Song of the day for December 30 2023

Todays song is Disco 2000 by Pulp.

The woman who inspired Pulp’s hit song ‘Disco 2000’ died shortly after being appointed a member of the Order of the British Empire. Deborah Bone, from Hertfordshire was a childhood friend of lead singer Jarvis Cocker in Sheffield. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2013. The 1995 Britpop hit contains the lyric: “Your name is Deborah. Deborah. It never suited ya.” She passed away on December 30 2014.

“Disco 2000” tells the story of a narrator falling for a childhood friend called Deborah, who is more popular than he is and wondering what it would be like to meet again when they are older. Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker based the lyrics on a girl he knew as a child and recalled, “the only bit that isn’t true is the woodchip wallpaper.” He elaborated:

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

Deborah was based on a real-life childhood friend of Cocker’s, Deborah Bone, who moved away from Sheffield to Letchworth when she was 10. As the lyrics suggest, she did marry and have children. Bone later reflected, “My claim to fame is growing up and sleeping with Jarvis Cocker, well someone had to do it, and it was all perfectly innocent! I have been told and like to believe that I am the Deborah in the Number 1 hit ‘Disco 2000,’ but we never did get to meet up by the fountain down the road.” The fountain referred to as the meeting place was Goodwin Fountain, formerly located on Fargate, in Sheffield city centre.