Blur and Oasis may have been the focus of 1995’s hyped ‘Battle of Britpop’ but my favourite song from that year came from Pulp – and it’s a track with a rich back-story of its own.
Disco 2000 was the third of four top ten singles to come from the Sheffield band’s most successful album, Different Class (the others being the anthemic Common People, the double A-side Sorted For E’s & Wizz/Mis-Shapes and Something Changed).
A tale of unrequited young love about a boy who falls for an unobtainable girl named Deborah, Disco 2000‘s lyrics were based on singer Jarvis Cocker’s childhood friend Deborah Bone, who moved away from Sheffield aged ten.
Bone, a nurse, died from cancer in early 2015 aged 51, just hours before she was awarded an MBE for services to children and young people.
The song’s video features Cocker appearing only in the background on a TV screen and as a cardboard cutout. It tells the story of a young couple hooking up at a disco for a one-night stand.
Or was it just a one-night stand? In real life the couple – and friends of the band – Pat and Jo Skinny, are married. Jo also attended Saint Martins College in London, where the unnamed Greek female subject of Common People also studied.
Small world, eh?
Finally, is it just me or is Disco 2000’s main guitar riff lifted from the classic 1980s Laura Branigan song Gloria?
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