Songfacts®:

• If you ever wondered what happens after "Sunrise," the closing track from Pulp's 2001 album We Love Life, the band finally got around to answering the question 24 years later. "A Sunset" closes out More, the Sheffield outfit's first album since We Love Life. It's as if Jarvis Cocker has been standing on the same hillside all this time, waiting for the sun to go down so he could scribble a few more lines about it.
• The song originated as a collaboration between Jarvis Cocker and former Pulp member and master of the sepia-toned guitar line, Richard Hawley. Cocker wrote the lyrics while Hawley provided the music.
• Cocker's lyrics major on the monetization of natural beauty and the loss of alternatives in modern life and modern politics.
  
  "I've been thinking about it, and especially with what America is now," he reflected to Uncut magazine. "Is there an alternative that you can think, 'Oh, yeah, that's the way I'd like to live?' You know, rock music came from America. America was very inspirational and the most modern country in the world. And now that isn't the case, or it's in the process of not being the case. We've been brought up in a time of extraordinary stability, really, and that's going. It's going to be interesting, but also quite upsetting."
• Jarvis Cocker took inspiration from a poster at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio studio in Chicago that advertised conceptual artist Rose Marshack's 2005 project "Tickets to the Sunset."
  
  Marshack's project was a "tour" of sunset events in major US cities, where she sold tickets as if the sunset were a live concert. This idea of commercializing a natural event directly influenced the song's cynical tone and its critique of consumer culture.
  
  "I like the idea of making people appreciate something that's there every day, but you forget about it because it's always there," Cocker told NPR. "It's a beautiful thing to look at a sunset."
• "A Sunset" opens with a sardonic twist on the classic Coca-Cola jingle, "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing":
  
  I'd like to teach the world to sing
  But I do not have a voice
  
  According to Cocker, Richard Hawley told him not to be concerned about the similarity to the jingle, which, ironically, only made Cocker more anxious about it.
• Environmental consciousness is woven into the song. Pulp credit "The Earth" as a co-writer, and one percent of royalties are directed to EarthPercent, a charity founded by Brian Eno to support environmental organizations.
• The track's lush orchestration, arranged by Laura Moody and conducted by Richard Jones, was fleshed out with backing vocals from the Eno family: Brian, Cecily, Darla, Irial, and Lotti Eno.
• The track was first performed publicly during a surprise appearance at The Leadmill in Sheffield on August 9, 2022, as part of Hawley's residency to support the venue's campaign against eviction. It was Cocker's first time on The Leadmill stage since November 1993.
  
  The song received its live debut with the full Pulp band at Flow Festival in Helsinki on August 11, 2024, and by the time More landed in June 2025, "A Sunset" had become the regular closer of Pulp's shows.
• So, after all that waiting, Pulp finally gave us the other half of the day. First there was "Sunrise." Now there's "A Sunset." One wonders if "Twilight" is penciled in for 2049.