“Archie” Comics Meet Pulp’s “Common People”

Image from Chris’ Invincible Super-Blog
Click the image to see it on its original page.

Back in the mid- to late nineties, one track you couldn’t avoid on alt-rock radio was Pulp’s Common People (from their excellent album, Different Class), a song that pokes fun at the genteel faux-poverty of kids from rich families at art school.

In the lyrics, the “narrator” tells the story of a rich Greek sculpture student at St. Martin’s college who wants to do a little lifestyle tourism amongst the British working class. The song is purportedly based on a real-life female acquaintance of Pulp’s lead vocalist Jarvis Cocker, who had a rich Greek female acquaintance at an art school named St. Martin’s who said that she wanted to “live like common people.” Cocker embellished the story in the chorus’ lyrics, adding “I want to sleep with common people like you.” According to Wikipedia, The BBC went so far as to try and locate the real-life rich art student who inspired the song without success.

Image from Chris’ Invincible Super-Blog
Click the image to see it on its original page.

There are (ahem) commonalities shared by Common People and the situation in Archie comics between rich girl Veronica Lodge and the very middle-class Archie Andrews. There are probably thousands of Archie storylines that are based on Archie not having enough money take Veronica on the type of date to which she has become accustomed. Some clever Photoshopper noticed the Common People/Archie connection, took the Common People lyrics, mashed them up with panels from Archie comics, and the result is over at Chris’ Invincible Super-Blog: Archie in…A Different Class!

Image from Chris’ Invincible Super-Blog
Click the image to see it on its original page.

This comic/music mashup got taken to the next level — Ontario Emperor (he’s from Ontario, California, not Ontario, Canada) points to this Michael Hanscom video that uses a montage of the remixed Archie panels with Common People as its soundtrack. It’s pretty good:

Recommended Reading

She’s Goth to Have It: An Archie comic like no other — in this one, Betty goes goth!

Anarchie: an anarchist take on Archie.

Here’s a classic Archie cover that shows the hilarious things that happen when slang changes: