His 'n' Hers
by Pulp

Album: The Sisters EP (1994)
Charted: 19
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Songfacts®:

  • "His 'n' Hers" was originally planned to be the title track off the album of the same name, released earlier in 1994, but it ultimately missed the cut and was instead was included on The Sisters EP, which included two other songs which missed the album: "Your Sister's Clothes" and "Seconds," along with the single "Babies."
  • In a Melody Maker interview in December 1995, Cocker explained the theme of the entire His 'n' Hers album, which are reflected and brought to an apex on the title track. "That thing where two people start wearing matching clothes, their personalities start to merge, they know exactly what each other's thinking, and they haven't a whole personality of their own any more," he said. "They've just got half of something else. And if that's taken away, they're less than a person."
  • "His 'n' Hers" lyrically deals with a fear of settling down into conventional married life, and rejecting conformity in relationships via the bizarre conduit of fears of interior decorating, which for the narrator seems to represent the domestic bliss he fears.
  • During live performances, Jarvis Cocker would ad-lib an entirely new section, replacing the original lyrics listing his rather ridiculous fears. Instead, he would ask audience members about their fears and go off on tangents based on those.

    Jarvis frequently improvised the part where he listed things he's frightened of. In October 1994 at a performance at Keele University, a girl in the front row mentioned that she feared dogs, to which Cocker replied: "Dogs. It's not a very well known fact... you've probably seen a lot of nature programmes, yeah? And in these nature programmes they make out that man was descended from the ape. And at one time we were all walking round like this, yeah? We evolved to stand upright. We evolved to stand upright and drive cars. And err... support football teams. But recent research has proved that man is not descended from the ape as had previously been believed, but man is actually descended from dogs. This will explain a lot of behavior you get to see at nightclubs and discos. Yeah, like a dog sniffs a lamp post."

    Meanwhile, on an appearance on Butt Naked on Channel 4 in 1995, someone mentioned a hatred of wasps. Cocker's response: "Well, yeah, because they just sting people for no reason at all. If a bee stings you, it's got a reason, because it has a pay with its life, whereas wasps can just sting people for no reason at all, as many times as they want. And there are some people like that as well; in fact some people even enjoy stinging you as many times as they can."

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