Oh is this the way they say the future's meant to feel?
Or just 20,000 people standing in a field
And I don't quite understand just what this feeling is
But that's okay 'cos we're all sorted out for E's and wizz
And tell me when the spaceship lands
'cos all this has just got to mean something
Oh
In the middle of the night, it feels alright
But then tomorrow morning
Oh, oh then you come down
Oh yeah, the pirate radio told us what was going down
Got the tickets from some fucked up* bloke in Camden Town
Oh and no-one seems to know exactly where it is
But that's okay 'cos we're all sorted out for E's and wizz
At four o'clock the normal world seems very, very, very far away
Alright
In the middle of the night, it feels alright
But then tomorrow morning
Oh, oh then you come down
Just keep on moving
Everybody asks your name
They say we're all the same
And now it's "nice one", "geezer"
And that's as far as the conversation went
I lost my friends, I dance alone
It's six o'clock I wanna go home
But it's "no way", "not today"
Makes you wonder what it meant
And this hollow feeling grows and grows and grows and grows
And you want to call your mother and say:
"Mother, I can never come home again
'cos I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere
somewhere in a field in Hampshire"
Alright
In the middle of the night, it feels alright
But then tomorrow morning
Oh, oh then you come down
Oh, oh then you come down
What if you never come down?
* On the single, "fucked up" is changed to "mashed up"
The summer of '89: Centreforce FM, Santa Pod, Sunrise 5000, "Ecstasy Airport", ride the white horse, the strings of life, dancing at motorway service stations, falling asleep at the wheel on the way home. There's so many people - it's got to mean something, it needs to mean something, surely it must mean something.
It didn't mean nothing.
Probably played live more often than any other Pulp song. Since its live début at Glastonbury in June 1995 it is hard to find an occasion when Sorted hasn't been played.
Jarvis has also occasionally played acoustic versions as a solo artist, such as at Manchester Royal Northern College Of Music in April 2009.
When it was first played live at Glastonbury in 1995, Jarvis had this to say about the song’s title: "[It’s] a phase that a girl I met in Sheffield once told me. And she went to see the Stone Roses at Spike Island and I said 'What do you remember about it?' and she said 'Well, I just remember all these blokes walking around saying 'Is everybody sorted for E's and wizz?'”.
Occasionally, when performing the song live, Jarvis has changed "Hampshire" in the lyrics "somewhere in a field in Hampshire" to the location they were playing. For example, when they played Blackpool Empress Ballroom in 1995, it was "Lancashire" and when they played Leeds in 2000, it was "Yorkshire".
Details here.