Pulp – Disco 2000: I Never Knew That You’d Get Married, I would be living down here on my own…

“I never knew that you’d get married
I would be living down here on my own
On that damp and lonely Thursday years ago…”

Still from the video.

Pulp’s song “Disco 2000” from their 1995 album “Different Class” is a song about the singer Jarvis Cocker’s childhood crush Deborah, but told through the lense of adulthood. The song is based on real events from Cocker’s childhood; there was indeed a girl called Deborah who was popular and pretty, but had no interest in Cocker and didn’t notice him at all. In the song he fantasises about meeting her at some distant point in the future, in the year 2000, when they’re both grown ups. There is a wittiness and a sense of humour, a slight self-deprecation which are all always present in Pulp’s songs but there is also a tinge of sadness, especially as the song’s narrator is realising that his childhood crush is now married while he is single and lonely on that damp Thursday: “I never knew that you’d get married/ I would be living down here on my own/ On that damp and lonely Thursday years ago….” There is even a cute sort of desperation when he sings “Oh, what are you doing Sunday, baby?/ Would you like to come and meet me, maybe?/ You can even bring your baby…” He doesn’t even care that she is with somebody, as long as he can see her.

Stills from the music video.

It is as if in one moment you are a carefree teen sitting bored in school, fantasising what your adult life might be, and you blink and suddenly you are twenty-something and your peers are getting married and having children. Doors are closing, opportunities being limited. We all have a certain someone that we fancied back in high school, or even primary school and we may have had certain fantasies and now we may have the what-ifs. That interest may have been only one-sided, or both parties may have been too shy to act upon anything… Time passes and school finishes. We move on with our life and we forget about that person, but there is always a warm, pure feeling to the memory. And the memory is pure and warm precisely because nothing happened; if something did happen, then it would likely leave us disappointed, as most school-age ‘loves’ do. Something that could have been always has more charm than something that is. For those living in small towns such as myself the feeling is even stronger because there is less people to see and it is almost impossible to avoid certain people even if we want to. Someone that was a rebel-without-a-cause, sitting with you in the last row in biology class and cracking jokes is now delivering pizza and you pretend not to see them when you do see them. I guess we’ll never meet at the fountain by the road.

The lyrics of the song:

“Oh, we were born within an hour of each other
Our mothers said we could be sister and brother
Your name is Deborah (Deborah)
It never suited ya
And they said that when we grew up
We’d get married, and never split up
Oh, we never did it, although I often thought of it

Oh, Deborah, do you recall?
Your house was very small
With wood chip on the wall
When I came ’round to call
You didn’t notice me at all

And I said, “Let’s all meet up in the year 2000
Won’t it be strange when we’re all fully grown?
Be there two o’clock by the fountain down the road”
I never knew that you’d get married
I would be living down here on my own
On that damp and lonely Thursday years ago

You were the first girl at school to get breasts
And Martyn said that you were the best
Oh, the boys all loved you, but I was a mess
I had to watch them try and get you undressed
We were friends, that was as far as it went
I used to walk you home sometimes but it meant
Oh, it meant nothing to you
‘Cause you were so popular…

Oh, what are you doing Sunday, baby?
Would you like to come and meet me, maybe?
You can even bring your baby
Ooh ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh…”

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The video for the song features a guy and a gal, played by models Jo and Patrick Skinny, who take time to get ready for a Saturday night disco and they both hope the other will also be there and they are both looking for a hook up. The video for “Disco 2000”, just like the video for the songs “Lipgloss” and “Common People” has that vibrant, artficial, retro aesthetic so typical for Pulp’s 1990s videos. Another thing I liked a lot about the video, apart from the garish, eye-candy, ’70s inspired aesthetics, is that it tells the tale almost in the style of a comic-book. If you pause the video every now and then, as I did to get screenshots for pictures for this post, you will notice that the the video is almost made out of pictures, a few seconds for each scene, and one after another and a story is told. There are even captions, unrelated to the song’s lyrics, which show us what the guy and the girl are thinking. It is interesting to see how they both want the other to notice them, but don’t want to appear to eager as well, so typical for love games. Jarvis Cocker did after all study fine art and film at Saint Martin’s College of Arts from 1988 to 1991 and aesthetic was important to him. I appreciate cleverness in lyrics and videos of rock songs, just as I appreciate art in various forms. This video is artistically interesting to me as any normal oil on canvas paintings would be.

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