”"[29]

This is Hardcore was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[30] In 2014, US LGBT magazine Metro Weekly placed the album at number 46 in its list of the "50 Best Alternative Albums of the '90s".[2] In 2017, Pitchfork ranked it seventh in "The 50 Best Britpop Albums".[31]

Track listing

Personnel

Charts and certifications

References

External links

• This Is Hardcore at YouTube (streamed copy where licensed)
• This Is Hardcore at Discogs (list of releases)

На других языках

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- [en] This Is Hardcore

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[es] This Is Hardcore

This Is Hardcore es el sexto álbum de la banda Pulp, editado en marzo de 1998. Lanzado tres años después de su gran éxito comercial Different Class, fue largamente esperado. Aunque no alcanzó el mismo éxito comercial que su predecesor, llegó al número uno en las listas. Además, el álbum fue bien recibido por la crítica y le dio a la banda su tercera nominación consecutiva, en 1998, para los Mercury Music Prize. Las primeras versiones del álbum en el Reino Unido venían con un disco bonus en vivo, llamado This is Glastonbury. Una edición deluxe del álbum fue lanzada el 11 de septiembre de 2006, que incluye un CD extra con lados B, demos y rarezas.

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[it] This Is Hardcore

This Is Hardcore è il sesto album discografico in studio del gruppo musicale rock inglese Pulp, pubblicato nel 1998.

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[ru] This Is Hardcore

This Is Hardcore — шестой студийный альбом британской рок-группы Pulp, вышедший в 1998 году. «This is Hardcore» дебютировал на 1-м месте британского хит-парада и не покидал список наиболее популярных альбомов страны в течение 21 недели[4].

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