The Athens Voice continues to insist that installation artist Danae Stratou, wife of Greece’s famous Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, is the muse that inspired Pulp’s 1995 hit “Common People”. Varoufakis said that though he didn’t know his wife back then he knows that she was the only Greek student of sculpture at St. Martin’s College from 1983 to 1985 making it possible that Jarvis Cocker’s lyrics were referring to her.

Cocker never revealed the name of the woman who inspired the hit, but he has said that the song was based on a real person he had met ten years earlier. He said that the rich girl from Greece who inspired the song had moved to the London borough of Hackney to live “like the common people.”

Speaking to the New Musical Express in 2013, he had said: “I’d met the girl from the song many years before, when I was at St. Martin’s College. I’d met her on a sculpture course, but at St Martin’s you had a thing called Crossover Fortnight, where you had to do another discipline for a couple of weeks. I was studying film, and she might’ve been doing painting, but we both decided to do sculpture for two weeks. I don’t know her name. It would’ve been around 1988, so it was already ancient history when I wrote about her.”

He states that he fancied the woman, but she didn’t actually have sex with him or want him in the same way as she did in the song.

Varoufakis doesn’t rule out the possibility that Danae was the woman who inspired the hit, “From personal experience, she is a very fascinating person.”

One thing is certain, the industrialist’s daughter with the neo-classical residence with an Acropolis view and vacation home is certainly not “common people.”

“Common People”

She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge
She studied sculpture at Saint Martin’s College, that’s where I caught her eye.
She told me that her Dad was loaded
I said in that case I’ll have a rum and coke-cola.
She said fine and in thirty seconds time she said, I want to live like common people
I want to do whatever common people do, I want to sleep with common people
I want to sleep with common people like you.
Well what else could I do – I said I’ll see what I can do.
I took her to a supermarket
I don’t know why but I had to start it somewhere, so it started there.
I said pretend you’ve got no money, she just laughed and said oh you’re so funny.
I said yeah? Well I can’t see anyone else smiling in here.
Are you sure you want to live like common people
You want to see whatever common people see
You want to sleep with common people,
you want to sleep with common people like me.
But she didn’t understand, she just smiled and held my hand.
Rent a flat above a shop, cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool, pretend you never went to school.
But still you’ll never get it right
‘cos when you’re laid in bed at night watching roaches climb the wall
If you call your Dad he could stop it all.
You’ll never live like common people
You’ll never do what common people do
You’ll never fail like common people
You’ll never watch your life slide out of view, and dance and drink and screw
Because there’s nothing else to do.
Sing along with the common people, sing along and it might just get you thru’
Laugh along with the common people
Laugh along even though they’re laughing at you and the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that poor is cool.
I want to live with common people, I want to live with common people…