Yesterday

“Yesterday” comes from the same aborted We Love Life sessions as “Forever in My Dreams,” but it’s a deeply inferior song. While the latter is one of Pulp’s most sublime and deeply moving hidden tracks, “Yesterday” is wan, rote and uninspired, from the bland guitar riff that opens the song through Jarvis’ distracted delivery of one of his few bland lyrics. It’s not the most original idea for a song – a pep talk urging someone to let go of the past. Jarvis has generally had little trouble revitalizing once-hackneyed song ideas with wit and imagination. Not this time. At least the band knew well enough to give the song a fairly wide berth, on the b-side to “Bad Cover Version,” along with “Forever in My Dreams,” but they could have gone further and left the song in the vaults. There are lost songs from this era, such as “The Quiet Revolution” and “Cuckoo Song,” that also leave “Yesterday” in the dust.