Analysis of Lyrics

The song "common People" is centrally about a well educated, well spoken, and wealthy female art student coming to Sheffield with fantasies of living life ruff with the common people like the singer of the song "Jarvis Crocker". The first exchange that happens between them is that she buys him a drink rather than the other way around, this tells us that Jarvis is broke and intends to hang onto this girl for her naivety and her cash. "Well what could I do?" This line puts us on the inside with Jarvis and it's implied that we all know how naive she is and that he is going to take advantage of that, as it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

The first place that he takes her is a supermarket, possibly to get himself some food and booze, also though to show her the boring side of the common life opposed to the romanticised view that she has. When he tells her to "pretend you've got no money" the thought doesn't even occur to her that it could be a real problem and so she assumes it's just a joke. He swiftly points out though that it is quite serious for all the REAL commoners around her. She also doesn't realise that she's naive and just continues on smiling when he takes the mick out of her idea of becoming like them.

Next he tells her that even if she does everything as he does, and blends in perfectly with the common people of Sheffield, she'll never understand because she'll always have an easy way out whenever she wants it, this means that she'll never understand the desperation or the real problem of being without money or support.

The next verse of the song talks about how she's not going to be well received by anybody around once they figure out she's just pretending to live the common life, he's saying that she is mocking the common people as she thinks it's all a bit of a joke because she doesn't really understand the true hardships that these people go through.

When Jarvis is talking about grease being easy to wash off of her cloths, he's saying that she can easily be rid of this life if she wants to and she's got nothing to really worry about.

Finally, he is saying that she'll never really get the experience of being poor and that she won't ever be accepted by the people that truly are, she'll always be thought of as, and will always be,
 naive.