Help The Aged

This song was chosen as the lead single from 1998 album This Is Hardcore, and signposted the new direction the band took - one full of cynicism and loathing for the fame that had accompanied their breakthrough 1995 record Different Class. It's one that surprised many who were expecting more upbeat tunes like "Common People," but one that Jarvis Cocker was keen to go in. Observer music critic Sean O'Hagan noted in a 2002 interview with Cocker that This Is Hardcore "cost Pulp a sizeable proportion of their post-Common People fan base," but Cocker in the same interview notes: "I weren't surprised in the slightest. Songs about panic attacks, pornography, fear of death and getting old are never gonna be top of the hit parade, are they? I wrote about my own life. Before that, it was me pottering about, picking up bits of information from wherever. Then it became very interior. Introspective. I don't think introspection is ever that healthy. In my experience, the more angst-ridden I've been, the worse the music is.'

Despite the dark tone of the song, "Help The Aged" still charted at #8 in the UK singles chart, making it the band's fifth consecutive Top 10 single.

In Seven Years of Plenty, Ben Thompson notes the dark themes of aging and death referenced in "Help The Aged": "Jarvis Cocker croons caringly, over a sparse piano accompaniment, 'One day they were just like you: drinking, smoking cigs and sniffing glue.' But this jaunty one-two is just softening us up for the death blow: 'If you look very hard behind the lines upon their face, you may see where you are heading and it's such a lonely place.'"