I'm a Man

Unfairly dismissed by Jarvis a few years after its release, “I’m a Man” proves that the band could never become completely ordinary; they’re just too damned neurotic. (In Mark Sturdy’s Pulp bio, Truth and Beauty, Nick Banks suggests that the song was more successful in live settings.) This is practically the sibling to “Party Hard,” another rock song that combines stadium-sized bloat with Jarvis’ bitterly pointed lyrics and panicked vocals, in order to show the listener how dehumanization really feels. And, like “Party Hard” again, “I’m a Man” is just a potent now, almost ten years after its release. Consider the sobering notion that lad magazines may in fact be the most successful mid-‘90s UK export to America.