Little Girl (With Blue Eyes)
by Pulp

Album: single release only (1985)
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Songfacts®:

  • This was the third single put out by Pulp. It was another non-album single after "Everybody's Problem/There Was...", and the first to feature two members who would become staples of the band well into their boom period: Russell Senior on guitar and Candida Doyle on keyboards.

    Jarvis Cocker explained how the post-"Everybody's Problem" period saw the new lineup come together: "Around the middle of '84, I met up with Russell Senior, who I'd first met in 1980. He came to our Leadmill concert and wrote our very first review in his fanzine 'The Bath Banker.' We decided to have a last ditch effort, so we practiced with a new drummer, Magnus Doyle, and the next incarnation of Pulp was born, with a new bassist, Pete Mansell, who was a friend of Magnus', whose sister Candida Doyle joined after a few months. At first, we had Tim Allcard, who played two-finger keyboard parts and recited poetry in between songs."
  • Cocker explained the meaning behind the song in a 1994 Record Collector interview with John Reed: "This was about a girl who gets pregnant. It was after seeing a picture of my mum, getting out of her wedding car, and realizing she was only 20, when she got pregnant and had to get married. She was at art college but had to give it up to have me."

    He continued: "The song got banned because of the lyrics - but not like Frankie goes to Hollwood. They just didn't play it. It got good reviews - 'a Scott Walker for the 80s!' People said, 'you'd like Scott Walker,' but all I'd heard sounded like Tom Jones. It wasn't until 1987 when somebody gave me a tape of his proper solo albums that I understood his genius. I started buying easy listening albums from jumble sales and Oxfam shops. Burt Bacarach, Henry Mancini - I found that easier to deal with, especially as we were making such abrasive music. I needed something to calm me down. I gave up being in touch with modern music. I resented anybody who was successful. I resented the Smiths, because they were from the North and doing a fairly similar thing."

    The band would later go on to work with Scott Walker as a producer on their We Love Life album.
  • The single featured three tracks on the B-side - "Simultaneous," "The Will To Power" and "Blue Glow," all of which ended up on the Masters of the Universe compilation.

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