Dubstar: Superstar 2008 DEMO
Claire and I started our long search for somewhere bigger to live in 2007. We'd long outgrown our apartment on Adelaide Crescent in Hove. One of the back rooms had been dedicated to music (where many of these Dubstar recordings were made) with the front lounge had doubled as an office for far too long. We would be house hunting for the next four years (!), finally moving to Seven Dials in Brighton. The process was frustrating but enjoyable, we saw some beautiful homes along the way. One particular house would be the inspiration for a Dubstar song…
WATCHING YOU, WATCHING ME
I have no interest in reality TV. Never have, it's not my thing in any way: 'Why would I watch a bunch of ****s trying to work out who's the biggest ****?'.
But I was interested in the singer from the Ordinary Boys. I really liked their song with Lady Sovereign and Preston was from Worthing, just a few miles along the coast from Brighton. Big Brother in 2006 was, for the first time for the program, on my radar. And there was Chantelle Houghton…the couple fell in love on the show and ignited the tabloids. I didn't know the details but it seemed too convenient to me, probably faked for the papers and the rest. I sniffed and took my cynical gaze elsewhere. They split up a few months later, what a surprise.
In 2007 we were chaperoned into a house by an estate agent who clearly knew where we were going but mentioned it to us. This was Preston and Chantelle's home, and it was gorgeous. A space for music on the top floor, some beautiful stained glass internal windows, Victorian architecture of course (I only live in Victorians!). Loved the house but not sure on the road, didn't make an offer.
We left and went for lunch at Richard's in Hove. There was plenty to discuss about what we'd just seen. This wasn't the first time we’d been in a famous couple's house. My surprise wore off pretty quickly and my overwhelming feeling was…sadness. For both of them. Us being in their home was part of the splitting up process. I knew that pain, I knew how fleeting fame is. This was an ending. There was nothing in the house to suggest anything bad had happened, right now it was a sad place. Here was the place where two real human beings lived, had made their home. There were pictures, trinkets, even large P and C letters on the fireplace. These weren't caricatures, this wasn't a media creation, this was the house where two young people had made a home after meeting each other in the craziest of circumstances. Had tried in obvious good faith and sincerity to make a life together.
And it hadn't worked out.
I had a cappuccino and mixed feelings. A kind of melancholy that you sometimes have from hearing someone else's bad news, but being in the house also reminded me of the excitement of success and sudden celebrity. No matter how manufactured your own pop moment might appear to outsiders, especially those who don't like or care about you, for you it's probably the greatest high you'll ever have. YOU thought you would never 'make it' and you have! YOU knew you were good but were you good enough to make it onto [insert TV program of your ambition]? Now you're a superstar!
For a few months in the previous summer Preston and Chantelle were the IT couple and were celebrated. Having seen behind the curtain I wanted to celebrate their celebrity. I hated that I'd dismissed this couple's story as manufactured and wanted to connect to their sheer excitement of getting the thing I presume they always wanted.
THINKING BACK NOW
Superstar was written quickly and recorded towards the end of the first USOB album sessions, just prior to the Client kerfuffle. It was resurrected a few years later in 2011 (I was a bit confused about my dates for this song when I first wrote about it, sorry about that!). Then we worked with Stephen Hague at his place in the Sussex Downs, there's a completed version of his I'd love to put up some time soon. And of course we played it at the comeback show at The Lexington in 2013.
Would it have made a good single? I think so but I'm useless at choosing this sort of thing. Maybe it was a little lightweight for the late 00s, maybe too positive? Maybe it's a little strange to have a 90s star (Sarah) singing a homage to a 00s star (Chantelle). Don't know, I thought it was sweet.
But I do know that I love this tune, especially the ending. It's one of those Dubstar moments where there's no self-conscious irony, it's just a thunderous 'YES!'.
And I like those Dubstar moments.
A quick aside, I remember seeing Preston in a pub near this house earlier that year. It struck me he looked great and was doing pictures with gleeful well-wishers. Good for him. By way of contrast a I was told a story about the contestants in Geordie Shore up in Newcastle. They'd done nothing wrong but their presence in one of the loudest, rowdiest drinking areas of the whole of Europe might lead to unwelcome, er…fights. So they were banned from the Bigg Market bars, all of them apparently. A pre-emptive strike. As Chris (who went to the same school as Paul ‘Gaza’ Gascoigne once mentioned ‘the Geordies don’t celebrate their own’. See also: Sting.
