How Jarvis Cocker lost ‘the greatest song ever’ thanks to an automated voicemail

Legendary musician Jarvis Cocker has claimed he lost “the greatest song ever” because of a voicemail error.

Efforts to retrieve the song were made by the Pulp frontman, but to no avail. Cocker, 61, would use the voicemail service’s recordings to note lyrics of interest, but an automatic delete option has erased what could have been his best-ever song. Originally noting his lyrics by leaving himself voicemails, Cocker explained that a call to his phone company proved futile as they said there was nothing they could do to help him retrieve his messages. Unfortunately for fans, it appears what could have been the “greatest song ever” is lost for good, as Cocker recalled the unfortunate loss.

Speaking to Daniel Rachel, author of The Art of Noise, Cocker says his late-night answering machine messages to himself ended up costing him a potential hit. He said: “I do have a phone that’s got a recording device on it, or I might use Notepad, but I don’t like using that because I forget there’s stuff on there. I used to leave myself voicemail messages.

“If I had an idea and you’re in the rehearsal room you can’t really record a phrase so I’d put the phone on the piano or whatever and record it. Sometimes I’d leave myself late-night recorded messages. They used to delete them after a fortnight.

“There was one particular one I’d recorded on the piano and kind of forgot about it and then I was away for a week and a half. When I came back it had been deleted. I rang up the phone company to ask them to access my voice messages ’cause I knew it was a really good song idea, but they wouldn’t help.

“I said, ‘Look, I bet if I’d been killed and they had a police investigation into my murder you’d be able to look through my voicemail records. So it must exist somewhere.’ She said, ‘Yeah, but you’ve not been killed.’ So I lost it forever and maybe it was the greatest song ever.”

Though Cocker lost the song, Pulp fans are not without new material. The band announced their first album in twenty-four years, More, would release on June 6. Lead single Spike Island was released alongside an album announcement.

A statement from the band reads: “This is the first Pulp album since We Love Life in 2001. Yes. The first Pulp album in twenty-four years. How did that happen? Well, when we started touring again in 2023 we practiced a new song called Hymn of the North during soundcheck and eventually played it at the end of our second night at Hammersmith Odeon. This seemed to open the floodgates. We came up with the rest of the songs on this album during the first half of 2024.

“A couple are revivals of ideas from last century. The music for one song was written by Richard Hawley. The music for another was written by Jason Buckle. The Eno family sing backing vocals on a song. There are string arrangements written by Richard Jones and played by the Elysian Collective.

“The album was recorded over three weeks by James Ford in Walthamstow, London, starting on November 18, 2024. This is the shortest amount of time a Pulp album has ever taken to record. It was obviously ready to happen. These are the facts.

“We hope you enjoy the music. It was written and performed by four human beings from the North of England, aided and abetted by five other human beings from various locations in the British Isles. No A.I. was involved during the process. This album is dedicated to Steve Mackey. This is the best that we can do. Thanks for listening.”