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“Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time” – Jarvis Cocker
(Words/music: Jarvis Cocker, available on Jarvis, Rough Trade 2006)

One thing that made Pulp such a compelling band is Jarvis Cocker’s engaging ability to tell a story.  His songs always put great care into details, yet Cocker puts much of the emphasis onto the thoughts and motives of his characters.  He gets inside his characters’ heads in these songs, privileging the inner workings over exterior details.  One way he accomplishes this is by putting himself into the song.  By using the first and second person, he shares not only his narrator’s inner monologue but also this character’s read on other people.  This is why “you” and “we” fill these songs, letting Cocker’s audience experience everything (including his other characters) through his narrator’s eyes.  When this works best, these Pulp songs toe the line between filling in just enough details to get to know the characters while only hinting at the deeper stories underneath the song.

“Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time,” the first single from his first solo album, Cocker still runs his stories through his first person narrator.  However, unlike many of his songs with Pulp, his narrator stays out of the events in the song.  He doesn’t use “I” or “we” at all, yet we still feel the narrator’s presence in the song.  Rather than sharing in the song’s plot sequence, Cocker offers advice to an unnamed female acquaintance, insisting that she keeps her guard up against the slick “love ‘em and leave ‘em” guys she runs into.  Even if he’s removed himself from the song’s plot, Cocker’s narrator remains essential, as it’s his read on the guy (vacuous and smooth) and the girl (vulnerable yet deserving of more) that makes the song work.  If Cocker merely described the events in the song, it wouldn’t have the same traction.  If he wrote the song from the girl’s perspective, it would sound like a third rate Aretha Franklin rip off – something that an American Idol castoff might throw out hoping for some En Vogue karma to wear off.  Instead, the song benefits from Cocker’s perspective, hinging around the title’s advice and the supporting reasons why men like this will only waste his friend’s time.

More on Jarvis Cocker: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm