Good Pop, Bad Pop

The Sunday Times bestselling hit from Jarvis Cocker

Jarvis Cocker

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The funny, revealing, surprising and highly original memoir from Jarvis Cocker

**AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK**

What if the things we keep hidden say more about us than those we put on display?

We all have a random collection of the things that made us - photos, tickets, clothes, souvenirs, stuffed in a box, packed in a suitcase, crammed into a drawer. When Jarvis Cocker starts clearing out his loft, he finds a jumble of objects that catalogue his story and ask him some awkward questions:

Who do you think you are?

Are clothes important?

Why are there so many pairs of broken glasses up here?

From a Gold Star polycotton shirt to a pack of Wrigley's Extra, from his teenage attempts to write songs to the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book, this is the hard evidence of Jarvis's unique life, Pulp, 20th century pop culture, the good times and the mistakes he'd rather forget. And this accumulated debris of a lifetime reveals his creative process - writing and musicianship, performance and ambition, style and stagecraft.

This is not a life story. It's a loft story.

Published: 15 June 2022
ISBN: 9781787330566
Imprint: Jonathan Cape
Format: Hardback
Pages: 368
RRP: $48.00

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Praise for Good Pop, Bad Pop

Incredibly entertaining...a trip through the things that have made him who he is.
Jessie Thompson, Evening Standard, *Books to Look Out For 2022*

Poignant in a subtle, understated way; Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time for the age of the Ford Cortina... This book is about a very normal childhood and the everyday detritus it left behind. Common people indeed.
Will Hodgkinson, The Times

Brilliant... accessible, pithy, lurid, entertaining, even laugh-out-loud funny... we can only hope that Cocker has enough tat for a second volume.
Neil McCormick, The Telegraph

Rummage through its pages - through the plastic and nylon, the tin and vinyl - and it's real gold, its shirts second-hand, of course, but its storytelling first class.
Victoria Segal, Sunday Times

Brilliant...Good Pop, Bad Pop is more than anyone dared hope for
John Aizlewood, i newspaper

Brilliantly fabulous: at once very witty, self-depreciating and moving.
Evening Standard

Thoughtful and very funny... terrific
Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian

Engaging and evocative. He [Cocker] paints a vividly drab picture of the north of England under Thatcherism. And his book is beautiful to look at, too, set out like pop art.
Daily Express

Like a pop culture Proust... a testament to just how rich this junk is that Cocker can weave such a compelling take.
Record Collector

Insightful and delightful.
Hi-Fi Choice

Good Pop, Bad Pop... pulses with the thrilling energy of adolescence and early adulthood... Cocker uses his objects to tell real stories about the past, leaving in the dirt and disappointment around the moments of excitement.
Prospect

With laugh-out-loud passages of comedy and stylish illustrations... [this] is the story of how he [Cocker] made himself into who he is, his acquisition of a personal style and outlook... Hopefully we will not have to hang around long before his next trip to the loft.
Financial Times

Like little madeleines, each relic is offered up to the reader in the intimate, confiding voice familiar from Cocker's lyrics.
Sunday Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*