"Let's all meet up in the year 2000..."
Audaciously opening with a riff lifted wholesale from an old Laura Branigan hit, Jarvis Cocker turns in a by-then customarily class-conscious wryly knowing anthem in this single released during the height of Pulp-mania.
His slice-of-life details in the Ray Davies vein ("Your house was very small, with wood chip on the wall...") combined with his typical lasciviousness ("You were the first girl at school to get breasts...") and the aforemention catchy guitar riff add up to another winner from a time when the band could seemingly do no wrong.
This was a UK hit (#7) but in retrospect it was a little bit lost in the shuffle, and in some ways marked the beginning of the end of the buoyant and triumphant His 'n' Hers / Different Class era for the band. Although they made a couple more solid albums, and Jarvis continues to churn out quality solo work, Pulp was never this joyously anthemic again.
Disco 2000 video:
An early video for Babies, probably my favorite Pulp song - before they had broken through, after a decade of trying:
