FEATURE:
Pulp’s Different Class at Thirty
Inside the Sublime Disco 2000
__________
I have written a feature…
about Pulp’s Different Class, as it turns thirty on 30th October. The band’s fifth studio album is considered their very best. Instead of doing another general feature, instead I am going to focus on my favourite song from the album. Disco 2000 was the third single from Different Class, released on 27th November, 1995. I can celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the album and the single. A huge song that was a big part of my childhood. I was twelve when the track came out, so I can remember listening to it at high school. To mark this song and the approaching thirtieth anniversary of Different Class, I am going to get to some features. A single that reached number seven in the U.K., Disco 2000 is frequently ranked alongside the best songs of the 1990s. Jarvis Cocker, Russell Senior, Mark Webber, Candida Doyle, Steve Mackey and Nick Banks created a masterpiece. One of many from Different Class. I am going to come some critical perspectives of Disco 2000. An obvious single that is sometimes overshadowed by the might and genius of the lead single, Common People, I have a particular fondness for Disco 2000. I think it was the song that drew me to Common People. One that I can listen to over and over again. I am going to start out with this article from Cult Following, as we get to discover the meaning behind a Pulp classic. Fans probably know the story. However, for those who do not, the below provides some insight and revelation:
“The song is one of Pulp’s best-known releases and sits alongside Common People, Sorted for E’s & Wizz, and Something Changed on their monumental Different Class. Though many are still trying to figure out the mystery figure mentioned in the anthemic Common People, the origins of Disco 2000 proved to be as interesting. Cocker shared all in an interview with Daniel Rachel, which featured in their book, The Art of Noise. The Pulp frontman confirmed it was the “futuristic,” far-off feel of the year 2000 which inspired the song and that the song itself is based on a true story.
The Deborah mentioned in the hit song was Deborah Bone, the mental health nurse who was honoured in the 2015 New Year’s Honours. She died on December 30, 2014, the day her MBE was announced.
Cocker said of the song: “The phrase Disco 2000 I liked. We’d done a party when I was at art college and I’d done some slides on very early computer technology that said Disco 2000 on them. That idea when I was a kid, the year 2000 seemed the most futuristic thing ever. The year 2000 was looming and it had seemed mind-blowing to me as a kid that I’d be alive in the year 2000 and we would be in space and I’d be there and wasn’t that incredible.
“It was very naive to think that now. It was 1995 and the millennium was only five years away and I thought, ‘This is a very upfront song: what subject could go with that?’ It seemed to me that a lot of people of my generation had that feeling and maybe you would have that thing of saying when you left school, ‘We’ll never forget each other and we’ll all meet up in the year 2000.’
“I guess a lot of people made pacts and it never happened. In the case of the fountain that I wrote about in that song, Sheffield Council didn’t help by actually removing it in 1998. So it physically couldn’t happen even if people had remembered to do it.
“Then it was memories of a true story of a girl who was born at the same time as me, and my mum was in the same maternity ward as hers, and we ended up going to the same school.”
The legendary frontman has since discussed the origins of the song’s message, saying he “fancied” Deborah “for ages”. He said: “There was a girl called Deborah—she was born in the same hospital as me. Not within an hour—I think it was like three hours—but you can’t fit three hours into the song without having to really rush the singing!
“But basically you know the whole thing was the same—I fancied her for ages and then she started to become a woman and her breasts began to sprout so then all the boys fancied her then. I didn’t stand a ‘cat-in-hell’s chance’. But then I did use to sometimes hang around outside her house and stuff like that”.
I am going to get to another feature from Cult Following soon. In fact, a review of the song. Before getting to that, it is worth bringing in some other reviews. Just a sprinkling of what critics think of the immense Disco 2000. Nostalgic for those like me who were around in 1995 as children and discovered the song fresh. As Pulp are touring and recently released an album, More, there is this opportunity for younger fans to hear this song on the stage:
“Disco 2000" has seen critical acclaim and has been labeled by many as one of Pulp's greatest songs. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic praised its "glitzy, gaudy stomp." James Masterton for Dotmusic said it "is easily the best track from the Different Class album, the closest they have ever come to an out-and-out pop stormer and certainly a floor-filler at office parties this holiday with its chorus of 'Let's all meet up in the year 2000/Won't it be strange when we're all fully grown.'" A reviewer from Music Week rated it three out of five, adding, "A bouncing disco beat, based on the riff from Laura Branigan's 'Gloria,' sees a pumped-up Pulp and Jarvis doing his usual talking bit. But it may disappoint fans of their recent epics." Simon Price from Melody Maker named it Single of the Week, writing, "But 'Disco 2000', like 'Pink Glove' before it, shows that what fuels his vindictive bitterness is actually a deep romanticism”.
I actually found this review from The Refined Cowboy. For so many people, Disco 2000 has deep personal connections and significance. Though it is part of the larger picture that is Different Class, there is this singular, distinct and powerful energy from the song that connects on a deeper level. Such a thrill that the band who created this track over thirty years ago are still together and can play Disco 2000 is a gift:
“At the time of its release it reached a respectable number 7 in the charts, but was bit of a second fiddle to its more popular number 2 achieving sibling Common People. Of course like most chart followers, it was Common People that introduced me to the band, seeing them for the first time ever on Channel 4’s morning zoo show The Big Breakfast. Not only was the song one of the best catchy numbers of the decade, but the video had me mesmerised – simultaneously dealing with themes of class and dating with a twinge of sadness from Jarvis Cocker’s voice, it all also seemed like so much fun as he explored the aisles of a hyper-colourful supermarket worthy of an LSD version of Repo Man. It told us that we could continue being 90s cynical youths, but from now on we could do it AND have some fun.
While Common People may have enjoyed more of the glory back then, it is easily Disco 2000 that trumps my personal chart today. Its sad, sentimental tone contradicts its fun, upbeat music, encouraging some serious (okay, maybe not that serious) social and existential thoughts while on the dance floor. Often concerned with matters of class in British society, with Disco 2000 Pulp channels the same sort of feelings and applies them to your awkward teen years, which is essentially the class struggle for kids.
While Common People may have enjoyed more of the glory back then, it is easily Disco 2000 that trumps my personal chart today. Its sad, sentimental tone contradicts its fun, upbeat music, encouraging some serious (okay, maybe not that serious) social and existential thoughts while on the dance floor. Often concerned with matters of class in British society, with Disco 2000 Pulp channels the same sort of feelings and applies them to your awkward teen years, which is essentially the class struggle for kids.
For me however, connection with the tragic narrative aside, it mostly brings back memories of Saturday afternoons in town. The entire music video is framed, which really made it stand out at the time (and maybe even still today?), and I can’t help but recall weekend trips to the record store in Bangor, where I’d always see the Pulp VHS collection of videos on display, the cover opting for the same design as the Disco 2000 music video, which has one of the best titles of all time - Sorted for films and vids, a play on their controversial song Sorted for E’s and Wizz.
What would my future bring? Would I be poor? Alone? A social outcast? For a teenager in 1995 the year 2000 was impossibly far away, another lifetime almost, and often felt like it would never really come. As anticipation for the turn of the millennium grew, hopes, expectations and opportunities moved on, and Disco 2000 became nothing but a dance we once went to ‘on that damp and lonely Thursday years ago’.
I will end with that review from Cult Following. A lot of people will be writing about Different Class ahead of its thirtieth anniversary on 30th October. A startling album that still sounds incredible relevant and powerful to this day, everyone has their own favourite song from Different Class. For me, it will always be the towering and captivating Disco 2000:
“Listeners to the seminal classic Disco 2000 will all have their very own fountain down the road. Whether it is that literal waterworks or a town centre their dad put the streetlights in, it matters not. Pulp crafted an anthem for the ages – one of the finest tracks put to tape – and their recent tour is surplus to the argument of its genius. The classic Different Class single has found a form of its own in recent years, an essential club and pub track which filters through on gloomy days as a shining light in an otherwise feeble disaster of a day. It is the lust and love featured within from the out-of-the-loop protagonist Jarvis Cocker writes himself into which marks Disco 2000 as a world-beating track of defiance meeting distress.
From a guitar riff recognised around the globe to a desire to recall the glory days from Cocker’s exceptional lyrics of longing for a woman who moved on far sooner than his protagonist did, Disco 2000 is a lightning-in-a-bottle moment. Brief spats of repetition, the cavalcade of usual Pulp stylings and the sexed-up presentation of all those years ago through the glittering eye of nostalgia – the hopeful claims they were on the verge of big plans decades before, it comes together wonderfully.
Life comes at you fast and for the lyrics Cocker puts out here, from being a mess at school to being friends but never more, Disco 2000 hits through not just as a track for the left-field losers painted as Pulp fans but for the generations after it. An anthemic classic in every sense of the word for its easy-to-access hooks, and its booming chorus which charms and writhes in the guilt and fear of meeting up with old pals. Collect those memories, the oohs and aahs of how everyone around you has grown – not that it’s any of your business anyway. Disco 2000 is a song which survives on its own, far away from the album of course but it lives on as a perfect example of Pulp quality.
Cocker was right all along. It is strange now we’re all fully grown. You aren’t the same as you are in your youth. Disco 2000 is an essential piece of work not just for the Pulp discography, not just for the 1990s indie spectrum of work but for the shift in tone a genre can take. To turn it on its head as Pulp did with this is beyond the pale. A gift of a track – and Pulp has plenty of those”.
I am going to wrap things up here. It is sad that the inspiration behind Disco 2000, Deborah Bone, died in 2015. However, she is part of music history. A song that is among the standouts of Different Class. On 30th October, it turns thirty. I recall when it came out in 1995. Maybe one of my very earliest experiences of Pulp. I loved Disco 2000 back in 1995 and now, three decades on, it remains in my head and heart! I wanted to show affection for…
A true classic.