Face The Music

Written by Stephen Hillier

When February 2012

Where Brighton, East Sussex

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Analogue Solutions Telemark

“I'd find you again, in another world...”

The Dubstar song that actually features a lyrical dagger through the heart, not simply implies it.

Every year Café Del Mar would get in touch to ask if I had anything that would be suitable for their compilations. And every time I’d said no, but as we were now in full reformation mode it seemed this was the moment to reconnect with our Ibizan roots. I said ‘si, here’s Face The Music’. Cafe Del Mar said ‘non’. Dammit.

This song was originally known as ‘Sorry’, but I thought it best that I would rewrite the words. Chilling out with a Negroni watching the sun going down to a song where someone is repeatedly telling you they’re ‘sorry’ didn’t make sense to me. On reflection, it also didn’t make sense to submit Face The Music, which had a sullen and obviously incompatible mood running throughout. Unfortunately, knowing what’s appropriate and when has never been my strength.

In the winter of 2012 I’d seen The Robin Guthrie Trio at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar in Brighton. A basement venue, it was a totally spit and sawdust kind of place. I loved every second, one of the most important gigs of my life. So I investigated his solo catalogue. He had released three stunning albums with Harold Budd: the Californian ones that were mirror images of each other, and Bordeaux following a few years later. ‘How Close Your Soul’ conjured an image in my mind: What if Sapphire and Steel were to be updated for the 21st Century, like Battlestar Galactica had been? Where would it be set? Who would play the leads? And who would supply the music?

I had answers to all of these questions. It would be in black and white, it would be set at night in a deserted French village, Alexander Skarsgård would play Steel and Karen Gillan would play Sapphire. The music would be by Budd and Guthrie, ‘How Close Your Soul’ specifically. And who would write the main theme? Me of course, and Dubstar would play it.

That’s what Face The Music is, not a tune to chill out to as the sun sets into the Mediterranean, but the theme to a romantic remake of an obscure 1980s Science Fiction TV show. You don’t get more Dubstar than that. Seriously, think about it… you don’t.

Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for up to be the first to hear new releases and up to the minute news

The Last Song

WRITTEN BY STEPHEN HILLIER

WHEN JANUARY 2000

WHERE HOVE, EAST SUSSEX

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

FEATURES ROLAND S-760

“What's our future, where are we going, who'll pay for us now?”  

In the winter of 1999/2000 Dubstar felt like it was going to end soon, well before Make It Better was even released.

I loved the idea of closing the act, a dramatic flourish, leaving the trio I’d worked in for the previous seven years with a song. My way of saying goodbye to the fans and meaning it this time. Swansong had been my first attempt at this, but even in the turmoil of the turn of the millennium it felt way too spiteful for me. Maybe I should have another go, write a song that could have come from the Disgraceful sessions. Something more conciliatory?

So in January 2000 I wrote ‘The Last Song’ as part of the duets idea for the Self Same Thing EP, hoping Holly Johnson would sing it with Sarah. He rang me up, was the very personification of politeness and consideration and told me it was too camp for him, have we considered Marc Almond? This has become one of my favourite moments of my entire career, to be turned down by one of the biggest voices of the 20th Century because my work was too dramatic (or overly emotional? I’ve never been sure what camp is…). Quite an honour.

Sarah sang it solo round at my place in Hove. One take, and there it is, a true account of how it feels when the curtain finally closes. Maybe it was the knowledge that this act was going to end, and pondering the question of ‘where do you go when the music finally stops?’

It wasn’t my intention when I wrote it, but revisiting ‘the Last Song’ yesterday I imagined it as from a musical, a finale for the supporting characters who are having to leave the play as the rest of show continues. More Brectian tragedy than Andrew Lloyd Webber.

I particularly like the way the song closes, lyrically the door is left ever so slightly ajar…it’s only the year 2000, we’re just turning thirty, this might not be the end, maybe we’re freaking out and there are more songs ‘yet to come’? Little did I know there would be around fifty of them…

Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for up to be the first to hear new releases and up to the minute news

We Still Belong

WRITTEN BY STEPHEN HILLIER

WHEN NOVEMBER 2005

WHERE HOVE, EAST SUSSEX

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

FEATURES ROLAND S-760, YAMAHA CP-70B, FENDER RHODES, KORG MS-20

“We never lied”  

There was talk of Sarah doing more Dubstar. We’d stayed in regular contact over the years and our vapour trails probably crossed on her way to Slovakia to play gigs with Client and me on my songwriting trips to Stockholm. I was excited, it felt right. I had an ongoing sense of Dubstar having more to say, we were cutoff too soon.

So I started writing songs specifically for the return. But given the heartache and drama from the 1990s which were constantly nagging in the back of my mind, I needed to reassure myself that this was a good idea…

I wrote this song to prove to myself it could be done, that it should be done. Initially We Still Belong was a statement: ‘hey, we’re back!’ Did you forget about us? Well we’re here, now please move over and make space’. Hooray! 

But that’s simply not the kind of song I write. Also, I’d spent the previous three years listening to nordic heroes such as Sigur Rós and Mew in the villa in Spain. That was the music I wanted to make, huge melodic and dramatic expressions of joy and angst. Isn’t that what Dubstar always was anyway? 

So I changed my song. ‘We Still Belong’ became a lyrical development on the theme that Human League explored in their classic ‘Dreams Of Leaving’ from Travelogue. It concerns that feeling of having to get away…and not knowing whether leaving will make things better. An expression of fear. It’s my favourite Human League song by far.

And ‘We StIll Belong’ is one of my favourites of those mid-00s compositions because I felt I’d hit the balance right on every level. The melody, the words, the structure, the pianos, the direction. And, crucially for me, it sounded like 2005, not 1995. This song was pointing the direction ahead and the space we could occupy. We still belonged.

Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for up to be the first to hear new releases and up to the minute news

DUBSTAR Preludes Volume 1

There are demos of songs. There are live recordings. There are ‘works in progress’ and first drafts of songs that appear on collectors’ editions of classic albums.

But what do you call it when you complete a song, forget about it…then it re-emerges somehow, years later when you think you’re writing something new? That’s what you’ll find in the Dubstar preludes, the precursors. The original songs that were the unconscious starting points for new, often completely different songs.

Most of these tunes didn’t have titles, there wasn’t time. They only survive on cassettes, scraps of notebooks, sometimes even Minidisks (I LOVED Minidisks). Luckily, what I lack in photos and diaries I can more than make up for with a huge archive of my writing that stretches back to the 1970s, covers the entire Dubstar era and much more. There are a lot of these tunes.

So the Dubstar Preludes are a curio, a minor release, a glimpse at a different road that a songwriter could have pursued.

I often visualise writing as a spider’s web of possibilities, many of which can lead to a positive outcome, a good song. But no matter how much you practice, study, how often you write, you simply have to pick a creative thread and hope for the best. That’s how songwriting works.

Many of the completed Dubstar tunes are what happens when you get a second chance to pick a thread. The preludes are the original silk. I hope you enjoy them.

Spotify
Amazon
Apple Music

It’s Raining in my Mind

Prelude to ‘Disgraceful’

This melody and the lyrics that accompany it were a precursor to Disgraceful, as I think you can hear clearly in the chorus section. Disgraceful had a rather sad birth in a house on Windsor Terrace, South Gosforth. This precursor was the last song I wrote on my piano back in Jesmond before temporarily moving out. It was hugely influenced by Franz Liszt, I think that’s clear. It’s funny, but hearing it in this form, it seems obvious to me that this isn’t a Dubstar song at all. Little did I know that a rewrite would be the title track of the act I’d formed with Chris earlier that year and go on to be an international success.

The title is a something Chris said to me as we were driving over the Tyne Bridge during one of the United States of Being sessions…

After the Valentines

Prelude to ‘Everything’s Alright’

I’ve been a Shoegaze fan since before the term was invented (By Andy Ross who singed Dubstar…I don’t think it was supposed to be a compliment). So it was an incredible treat to see the reformed My Bloody Valentine play at the Roundhouse in Camden, sixteen years since I’d seen them at Whitley Bay Ice Rink. And they haven’t mellowed, that’s for sure. The gig was so loud that despite my aviation quality ear protectors I had to put my fingers in my ears lest they bleed. And when I took them out, it was like someone had smacked me on the side of the head. Or what I imagine it would be like to accidentally open the door of a submarine on the sea bed.

Anyway, this tune was written a couple of days after on the train back from meeting Stephen Hague in Hastings. I was still shaking, actually physically shaking from the gig, it was more of an experience than a joy really. I’d had the chord sequence in the back of my mind since a very young age. My grandfather had bought me an organ with single keys for chords on the left hand and I loved playing a succession of majors or of minors, no regard to key, I was too young. I think these early experiences with harmony have hugely influenced my writing.

I used the tune as the basis of ‘Everything’s Alright’, the song I wrote with Cat.

Just a Woman

Prelude to ‘Just a Girl She Said’

I’ve mentioned before that ‘Just a Girl’ was a combination of my composition submission for my O’ Level music and one of Sarah’s poems. It was the discovery of this piece, one of the easy drafts of that work that was the inspiration of this entire prelude series. I was looking through my scrapbook in my loft down here in Brighton when I came across a piece of manuscript that I must have put in the encyclopaedia of music that my parents had given me for my studies for O’ level. It was very rough, my manuscript writing has never been that great frankly. My reading’s not much better, but I played it on the CP-70B and remembered from way back that this was the original doodle for Just A Girl. It might be a bit of a stretch but I think you can just about hear the Dubstar themes, especially towards the end.

A Stranger to Everyone

Prelude to ‘When You Say Goodbye’

This is the only piece on this volume that had a title before its inclusion. Again, it had a rather sad origin, written in the days before Dubstar’s headline appearance at the NME tent at Reading 1996, when my relationship was ending. I enjoyed the way the music is very simple, cheerful, it could be an exercise by J. S. Bach…but the mood in my head was one of utter bleakness. Isn’t it curious how sometimes the most cheerful of compositions arrive in the midst of serious upset?

As the final writing sessions for Goodbye got underway in late 1996 and early 1997, this was the perfect starting point for another Dubstar tune in 6:8, the best time signature. After 5:4 of course.

Oh, and I played this piece as part of the GGGGHOST sets in 2015/16. It was always one of my faves, and sounds gorgeous on a Yamaha DX7.

Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for up to be the first to hear new releases and up to the minute news

Day I See You Again

Songwriter Steve Hillier

Date Written March 1995

Place Written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne & RAK Studios, London

Released When October 1995

Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760

Spotify Link

“If the man you’ve grown to be’s more Morrison than Morrissey…”

This lyric went down well in the music press of the mid 90s. I’m not sure how it would go down if I’d presented it to them in 2020.

Day I See You Again, which really should start with a ‘The’, is the last song to be written for Disgraceful, and another example of a melody that had been hanging around in my head for years before being incorporated into a song for Dubstar. Like so many others, this was written in 3/4 time and changed to 4/4 for the album. It was conceived as a Viennese Waltz, as you can hear in my piano version (replete with the original middle eight section…I think I prefer what we did for the album but thought it would be interesting to include here). On the Disgraceful version you can still hear the triplet rhythm in the vocal performance, with Sarah sounding slightly unsure of where the beats are supposed to fall, especially in the first two verses. This undoubtedly adds to the charm of the released version, a vulnerability that resonates with the emotional centre of the song.

The lyric recounts a real situation. I’d met my ex-girlfriend at London’s Royal Festival Hall during the first recording session for Disgraceful in early 1995. The situation was gently tense, like a scene from a rom-com, so on returning to RAK studios I wrote how I felt, a lyric that said what I wanted to say but hadn’t. Earlier in these sessions, Graeme Robinson had told me that there were two types of Steve Hillier songs, the jolly ones you could dance to and the daggers through the heart. Day I See You Again is definitely the latter, the hope and the fear as the blade pierces your chest for the final time.

Stars and Day I See You Again are my most successful songs from this era, a superb opening statement of intent from a new writer, a new act. And this is the only Dubstar song where neither I nor Chris appear! If I recall correctly Sarah did a vocal session with Graeme Robinson and Jon Kirby in Darlington where they’d put together a new arrangement of my song and played it to Food Records without our knowledge. The record company loved it so much there was no chance we could go back to my original orchestral arrangement (some of it does remain though, such as the brass and pizzicato strings). We had no choice but to go with theirs, and although that was probably for the best…

I can’t imagine I’d be so relaxed about an arrangement of mine being nearly totally removed today. At least I’d written it and Sarah sang it, so it still qualifies as Dubstar.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify

Amazon

Apple Music

In The End

Written by Steve Hillier

Place written Umbertide, Italy

Date Written September 2006

Originally Sung By Steve Hillier

Features Yamaha CP-70B, Roland JX-8P & Jupiter-6

“It all works out in the end”

Stephen Hague recorded a superb version of this song. The world should hear it. Maybe it will one day.

In The End was written at a writing retreat in Umbertide, Italy, that was organised by Chris Difford of Squeeze. Chris and I had spoken a few times over the years at the BBC Radio studios in Brighton. I was a regular guest on Phil Jackson’s ‘Introducing’ program, where he would play demos of local bands and people like me and Chris would decide if they were any good. 

He invited me to a writing retreat that was happening in September 2006. These are often strange affairs…ten or twenty songwriters in a farm house with a studio and some pianos, writing songs together for a week. Not my ideal way to work, but it can be fun. On this occasion I arrived a few days later than everyone else from Barcelona. I’d been at Shelton and Philo’s wedding with Bill Brewster, the legendary DJ and author… and by the time I’d arrived in Umbertide, a no-horse town that seemed to be closed on Mondays, I was exhausted, utterly wrecked. This put me on a bit of a back foot for the rest of the week. Friendship groups and alliances had already been formed, I was struggling to get any writing done. I’m not a natural cowriter…my approach can be infuriating to my collaborators by the same measure as they infuriate me.

But by the end of the week I’d managed to spend some time alone with a Fender Rhodes and a view of the Umbrian hills in the distance. I wrote ‘In The End’, a message from someone who has died to the loved one they left behind, a topic I’ve returned to in recent years. It’s a classic Dubstar song.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify

Amazon

Apple Music

Ghost

Written by Steve Hillier

Date Written January 1997

Place Written Real World Studios, Box, Somerset

Released When July 1997

Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760, EMU Drumulator

Spotify Link

“Who could understand me now you’re gone?”

The last song that was written for Goodbye and completed in the producer’s cottage at Real World studios. The demo was recorded in the eaves onto a Roland VS-880 hard disk recorder. That version is lost to time, I’ve no idea where it went, and I really have looked for it. But I do know that Sarah cried when she sang it. I thought that was a good thing.

When we played the comeback show in London in 2013, Sarah hadn’t been able to get through the rehearsals without crying so I told her that rather than being flattered that I’d written a song about us splitting up, my ex-girlfried had told me she was annoyed (see also Say The Worst Thing First). I was stunned, it’s such a nice song, what could the problem be? I understand completely now. This was my side of the story, my sorrow put out there with no opportunity for her to comment. I had a platform for my sadness and there was none available to her. I know I’d be annoyed if the tables were turned.

‘Ghost’ is the seminal Dubstar song, and like Song No.9 it has everything that was good about the act. Maybe Ghost is the major key sibling to 9’s minor key? Sarah sang it beautifully and hearing Stephen Hague’s finished mix in the enormous main room at Real World was an incredible moment. Heartbroken lyric, simple drum machine beat, chiming guitars, modal borrowing in the chord sequence and written in a major key. Perfect.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify

Amazon

Apple Music

Song No.9

Written by Steve Hillier

Date Written January 1991, Refined January 1995

Place Written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Released When January 1996

Originally Sung By Steve Hillier

Features Roland S-760, EMU Drumulator, Korg M3R

“…You can’t face me, I’m just your flatmate’s girlfriend, and Monday I’ll be gone”

Student life, another song inspired by real events. I’m particularly pleased with this lyric, every time I hear it I’m taken back to Shortridge Terrace in Jesmond, a shared house I stayed in with my girlfriend before eventually moving north in 1998:

I came to this town, a weekend with my boyfriend, his final year away this time, but..

Remember how we sneaked around the last time?

And without a sound, we knew that New Year's just around the corner, somehow

I should be somebody's partner, but we know he's working late, a barman at the Union… and left me in the house…

You were there

Remember your alarm clock on his bedside and thinking we'd be heard?

No one came

Christmas seemed so far behind me, we know New Year couldn't be the same

You can't face me

I'm just your flatmate's girlfriend

And Monday I'll be gone , and until then

I won't touch you, I won't smile, I won't try,

You will laugh and be the same,

And I won't cry , because

New Year's going to be the same

Song No.9 was part of The Joans’ live set, although the Dubstar version was a significant update. The drums were supplied by my Drumulator drum machine in an overt homage to Robin Guthrie’s unique style of programming. There’s also a reference to Frazier Chorus’s Forgetful in the intro of this song. Their album Sue had been one of my favourites in my first year in Newcastle when the events set out in this song occurred.

This is one of the rare Dubstar songs that began life as a chord sequence, and I think you can tell. There are three distinct melodies that fit under the main sequence (the first you hear on the piano version above). They don’t work together, you have to hear them separately. So you begin with the string melody, then the vocal melody, then the dulcimer melody. I simply don’t write like that, but it happened on this occasion because I wanted to refine this song from the Joans live set to fit into the Dubstar set. In its original incarnation, it was mainly instrumental, with a middle section where I would sing almost entirely unaccompanied. That’s the vocal melody you hear in the verse in the Dubstar version. But it wouldn’t make sense to have Sarah standing there on stage with nothing to do for four minutes, so I rewrote the song to include a lot more singing, and an entirely new lyric. Trying to avoid Sarah having nothing to do onstage explains why on Make It Better there’s hardly a pause from the singing at all. Take a listen, there’s hardly time to take a breath.

I am aware that I’ve enthused about so many of the songs in this series… and I’m going to do it again now. Not only do I think that Song No.9 is the best Dubstar song, I think it’s the best song I’ve written. It has everything that I love about music. A soaring melody, drama, the lyric is concerned with something real between two people. Something that actually happened. And when it’s over, you feel like you’ve been taken somewhere.

I even like the fact that it was tucked away on a B-Side so very few people ever heard it. Funny like that.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify

Amazon

Apple Music

Not So Manic Now

Written by Brick Supply

Place Written Wakefield, Yorkshire

Released When January 1996

Originally Sung By Brick Supply

Features EMU Proteus, Roland W-30

Spotify Link

Spotify Link To Original

“I was making myself the usual cup of tea when the doorbell strangely rang”

Did the doorbell ring in a strange manner, or was the fact that the bell was ringing strange in itself? No one will ever know.

Graeme Robinson, who would later become Dubstar’s first manager, gave me a cassette when I was DJing at the Arena in Middlesbrough. It was a collection of artists he had recorded at his studio in Darlington under his Circulation Recordings label. The first song was Not So Manic Now by Brick Supply, total unknowns from Wakefield. I fell in love with the song driving home up the A19 in my Lada, the only Russian car on Tyneside without heating. It didn’t feel significant at the time, I fall in love with a lot of songs. But this was the moment that would transform The Joans into Dubstar.

I made an arrangement for Not So Manic Now on my Roland W-30 that weekend, Sarah popped round to Jesmond to sing it and Chris played some funky guitar. The original arrangement sounded a lot like Wear Your Love Like Heaven by Definition of Sound (who by total coincidence toured with us on the first Dubstar UK tour). This was a classic example of me trying to marry two ideas that should never have met, let alone wedded. It didn’t survive. I have a DAT of it around here somewhere. 


A few weeks later Graeme was at a show we were playing at The Riverside in Newcastle, heard us perform this tune, and couldn’t believe his ears (or his luck). Later he approached us to make some demos in his house in Darlington. Between him and Jon Kirby, his musical partner, they changed much of my arrangement back towards the original Brick Supply version of Manic, which annoyed me enormously at the time. I can see now that this was the right approach, and a defining moment for Dubstar emerged. Funnily enough, Manic was not a contender as a single until the mixes came back from Stephen Hague, working at RAK. We heard them for the first time up at Chappel Studios in Lincolnshire where we were finishing off the Disgraceful album. We were excited, it sounded like a hit. It was.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify

Amazon

Apple Music

Gemini

Written by Steve Hillier

Date Written September 2007

Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood

Features Yamaha CP-70B, Boss Dimension-C Pedal

“Newcastle stone”

At the heart of every Dubstar song is the lyric, it’s the reason the song exists. The lyric within Gemini was inspired by Frog Prince by Keane, although you’d never guess that from hearing it. It’s one of my favourite Keane songs (and they have two others that come close, why do I never like the hits???). What appeals is that sense of story telling, but without actually telling a story. Just hinting at what’s going on. 

Gemini is the tale of a man trapped in the past, a metaphorical castle that his love created, long gone, from which that he could never escape. This song was inspired by many conversations I’d had with men of my age. There seemed a creeping bitterness among them, cynicism, a sense of defeat in their voices. Their youth had evaporated and they no longer had a role in the world. They’d even stopped trying to find one and resented the rest of the world for carrying on. And so often this sense of being forgotten began in relationships where they had been ‘done wrong’ by a woman…although whenever I listened carefully it was obvious that the women in question had done nothing of the kind. It was the men who’d messed it all up by being reliably useless (at best), reliably destructive (at worse) or unreliable (most commonly). 

Gemini is seeing someone stranded in their life, trapped in a past that’s receding into the distance every day. Where they don’t realise it, but they’ve spent years blaming others for their own mistakes, blaming others for how disappointing their lives have turned out to be. I think this is one of the best songs Dubstar ever recorded, definitely in the top ten.

It’s unusual for a song of mine as there’s no chorus of any kind, just verses. Another reason why I love it so much.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify

Amazon

Apple Music

I Lost A Friend

Written by Steve Hillier

Date written January 2000

Place written Hove, East Sussex

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland Juno-106, Korg Prophecy

SPOTIFY LINK

“I’ll never see him again except in memory of someone good”

I left Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne in March 1997. I felt as if I’d done everything I could on Tyneside, I’d had two significant and long lasting relationships, both now ended. I’d DJed everywhere from Luckies Pub to the Riverside, performed at pretty much every night club and worked at both Universities. I’d formed a music act and we were doing well. It was time to move on, and I had a choice: London for the sake of work, or Brighton for the sake of my happiness. I chose the latter. I’ve not regretted the move once.



But I didn't leave Jesmond completely. I returned half a dozen times even before we made Make It Better back at the Arts Centre, trying to find…something. A pilgrimage, an inability to let go? These were not happy occasions, I’d alight at Central Station and pull up my hoodie or pull down a baseball cap in case I bumped into someone I knew. Paradoxically I’d hang out in the bars later that day hoping to bump into someone, anyone I knew from the old days. I think I spent more time in the Forth Hotel after leaving Newcastle than I did when I lived there.

I’m not sure exactly when it was, but one cold winter’s morning in 1998 I was walking around Newcastle city centre and into the library, just behind the HMV records that we’d opened two years earlier. I wanted to speak to my ex-girlfriend, I had no idea how to reach her. I had an address but couldn’t bring myself to simply turn up unannounced… I needed a telephone number. So ‘I searched the phone book’…nothing. More broken-hearted than depressed, I spent the rest of the day wandering around the city searching for evidence of my past. Anything that would validate the decade I’d spent on Tyneside in the rain. It’s peculiar, but now I have spent more than double the time living in Brighton than in Newcastle, I have more memories of heading north to find my past than of the past that I actually lived up there.


I Lost A Friend is that lonely day in song form, one of my favourite self-penned songs. This is what Dubstar was about, not breakbeats and rock guitars… a dagger through the heart and a melody through the head. There are two versions of this song, the I (Friday Night) B-Side and the ‘version’, which is stripped right back and loses the Smiths-style DMX drum machine for something more sympathetic to the song. I prefer that one.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify

Amazon

Apple Music

Vini (Unchained Monologue)

Written by Sarah Blackwood, Steve Hillier & Chris Wilkie

Date written March 1987, January 1994, Refined March 1997

Place written Welling, South London & Jesmond, Newcastle

Released June 1997

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760, Roland JV-1080

“I’ve been hurt again”  

‘Unchained Monologue’ was initially entitled ‘Vini’ and inspired by the Durutti Column and Imperfect List by Big Hard Excellent Fish. Twenty two years later my wife would perform Imperfect List at a Feminist Swearing Night in a pub in Brighton for the Finnish Institute. Life eh?

There are two main accompanying parts in this tune, one written on piano by me when I was at school played on the JV-1080, another from Chris. It’s the original piano composition which predated ‘Unchained Monologue’ that you can hear on this new recording. It had knocked around as a demo for The Joans for years but I could never quite get a vocal melody for it. Maybe there were too many notes going on already? So I decided not to write a melody. I took inspiration from Imperfect List and wrote a monologue translating what people say and what they mean. There was a section of the song where I’d not written anything, I’d run of things to say so Sarah filled in with ‘that noise in the background is only the TV’ and a few other lines. There’s a sampled drum fill on this track that rears its disgusting head again on ‘Rise To The Top’, a song on Make It Better. I have no idea what it’s from, I found it on Jungle tape I’d bought in Camden Market while waiting for Goodbye to be mixed at RAK. Sounds terrific.

I have mixed feelings about ‘Unchained Monologue’ now. As a writer in his early twenties, doing a dream pop version of Smiley Culture’s Cockney Translator seemed like a great idea. Now it feels alittle trite. Every word was true though, I meant it at the time and that’s what ultimately matters. And your tastes change. It’s handy to be reminded that trying to recreate the person you were when you were young-and-foolish is something only the old-and-foolish should attempt.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify

Amazon

Apple Music

I Won't Forget You (Bow Wow Now)

Written by Steve Hillier

Date Written January 1996

Place Written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760

YOUTUBE LINK

“I can’t bear the thought You’d Have to Die Before Me“

B-sides, songs that perform the function of having something (anything?) on the flip side of a vinyl single gave writers an opportunity to say something they felt needed to be said without the pressure of writing a ‘hit’. There were no expectations, you could write whatever you wanted.

They hold a unique role in the development of a 20th Century act and for a fan’s relationship with their heroes too. Growing up, I’d enjoyed the B-Sides of my favourite acts (Billy Bragg, The Smiths, Cocteau Twins) much more than the A-Sides. I wanted Dubstar to have the same connections for fans who hungered for more. Luckily that was easy in the 1990s, a decade defined by a million formats, all of which counted towards the singles chart, and all of which needed new material to fill them up. There was scope for an act to release three B-Sides with every single AND have a remix CD too. So we did.

The pressure was off when it came to writing B-Sides, I had the luxury of knowing that whatever I wrote was almost certainly going to be released. Bow Wow Now, as this song was originally known, is an example of this luxury and is one of a handful of Dubstar recordings that really deserved a better version than the released attempt. That melody, those words, the heart break…all of which could have done without the rather clumpy programming. Also, this is the only Dubstar song where the vocals were copied and pasted from one chorus to the next in a sampler. I can’t remember why, but It may have been something to do with there being no heating in our studio ‘Stink Central’ at the Arts Centre. You can hear Sarah shivering as she’s singing. It was January 1996. We were in the top twenty at the time.

Chris and Sarah were vegetarians when we recorded this song, I’ve been vegetarian now for many years too and am heading the vegan way. Consequently I’m rather pleased that we managed to have a song about the loss of an animal in the Dubstar canon. It’s not Meat is Murder, I Won’t Forget You expresses something different. It’s the closeness people achieve with their childhood pets and the grief on their passing.

So why change the name of the song? ‘Bow Wow Now’ as a title was always an ‘in-joke’. It was an attempt to hide the sentiment of the song, a cross between 90s irony and self-conscious deflection. But last night when I was playing this song for the first time in decades, it felt ridiculous to hide the meaning of the lyric. And I never liked that title. So from here on this song will be known to me as ‘I Won’t Forget You’, which is the title it should always have had.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify
Amazon
Apple Music

So Say We All

Songwriter Steve Hillier

Date Written September 2010

Place Written Christianhavn, Copenhagen

Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood

Features Yamaha CP-70B, Korg MS20, Korg MONO/POLY

“All that we leave behind”

This work is my proudest moment as a songwriter on the entire Dubstar journey. 

So Say We All is the sound of acceptance and unity. If the song ‘United States of Being’ from four years previously was an explosion of glorious intent, So Say We All is the moment where you sit back and reflect on where that unity has taken you, what you have learned about yourself.

It was written on a walk into central Copenhagen after a party at Solveig’s place in Christianhavn. There was something about the Nordic air, the view of the canals, my ongoing love affair with Scandinavia (then in its fifteenth year), the proximity to Christiania, my hangover...the lyric and melody came to me in an instant:

“All that I was meant to be

Every way that time has changed me

All that I was meant to do

Every word I said that was not true

And all that we leave behind, all we resign

Like a child in my arms is

All that we leave behind, it…

Crumbles to dust

And sand in my hands

And drifts away

But it stays 

While you learn to live again”

I sang it into my phone and brought it to the Dubstar demo sessions at Gavin’s studio ‘Base HQ’ in Newcastle later that month. A classic Dubstar song was born. And through the long crescendo coda, or Danish Ending as I like to call them, I mixed in vocal snippets from all of the other songs that were destined to be on this second attempt at a finished album. It was a direct and clear homage to Looking Glass by The La’s, one of the songs that had brought myself, Chris and Paul Wadsworth together all those years previously. It felt right.

If ever there was a song I’d written that worked exactly as I’d wanted from start to finish, it’s So Say We All. I put it next to Stars, Song No.9, I Lost A Friend, In The End and Manic… these are the finest Dubstar songs of them all. 

We will not hear their like again.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify
Amazon
Apple Music

A view of Christianhavn from the spot where So Say We All was written.

The Self Same Thing

Songwriter Steve Hillier

Date Written April 1998

Place Written Hove, Sussex

Released When June 2000

Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760

Spotify Link

“We’ve an equal stake in all we’ve planned”

The Self Same Thing was the first song of the new Dubstar era in Hove, Sussex.

When Dubstar played our ‘we’re back!’ gig in 2013 at The Lexington in London, this was the song I most wanted to redo the arrangement for. Although the chunky guitar chords made sense when I thought we could be the English Cardigans, fifteen years later they felt dated, an ambition from another time. So I replaced the ‘ba ba ba ba’ vocals with synth bells and the bass line by a drone on a Moog Little Phatty. For the first time, it sounded like the song it should always have been. 

The Self Same Thing was written in the early Spring of 1998 as an attempt to cheer up my girlfriend, now wife, who was hating her first job after leaving university. It’s an expression of solidarity between two people, between two sexes… and a musical way of stating my belief that men and women have more in common than separates us. We are the same, just about.

I left the act before this song was released as the title track on The Self Same Thing EP, the final Dubstar record. On returning from holiday in Mexico, I met Chris at a coffee shop in Belsize Park, just around the corner from where he and Sarah shared a flat. I’d spent a whole afternoon running into waves that were beating the shore at Cancun, trying to work out if Dubstar was still worth pursuing. For all the dramas over the past couple of years and the changes I could see coming in the music industry and my own life… I’d decided ‘no’. I told Chris I was off. Even though I knew I was doing the right thing, there was a gnawing sense of unfinished business, Dubstar had more to say. That feeling persisted for ten years and led to the writing of another fifty songs. So I was probably correct.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify
Amazon
Apple Music

No More Talk

Written by Steve Hillier

Date Written April 1987

Place Written Welling, South London

Released When July 1997

Originally Sung By Steve Hillier

FeatureS Roland S-760, Yamaha DX100, Novation Bass Station

Spotify Link

“Let the feelings out and take the pain away”

it’s a funny thing, I have stronger memories of writing this song in the 80s as a teenager than completing it in the 90s as a published songwriter. 

I hated education, which is ironic given how I’ve been a part time University lecturer since 2004. No More Talk was the result of yet another depressing day in the Sixth Form at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School.  After the 51 bus home I would come home and erase the stink in my mind by immediately playing the piano, the only way my parents would know I was in the house. Although I could read music, I was never that good at it, certainly not a sight reader and having little patience to improve I would improvise melodies and write tunes of my own so I had something to play. No More Talk was one of these melodies.

As the demo sessions for what would become Goodbye were being completed, I was getting concerned. Dubstar needed another obvious single (Girlfriend and Cathedral Park were clear contenders right from the start), something that felt like it could be as big, potentially bigger than Stars. So I pulled out this nine year old melody and wrote new words reflecting the sheer frustration I was feeling. it became the lead single for the second album.

The release of No More Talk also marks the moment when my fears that Dubstar’s rise was over were realised. We were waiting outside BBC television centre to be called in for our appearance on the National Lottery. Jo Power from Food Records came over with the news that No More Talk was number 20 in the midweek charts. That sounds terrific now, but I knew this was a disappointment for everyone, we needed to be in the top ten. We should have been in the top ten. I was gutted, so I distracted myself by shuffling and grinning like a lunatic all the way through the biggest TV performance of our careers.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify
Amazon
Apple Music

Just A Girl

Written by Sarah Blackwood, Steve Hillier & Chris Wilkie

Date Written April 1984 & March 1994

Place Written Welling, London, Jesmond & Benton, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Released When October 1995

Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760, Yamaha TX81z, Korg Mono/Poly

Spotify Link

“I’m a person who thinks, but you hope I’ll forget if you ply me with drink”

Just A Girl is a combination of a melody and chord sequence I’d written for my O’Level music exam and a poem from Sarah’s poetry book, some ten years between them. It works superbly, a defining Dubstar moment. Just A Girl was pivotal for us, the song where it was obvious that Dubstar wasn’t just another pop act, but something more considered. More intelligent maybe? The journalists loved it, so did the fans, and coming after Anywhere on Disgraceful, it was one of those nice moments when you discover an act can do something else, they’re not just about the singles.

I’m particularly proud of the arrangement. Of all the early Dubstar recordings, I think it’s Just A Girl that exhibits my passion for the Cocteau Twins most obviously. Some have pointed out that it bears more than a passing resemblance to ‘Monochrome’ by Lush. Purely accidental of course, although both Chris and I adored their Mad Love EP (and are friendly with Emma Anderson. I produced an early version of Lush’s comeback single Out of Control). I enjoy the fact that this song feels almost perfectly ‘of its time’, it’s a reflection of the music and acts on 4AD that Chris and I had obsessed over.

For some reason I thought it would be a clever to include funk breakbeat samples in a song written in 6/8. You can hear them most clearly at the end during the fade out. Daft really, but it was the 90s so I’m forgiven.

When I was playing Just A Girl on the piano last night, I realised that of all the Dubstar songs, this one is the defining moment for Sarah as a personality. It struck me as I was working out what to play that this is not the kind of melody I write, these are not my words…sure, the synth parts and the semi-chromatic chord sequence came from me, but ultimately this song is Sarah’s. I don’t think it would work if it wasn’t for her topline, it would be too ornate, even retro sounding. Another happy accident from 1994.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify
Amazon
Apple Music

We're Great

Written by Steve Hillier
Date written September 2006
Place written Hove, Sussex
Originally sung by Steve Hillier
Featured instruments Yamaha CP-70B

“We're not good, we're great"

The Yamaha CP-70B changed my life, in the middle of the naughties this was my instrument.

I’d fallen in love with the sound of this piano working with Keane in 2002. A hybrid between a piano and an electric guitar, it looks like a box made of Tolex and sounds like nothing else. The Keane boys made it theirs on their first two albums, and pretty much have the final say on what you can do with this electric grand.

I bought mine from Gary Numan in 2006. He’d had it stored away in his garage for decades, and when I came to take a look, it stank of mould and neglect. Truly. But it was a wonderful moment…two keyboard fanatics setting up an ageing bit of kit on a driveway in Sussex, a piano that hadn’t seen the light of day in decades…and it worked perfectly. No need to remind me to smile eh?

Many of the Dubstar recordings from this era are dominated by the sound of the CP-70B, with We’re Great being a prime example. You can bash away for hours on this instrument, and as long as you have the sustain pedal down you’ll probably end up with something worth listening to. We’re Great is another example of my writing inspired by the work of Vini Reilly. He’d released what would be his best album in Keep Breathing and was an inspiration on many levels, that an artist could release so many records and yet still have his best work within him almost thirty years into his career.

This song was completed between Chris and I but Sarah never managed to sing the vocals. It was abandoned after the whole Client kerfuffle, so the only surviving recording has me on vocals, just like The Joans. I imagined it could be the opening song on the new album. Sadly not.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify

Amazon

Apple Music

Swansong

Written by Steve Hillier

Date written February 1999

Place written Hove, Sussex

Released When August 2000

Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760, Roland VG-8

Spotify Link

“Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end”  Mary Hopkins, Those Were The Days  

And so we arrive at Swansong, the final song Dubstar would officially release on an album. This is the sound of the end, two people who despise each other and will separate forever. It’s spiteful, it’s bitter, and it’s exactly what I wanted say. This was the last act of an act that began as a stoned daydream to become a 4AD records artist… but instead had taken three people around the world on a crazy and rather wonderful escapade. Not a bad swap really.



And with a farewell reference to the 4AD dream, there’s a nod to the Cocteau Twins as this song fades out. I had to get this in, they were the reason Dubstar existed.


Swansong features a wall of guitar from Chris right at the very end. We created this by him playing the same part in various places on the neck of his Fender and using the Roland VG-8 to ‘retune’ his strings. Sounds tremendous, and we returned to this idea a couple of times on the United State of Being sessions too.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify
Amazon
Apple Music

Cathedral Park

Written by Steve Hillier

Date Written January 1991, Refined in 1993

Place Written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Released When August 1997

Originally Sung By Steve Hillier

Features Roland S-760

Spotify Link

“Her words are lame, like her life”

It was a January day in Jesmond 1991, and I was listening to my grey promo CD of My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’. There was a floppy disk on a tall pile next to the Roland W-30 sampler. On the label was written three words: ’potential number one’. I loaded it up, unsure what I would find. It was a simple melody, a chorus and I’d managed to include some text…’it feels like I’m living without you’. Could it be a number one? Would it?

My optimism was misplaced, Cathedral Park is the only Dubstar single, in fact the only Dubstar release* that failed to make the UK Top 40. Released on the week after Diana Princess of Wales died, there was simply no way the jolliest song we had recorded was going to be on the radio and TV. At any other time it might have, It did reach number 41 after all. Neneh Cherry and Youssou N'Dour took our place on the radio playlists with Seven Seconds. Now that’s a potential number one.

Cathedral Park was named after the Red House Painters song ‘Grace Cathedral Park’, and although that winning chorus melody was another written staring out of my window at the rain, the lyric was inspired by an afternoon I’d spent in Jesmond Dene years later, reflecting on the recent demise of my first serious relationship. And when I say reflecting, I mean being thoroughly miserable and trying to make sense of it all as Mark Kozelek sang about his own relationship woes. Red House Painters helped me through a difficult time. I’d like to think I paid them back by repeatedly playing their CDs to everyone I knew in 1993.
Sarah did a superb job of singing this song, especially as like so many on Goodbye the melody wasn’t written with a vocalist in mind, at least not a human vocalist. It sounds fabulous on a piano, and the huge leaps in pitch make sense when all you have to do is hit the right keys. But hitting the right note when you’re jumping nearly an octave in the middle of a phrase is asking too much. We never played this song live.

It was the experience of writing the songs for the Goodbye album that made me change my approach to vocal melody writing. Until this point, and simply by chance, writing melodies on piano had translated perfectly for mine and Sarah’s voices. But Cathedral Park sounded strange, strained, and definitely did not fit in with the ‘back to basics’ approach of melody writing that was being used by the Britpop pack. Consequently I sang all the melodies on Make It Better as I wrote them. 

And as I’m writing this, I’m listening to Highasakite, and noticing they use huge leaps in pitch in their choruses. They also seem to use a lot of Melodyne to achieve this. Flamboyant melodies are back.

*that qualified for the charts

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

Spotify
Amazon
Apple Music