Party Hard

great song, awesome video

Does anyone else feel the lyrics could be about something deeper than being bored of partying?

I reckon it could be about unrequited love. He loves a woman, she used to love him but nothing happened because all of a sudden she moved onto someone else. It uses the backdrop of a party to symbolise the mundane ritual of love.

"Entertainment can sometimes be hard when the thing that you love is the same thing that's holding you down"

He loves her but she is clearly holding him back from finding someone else because he's so fixated on her.

"This man is dangerous, he just shed his load on your best party frock"

The other guy has shown his intent, he is "dangerous" whilst the narrator is boring.

"I was having a whale of a time until your uncle Psychosis arrived."

He was happy until she decided she liked someone else. There was just no logic behind her actions.

"I'm here whenever you need me & whenever you need me I won't be here."

He still wants her, but at the same time, he should sack her off considering how she's treated him. He's in two minds.

"If you didn't come to party then why did you come here?"

If she doesn't love him any more what was the point of even trying with him? Why waste all that time just to decide that he's not worthy of her?

"When the party's over will you come home with me?"

When she breaks up with the other guy, could there still be a chance of him and her getting together?

It's probably because I'm going through something similar at the minute and I've been listening to This Is Hardcore a lot recently, but when I listened to the lyrics something just clicked.

Your interpretation is certainly plausible. A possible alternative interpretation of "Entertainment can sometimes be hard when the thing that you love is the same thing that's holding you down" is that he loves this person, but he also finds this person constraining and difficult.

So my take on this is that it is pretty obviously about Jarvis/Pulp hitting the big time and realizing that it is shyte. Nothing too shocking there.

The only things that think are worth adding are that i think cocaine psychosis/paranoia plays a big role in this song (as with quite a few songs on This Is Hardcore).

Specifically, the lines: I was having a whale of a time until your uncle Psychosis arrived.

Obviously about drug psychosis and paranoia.

Why do we have to half kill ourselves just to prove we're alive? I'm here whenever you need me And whenever you need me I won't be here.

In the obvious sense, this is about excessive coke use, and how it sucks the life out of the hard partier. And on a slightly different take, the cost that this has on those around the partyer: they're there to party, to get amongst it, but as a result of this high life and celebrity, they're pretty much a sh!thouse friend now, and essentially a sh!t person.

The song may also be about people that feel that they are not living a full life unless they are involved in some king of partying all the time. Living side by side with such people may be very tiresome, and you may be missing some not-so-spectacular, but very important slow moments of the life.

this is an occult exploratory sort of song, similar to Bowie's Thin White Duke and has a variety of overlapping meanings-

on one hand he is almost singing to a decrepit porn star "I've seen you having it, having it, but now you just had it" which is simultaneously himself, (Jarvis mentions later of this time he felt his filter barring the world from seeing his inner self was stripped by corrosive drugs & fame, hence the imagery of a portrait of himself behind a cracked window in the This Is Hardcore video etc,) sort of guiding them through their work: "entertainment can sometimes be hard... just get on the floor and show me, show me what you're made of."

on the other hand it is also about the shadow of regular human sexual dimorphism, which tends to be seen by those only with an irregular, perhaps unhealthy fascination with it & the "chunky" alienation that ensues- a similar feeling to an over consumption of pornography of any sort. It is a cautionary tale of "don't stare too long." Part of what Jarvis means by 'hardcore' is to get to the bottom of things, but as the great Allan Watts said "𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘢 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘧 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘢 𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘺 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦, 𝘪𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘧𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘮 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘧𝘳𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘶𝘳" sic of which will tell us very little about what a leaf actually is. It is like trying to explain a leaf without mentioning a tree.

To be hardcore, that is, to be so thoroughly involved in one state of being that it is like death, to be stuck forever- it is practically vampiric. Life is and is about change. To party to excess as a job or vocation is to take the celebration of life and make it mechanical, which it is partially already, as a skeleton may be viewed as a machine servicing the soul, but what is partying, anyway? What do people mean by "rock"?

This viewing of life as mechanical also has to do with occultism and magick, which at it's essence is to use esoteric knowledge of "the unseen side of life" to effect change. All throughout this song he uses a vocal harmonizer effect that adds a ghostly, vocaloid-style second voice to his own- like a laser-point of resonance, like the intended consequences of a magician's spoken spells. Jarvis mentions "I used to do the I-ching" in 'Glory Days,' clearly focuses his will with devil signs doing "Party Hard" live on Conan O' Brien & looks skyward after the same tune live at Finsbury Park and thanks whatever disparate entity has granted him successful completion of his work. This is clearly channeling Bowie's "Station To Station" methodology, which was another cocaine addled rock star obsessed with the occult using the medium of the album to try and effect his will, mainly for salvation from a hell partially if not fully of his own making. in "This Is Hardcore" Jarvis is trying to rescue himself from being eaten alive by the zeitgeist of 97' cool Britannia- which he infact, helped create. To say something unsexual is "pornographic" is to mean it is manipulative and divorced from what is the pure impetus of the situation for the purposes of titillation or power- this could be easily ascribed to the likes of the Spice Girls and New Labour's empty promises. There was a headwind afoot of profound fuckery and Jarvis was in a psychic weather tower, this album is his distress beacon and magic machine- willing him to get out of harm's way.

[Edit: better spacing of paragraphs]

this song sounds kind of like it belongs more on different class..then again Pulp is Pulp. cool song