Pulp never really belonged, not even in the music scene, Britpop, of which they were one of the most important bands. Jarvis Cocker wrote with great empathy about all sorts of goofy characters, including himself. Some of those songs are bona fide classics. “Disco 2000” is one of the greatest alternative rock songs of the 1990s.
But what does it all mean? Where’s “Disco 2000,” who’s Deborah, and where’s the fountain down the road? I will be doing my best to answer all of those questions.
Pulp’s Journey to Making “Disco 2000”
I remember spending hours in the company of Britpop albums, posters and music videos. I remember imagining what hanging out with those characters must be like. And, I remember thinking that hanging out with the Gallagher brothers of Oasis would surely end in a black eye and alcohol-induced coma.
Pulp, on the other hand, sounded and looked just as cool, while entirely seeming like fish out of water. In Jarvis Cocker, they had a David Bowie-like rock intellectual. He had great dance moves, but they were silly. He wrote brilliant lyrics, I thought, but most were self-deflating. Yeah, that was a rock star I could relate to.
So did a lot of people. Just not immediately.
It took Pulp a few goes before hitting the big time in Great Britain. The group cut its first album in 1983. By the early 1990s, Cocker’s songwriting was coming into its own. But the band was still largely ignored in favour of more in-vogue indie-rock bands.
At the height of Britpop, Pulp made “Different Class,” undoubtedly one of the best albums of the era.
A chance cancellation by The Stone Roses at the last minute allowed Pulp to headline the Glastonbury Festival. The show ended with a magnetic rendition of “Common People.” And, puff, just like that, Pulp were sat alongside Oasis, Verve or Blur, as heroes of the British Empire, premier pop band, masters of Englishness.
“Disco 2000” was the other colossally successful, epochal single from “Different Class.” It mentioned characters that Cocker seemed to know personally. It baffled me, and the rest of the world for a good while. What does it all mean?
The Meaning of the Lyrics of “Disco 2000”
Jarvis Cocker had been doing Pulp as a full-time career for years before the band recorded “Different Class.” Now, the album would change Cocker’s life and that of his bandmates. But it was more than great timing that did it all.
Cocker had finally found the most natural, funniest and most empathatic way of writing about his peers. Whether it was about brainy geeks visiting the club on “Mis-Shapes,” kids getting smashed at the music festival on “Sorted for E’s & Wizz,” or impossible love affairs on “Common People,” Jarvis understood and took pity on his characters.
Often, as on “Disco 2000,” Cocker was, in fact, the ridiculous, but well-intended main character. These singles told stories. These tales were relatable for British audiences, and fairly exotic for everyone else.
On “Disco 2000,” the narrator, a teenager (who we’d assume is Jarvis), falls madly in love with Deborah, a school colleague. They grow up together, but the narrator feels incapable of telling her how he feels.
In their adulthood, the two drift apart, but our main character cannot stop thinking about Deborah. But the more he thinks about her, the more he realises that Deborah has likely moved on, gotten married, and had children. The narrator dreams of “Disco 2000” as the place where they’ll meet, catch up and accept the fate that they’ve been given.
Songwriting
Jarvis Cocker had found a way to blend personal themes and glam-rock grandeur on the band’s 1994 release “His ‘n’ Hers.” The “Different Class” album was a further distillation, I believe, of the recipe he had found.
On “Disco 2000”, he writes from experience, but also writes for millions with stories similar to his. The band also adds a disco-like beat to the song.
Even the geography checks out. The “fountain down the road” is, most likely, Goodwin Fountain in Sheffield, where Cocker grew up. That fountain, however, stood, less than the song is remembered.
As for the woman in the song, that was later revealed to be Deborah Bone, a childhood friend of Cocker’s. She grew up to be a mental health professional and won awards for helping young people manage stress and anxiety.
Sadly, Deborah passed away in 2014, but not before fessing up to being the character in the song with good humour: “Born in Sheffield, 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 #1 hit ‘Disco 2000’ but we never did get to meet up by the fountain down the road.”
Cocker later admitted that, indeed, most of his songs are about either him or somebody he knew. In 2002, he told BBC 6 Music: “I haven’t got much of a sense of imagination so a lot of our songs are just straight true stories – 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! (“We were born within-three-hours of each other”) It don’t work! So I took poetic license and cut it down to an hour.
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. The only bit that isn’t true is the woodchip wallpaper.“
The Music Video for “Disco 2000”
Pulp spent many years perfecting the band’s image and trying to get on the telly. By 1995, MTV viewers could hardly escape the band.
The music video was directed by Pedro Romhanyi. The video tells the love story between the boy and girl who also appear who meet at the disco and hook up. Models Patrick Skinny and Jo Skinny play the two parts. Rather memorably, Pulp’s musicians are shown in the form of cardboard cutouts.
The Legacy of Pulp and of “Disco 2000”
“Disco 2000” was a number 7 hit single in the U.K. It charted in other European territories as well. But what does that matter, really? Clearly, this is one of the most beloved songs of the era.
Pulp was praised by contemporaries left and right. Oasis had Cocker play football with them, while Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds covered “Disco 2000.”
Knowing that the song would likely flood the market around the turn of the millennium, smartly, I reckon, the group ended the song’s synchronisation license deal in 1999. It meant that the song avoided being used in endless, repetitive comedies set around the year 2000.
It did pop up on the British drama series “Life on Mars,” where the main character travels back in time to the year 1973. Cocker, Pulp and fans had few complaints about that, however.
“Disco 2000” and “Different Class” were the high watermark for Pulp. While the band never quite achieved the same level of artistic or commercial success, the band’s subsequent two releases grew the band’s amorous relationship with their fans.
And while many wept when Pulp called it a day just after the year 2000, in 2025, the band reunited and produced the excellent album “More.” It’s a happy end from one of the 90s most interesting bands.
