Watch Pulp perform unreleased song ‘Hymn Of The North’ live in Sheffield
Jarvis Cocker treated his hometown crowd to the first listen of the track
Pulp performed an unreleased song called ‘Hymn Of The North’ at one of their Sheffield homecoming gigs this weekend – check out footage below.
The Britpop legends were performing at Utilita Arena on Saturday (July 15) for the second of two shows in their home city.
Closing out the concert with their second encore of the evening, frontman Jarvis Cocker introduced ‘Hymn Of The North’ as a song fans hadn’t heard before.
“Okay, I can promise you that no one has ever heard this song except for us on this stage. Actually, that was a lie,” Cocker told the crowd.
“It’s a song, the kind of version of it was featured in a play by a guy called Simon Stephens and it’s called ‘Hymn Of The North’.”
He went on: “We are in the north, so we thought you should hear it first, okay?”
The frontman added that there were discussions about to whether he should play it at all because there was “a lot that could go wrong with it”, including that he was “playing the piano for a start”.
Check out footage of the performance below.
Saturday also saw former short-time Pulp member Richard Hawley – who supported the band at both Sheffield shows – join the group on stage to perform ‘Sunrise’ and ‘Common People’. He also joined them onstage the previous night (July 14) and at their Dublin show in June.
Pulp first announced their plans to reunite once again for a number of live shows back in July 2022.
The last time the band had played together was in 2012, two years after they began a first reunion tour that took them to Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds and beyond.
During a talk hosted by The Guardian about his memoir Good Pop, Bad Pop, Cocker confirmed that the band would reunite to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their album This Is Hardcore.
In March this year, Steve Mackey, the longtime bassist for Pulp, died at the age of 56.
Cocker paid tribute to his late bandmate on Instagram, writing: “Our beloved friend & bass player Steve Mackey passed away this morning… Steve made things happen. In his life & in the band. & we’d very much like to think that he’s back in those mountains now, on the next stage of his adventure. Safe travels, Steve. We hope to catch up with you one day.”
When Pulp reformed Mackey said he would not be taking part in the reunion tour in order “to continue the work I’m engaged in – music, filmmaking and photography projects”.
At Pulp’s Sheffield shows the band dedicated ‘Something Changed’ to Mackey, according to setlist.fm.