This Father’s Day weekend, as barbecues sizzle and socks are unwrapped, one 61-year-old dad is standing tall – with a Number One album, More, five-star reviews for an international tour and the rarest accolade in British pop: relevance.
Step forward, Jarvis Cocker. Yes, that Jarvis, still impossibly lanky, still wearing glasses better than anyone since Michael Caine circa 1966 and, against all odds, back at number one and selling out arenas like The O2 (for the first time).Eschewing nostalgic pastiche, Pulp’s return – triumphant, sharp and tinged with real joy – hasn’t just lit up the charts and sold out arenas; it’s given a generation of men something even rarer: hope.
Not youthful hope. Not the deluded sort that imagines you could still fit into your leather jacket from 1994. But mature hope – the kind that says, “You don’t have to chase relevance. You just have to be you.”
That’s the Jarvis trick. In an industry obsessed with reinvention, he stayed true. No cynical rebrand, no desperate bid for TikTok virality. Instead, he’s returned precisely as he was: wry, deeply literate and gloriously odd. That same Sheffield snarl, that same sideways glance at celebrity, class and sex. It still cuts through the noise, perhaps more clearly now than ever.
Of course, very few people can pull this off. David Bowie did it – spectacularly – with The Next Day and Blackstar, albums that redefined him in his sixties. And yes, Take That returned older, wiser, less glossy – and struck a nerve. But Jarvis? He didn’t need to reinvent. He just waited for the world to catch back up.
And it has. In an age when the culture industry is laser-focused on youth, where 30 is seen as old and 40 can be a full-blown career obituary, it’s reassuring to see someone still shifting albums and selling out tours, who’s closer to pensionable age than pop stardom. What’s more, he’s doing it with intelligence, humour and vulnerability – qualities that some men are only just starting to access properly in mid-life.
Men in their fifties and sixties often disappear from the cultural foreground, unless they become parodies or patriarchs. Jarvis doesn’t do either. He remains lanky, louche, curious, political – someone who never stopped watching or thinking. He’s still interested.
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Perhaps, that’s the secret. There’s something about Jarvis’s resurgence that feels beautifully earned. This isn’t just nostalgia (although we’ll scream “Common People” like it’s 1995). It’s a genuine connection to the now. When he strides on stage in his brown corduroy suit and sings about the absurdity and ache of modern life, he’s not reaching backwards – he’s showing that authenticity doesn’t age.
On this particular weekend in June, that means something. To men wondering how to balance the dad jokes with dignity and figure out how to be seen, heard – maybe even admired – without selling out or giving up. To the quiet questioners who just want to know: “Can I still matter?” The answer is yes. But only if you do it like Jarvis, not by chasing the zeitgeist, but by being the weird, witty version of yourself that only you can be.
So here’s to Jarvis Cocker: father of cool, patron saint of middle-aged misfits and, right now, arguably the coolest man in Britain.
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