I Will Be Your Girlfriend

Written by STEVE Hillier & Chris Wilkie

When April 1992, refined in 1996

Where Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood (JONI MITCHELL)

Features Roland S-760, JV-1080 & JD-800

Spotify Link

YOUTUBE link to ‘Joni’, the original DEMO version of Girlfriend

“I am the gum on your shoe”

This Girlfriend had a prolonged gestation. The original idea was to combine the feel of Temple Head by Trans Global Underground (mixed by Paul Tipler, who would later go on to mix several of the songs intended for United States of Being) and the melody from Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell. So in 1994 it was an instrumental based around a ‘don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone’ vocal sample. We’d performed this song in our set as The Joans, but for the life of me I can’t remember what Sarah did onstage. She didn’t mime it or sing along, but I remember it worked brilliantly. There was a particular gig in Middlesbrough in 1994 that made me think: “Hang on, I think we might be onto something here.” We signed to Food Records only a few months later.

By the time we’d recorded the version that ended up on Goodbye at Stephen Hague’s barn in Woodstock NY, the Joni Mitchell sample was long gone, replaced by one of my most acerbic lyrics. “The prostitute who rings your family” felt like a powerful line at the time, but with hindsight it’s too strong, almost vulgar and makes the song unnecessarily aggressive. Still, it made it onto the radio and charted.

Inside

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEn January 1997

WHERE Bob Clearmountain’s place, Woodstock NY

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760, JD-800 & JV-1080

Spotify Link

“…I don’t laugh at the television”

Inside is intended to be darkly funny, knowing. It’s a nod to the audience that I knew I was being deliberately morose for their amusement. I felt a strong sense of defeat in 1997 (see ‘It’s Over’)…when I returned from the Woodstock sessions with Stephen Hague, Newcastle felt like a place I’d already left. And I felt this should be reflected in the music I was writing…hence ‘Goodbye’.

Back in the USA, Chris, Paul and I had spent much of our time listening to Depeche Mode’s Violator. Three young men in the big country, we were trying to follow in the footsteps of the Brits who’d arrived before us, and rather than connect with The Beatles (despite Paul and Chris and seemingly all the Britpop bands being huge fans) we chose Depeche and their seminal album as our guide. 

Some of their gloom filtered into my writing in Woodstock and returned with me to the UK. Back in Newcastle there was a final demo session at the Arts Centre where I was concerned that we didn’t have enough hits for the new album. Inside, When You Say Goodbye, Let’s Go and No More Talk were the solution and recorded quickly, the latter fulfilling the requirements perfectly. The former being just a little too morose for Radio 1.

No More Talk

Songwriter STEVE Hillier

When April 1987

WHERE Welling, South London

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… 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 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, and so distracted myself by shuffling and grinning like a lunatic all the way through the biggest TV performance of our careers.

Polestar

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEN September 1996

Where Arts Centre, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760, CR-78 & JV-1080

Spotify Link

“I was wrong”

In January 1996 we made our first trip abroad as an act on a Nordic tour via Paris. I’d visited Paris before, we were only there one night but there was no denying this was the most fun I’d had in France since Biarritz. But France didn’t prepare me for the life-changing events that were just a flight away…

We landed in Helsinki through clouds and snow-covered fir trees. I’d seen nothing like it, David Bowie had been just one plane ahead of us on his own trip too. We spent two nights in the city, did TV, played a gig and had an amazing time. My ongoing love affair with Scandinavia and the other Nordic countries began in January 1996. This song was born from that trip…

… and also from memories of that same winter on Tyneside. The lyric was a reflection of those moments you hold dear from a relationship. Not the big events but small things, like going for a walk together. The walk referenced in this song was with my girlfriend along Stepney Banks in Newcastle upon Tyne (near where the Cluny venue is now) heading back towards Jesmond where we lived. While Dubstar were out in Helsinki I’d received the news that EMI wanted a second album from the band…significant news for any new band and huge for me personally. We celebrated at the Cumberland Arms into the night. We were two Southerners with a new validation for staying in the North East…the band had been signed, the first album was doing great, the second was confirmed and we were going to be rich. Hooray! So it was we, a man from London and a woman from Sussex who were the ‘Northern Lights’. Turning right on Stepney Bank took us to Polestar, the rehearsal rooms run by Pauline Murray of Penetration. Chris, Gavin and I used to rehearse there, it was where Dubstar was formed. This song is named after it.

And the Helsinki connection? Initially, the word ‘England’ in this song was ‘Finland’. It sounded a bit daft on the demo, so I changed it.

Say The Worst Thing First

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEN September 1996

Where Arts Centre, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760 & JD-800

Spotify Link

“…my words were knives that broke our lives”

I broke up with my girlfriend after Dubstar headlined the NME tent at Reading Festival in 1996. I spent the next day wandering around Pink Lane, alternating between the The Forth Hotel bar and our studio in the Arts Centre trying to work out what on earth I was going to do next (a familiar feeling). On that long day drinking Guinness in the Forth Hotel I made a decision. Inspired by Ewan McGregor’s monologue in Trainspotting, I decided I would choose life… I chose to be happy rather than be a suffering artist. I chose that I wouldn’t feel this bereft, that I wouldn’t be such a failure at relationships ever again. Next time would be the right time, next time would be the last time.

But like St Augustine before me, I had to do a little more suffering and drinking first.

I hadn’t appreciated until many years later how privileged I’d been in this moment. A broken hearted songwriter splits from long term partner and gets to metaphorically open his heart in songs that will be heard by thousands of people across the world. There are worse ways to recover from the end of a relationship, but few more self indulgent. I don’t regret writing this song, but I know I couldn’t write something like this now. It’s profoundly unfair. It overlooks the other person’s position in the situation in order to express your own pain.

So I wouldn’t be comfortable doing this in 2020, but I am torn. Isn’t this self indulgence exactly how artists have behaved thorugh the ages, landing themselves in the middle of a situation involving loved ones…and then telling their own audience how they feel about it? I suppose a writer has to decide what’s more important, their art or their life. I chose the latter.

I love everything about this song except the version on Goodbye. I had too many things going on in the arrangement, like a collision of a hundred ideas for what should have been a stripped-back ‘dagger through the heart’ Dubstar song. Hopefully, the piano version addresses this. Still, the bridge with the instrumental mandolins, a reference to For Ever and Ever by Demis Roussos, is my favourite moment on the whole album.

Cathedral Park

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

When January 1991, refined in 1995

WHERE Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by STEVE Hillier

Features Roland S-760

Spotify Link

“Her words are lame, like her life”

It was a winter’s 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 huge pile next to the Roland W-30 sampler. On the label was written three words: ’potential number one’. I loaded it up, not quite remembering 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 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 maybe it would have worked; it did reach number 41 after all. Neneh Cherry and Youssou N'Dour had taken our place on the radio playlists with Seven Seconds. Now there’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 feeling 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 of the songs 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 melody writing. Until this point, and simply by chance, writing melodies on piano had translated perfectly for my and Sarah’s voices. But Cathedral Park sounded strange, sounded 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 I’m noticing they use huge leaps in pitch in their choruses and a lot of digital production tools. Flamboyant melodies are back.

It’s Over

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEn October 1996

WHERE Arts Centre, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760, Novation Bass Station

Spotify Link

“…I’ll face the ending”

I did a songwriting session with Michael Garvin in 2003 (he cowrote Never Give Up on a Good Thing among many others). When I thought the song we were working on was going a bit over the top he told me “when you feel like you’re going too far, you’re almost there”. Wise words, I’ve used that motto in everything I’ve written since. Wish he’d been around during the writing of Goodbye, where there are a few moments where I feel I’d stopped short before the song really expressed how I felt.

Despite this, there are a handful of songs where I actually do feel like I went too far, and ‘It’s Over’ is one. A great song can be sad, it can be melancholy, reflective, sombre. This song is morose, depressing and depressed, suicidal even and I would have preferred it not to have appeared on Goodbye.

My enduring memory of its writing was staying up into the small hours at the Arts Centre trying to get the rhythm parts to work. I’d bought the Bass Station as a birthday present to myself back in May and was struggling to find a use for it. I’d owned plenty of analogue synths and couldn’t see the point of getting another (this was 1996…no such restraint today). But Robin File from Audioweb (Sarah’s boyfriend at the time) had said they were great, and I wanted an analogue I could plug in with a MIDI cable so.... Unfortunately I struggled with it. I never liked its sound much, having been spoiled by the full on 1980s juice of the Mono/Poly. The opening wawp on this tune is that Bass Station, a synth I wouldn’t use again until Arc of Fire.

I still have it, never use it.

The View From Here

Written by STEVE HILLIER

WHEN February 1996

WHERE Wolverhampton Town Hall

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760 & Roland JD-800

Spotify Link

“…I was lost a long time”

It was during the third Dubstar UK tour, just after Manic came out. Things were truly exciting. I was standing behind my keyboard setup waiting for Paul (Wadsworth, our drummer), Chris and Sarah to show up for the sound check. I played some chords on the JD-800 using a string sound that I’d modelled on the Polymoog Vox Humana that’s all over Gary Numan’s Pleasure Principle album. I was struck by the size of the room we’d sold out, how hundreds had paid money to come and see a band who’d played only a handful of shows. The opening melody just appeared out of nowhere…it all made sense, look at the view from here, this was not just the next step, it was real. It’s a theme I’ve returned to regularly, the idea of facing the future, like the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich.

My Start in Wallsend

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEN July 1996

WHERE Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760

Spotify Link

“…I know I’ll find a way to stay with you”

I didn’t.

This song was originally entitled ‘My Start And World’s End’ but one hazy afternoon at the Arts Centre I casually told Paul the title of my new composition. He responded, slightly incredulously ‘Wallsend? You’re writing about Wallsend now?’. I thought this was a brilliant idea. Unfortunately I wasn’t writing about the North Tyneside ship building town, but the lyric sounded like it could have been. There’s a romance in name-checking a real place, so My Start in Wallsend was born.

Sunday sunshine
I know that sometimes friends can easily lose the way
Now in daylight no time for fights
We have to live another day
You're my best friend
My start in Wallsend
People round who know the score
For all the great things I’ve kept a space
For all the time I've spent with you
So take the bad things out of everything
I'll show you the way

Both our families
They know what I see
Know the plans that I believe
We'll drink to them
For waiting then
For all the smiles that time will bring
Cos we're the best kind
And now I know I'll find the way to stay with you
So toast the great days
Forget our sad ways
Laugh for all the things we do
And take the bad things out of everything
I'll show you the way...

But…
It all depends on if you'll see me
It all depends on if you'll speak to me...

And this is my favourite song from Goodbye. There’s nothing in the lyric I would want to change, nothing in the melody (although it’s nearly impossible to sing, Sarah managed it only once. There’s a leap of an octave and semitone down at one point…no writer should ever do that to a singer). There are only a few things in the arrangement I’d change too. The demo of this song that was recorded in Jacob’s Studio, Surrey included Paul playing drums double time in the final chorus, an approach that I prefer to the languorous Red House Painters approach we’d taken for the album version. And even though there was an idea to change the chorus in this song when we got it to RAK in the winter of 1997…I said no. The song was written.

So yes, it’s my favourite and largely forgotten song in the Dubstar canon from the 90s. Another example of why I can never be an A&R person.

It’s Clear

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier & Chris Wilkie

WHEN January 1993

WHERE Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by STEVE Hillier

Features Roland S-760 & JD-800

Spotify Link

“This is the first time that it’s made vague sense”

Just as the reflective mood is established on the album with My Start In Wallsend, along comes It’s Clear, originally entitled ‘Brownmouth’ to break the spell. This song was part of The Joans set when Chris and I had paired down to a duo following Gavin’s departure for British Airways. It kind of worked too, and debuted on Metro FM, Tyneside’s biggest independent radio station on the Nicky Brown show in 1993 (hence ‘Brownmouth’).

 We included it in the demo sessions for Goodbye, changed the key to suit Sarah and it survived.

The synth intro and banging distorted kick drum sound at the start was a reference to the Gabba I’d been listening to over the summer of 1996. Gabba was a stupidly fast and distorted form of techno that was briefly popular in the Benelux region… and I loved it. I found it highly amusing that this sensitive pop group from Tyneside would secretly be enjoying the hardest form of music known to humanity in the basement clubs and blues of Shieldfield. In reality, it was just me listening to Dutch twelve inches in the safety of my front room.

Ghost

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEN January 1997

WHERE Real World Studios, Box, Somerset

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 and I thought that was a good thing. This piano version is the only version that has never involved tears in its performance.

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 was 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.

Can’t Tell Me

Written by Chris Wilkie

Originally sung by Chris Wilkie

Features Roland S-760 & JD-800

Spotify Link

“Dropped your pants, kicked off your shoes”

And this is the seminal Chris song.

We included Can’t Tell Me in the early Dubstar live sets and it sounded terrific. The chord sequence is superb and features the best melody Chris has written. My fondest memory of the first Dubstar tour was being berated by Miles Jacobsen (who worked at Food Records) for playing a song live that wasn’t included on the album we were promoting (which was ‘Disgraceful’). We all thought that was a terrifically cool thing to do, so ignored his advice. Miles now has an OBE. No one from Dubstar holds an honour currently.

Wearchest

WRITTEN by Steve Hillier & Chris Wilkie

WHen April 1993

WHERE Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by Steve Hillier

Features Roland S-760

Spotify Link

“I can’t sleep with something I can’t fight”

Another song from The Joans era.

I wrote this song for an appearance that Chris and I made on Wear FM, a radio station in Sunderland. This was the last I wrote specifically for me to sing before meeting Sarah a few weeks later. When we were recording Goodbye in RAK studios, Sarah would sing her vocals around 5pm… a great time for vocalists, the singer is fully awake, not bloated from lunch nor drunk from dinner. Unfortunately for Sarah, on this occasion, she’d put her hand down on an electric hob in the kitchen area at the studios and burned herself badly. Screamingly badly. Ever the trooper, she took that pain and adrenalin with her into the studio with Stephen Hague and the vocal went down faster than any other from this era. I suspect it helped her get the higher parts too.

When You Say Goodbye

WRITTEN BY Sarah Blackwood, Steve Hillier & Chris Wilkie

WHEN February 1997

WHERE Arts Centre and forth hotel, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760

Spotify Link

“I know all the people you've been with before”

Many songs are written in nightclubs, but ‘When You Say Goodbye’ is the only Dubstar song written in a pub (specifically the Forth Hotel, in the corner nearest Central Station by the fireplace).
 It has an interesting balance between anger and bitterness, between pathos and pure whining. Unfortunately, this song falls just slightly on the wrong side of all of them, and I’m not comfortable with how the lyric fantasises about attacking the woman. That’s going too far and a sentiment that’s not earned in the song; the bad person in this scenario is the man, the one putting it around town.

I do think this is one of the best songs on Goodbye though, it’s interesting and I like how it references a real-world crazy thing that was actually happening as we were recording the album. And at that point, we didn’t know quite how crazy it was going to get in 1997, it was only February. Musically, this is another song demonstrating my passion for Cocteau Twins, specifically the song ‘Seekers Who Are Lovers’ from Milk and Kisses. The connection isn’t that close, it’s the opening guitar chimes and the overall slow, limping feel that appealed to me. So it appears in this song too.

Let’s Go

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEN November 1996

WHERE BOB CLEARMOUNTAIN’S PLACE, WOODSTOCK NY

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760 & JV-1080

Spotify Link

“I haven’t sung in years”

New love, and a song that symbolises the naivety and relief when you think you’re through the worst and can see what’s coming for the first time ‘in years’. It’s the companion song to ‘The View From Here’, hence the reference to the song in the lyric. There’s a sample of Sarah that I swept down in pitch at the end to make her sound like she was falling. Someone said this song sounded like a suicide note, with Sarah jumping off a building at the end. A fascinating idea, but that wasn’t my intention.

Let’s Go reminds me of the Cardigans in their more reflective and wonky moments (I would become close friends with their producer’s wife Solveig a few years later). In a peculiar way, this song was inevitable, it’s exactly what Dubstar was…three people who really didn’t know what was going on or what they needed to do in order to be successful. And that was fine, it all worked out, but I didn’t realise that in order to keep the whole show on the road it might have been better to write more songs like Stars, No More Talk and Anywhere. Instead, I was having one of the worst times of my life and was determined to tell everyone about it in songs, many of which didn’t even have choruses.

B-sides & Bonus Songs

GOODBYE TO YOU

WRITTEN BY SARAH BLACKWOOD, STEVE HILLIER & CHRIS WILKIE

WHEN MARCH 1994

WHERE JESMOND, NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

FEATURES Roland S-760 & JV-1080, Korg Mono/Poly

SPOTIFY LINK

“I try to feel bitter but end up feeling used”

That was the original lyric. For some reason this song comes up as simply ‘Goodbye’ on Spotify. Goodbye To You was recorded for Disgraceful and would have been the final song on the album if I hadn’t made sure that I read and understood every syllable of the record contract we’d signed with Food/EMI. In essence, we’d agreed that if we’d included a sample on a submitted recording we had to tell the record company all about it, so I did. The original version of Goodbye To You had a sample of a Hip Hop record running all the way through it. There was no denying it, it was Funky to the Doobiest and a one way ticket to a law suit. I thought that would be a bad idea, so… I told the company, and they pulled it from the album. They couldn’t deny they’d known, I’d done everything in the most official way possible. There was a fax machine involved and everything.

This was a mistake. On the one hand, I’d performed the honourable thing and confessed. On the other hand, if we’d been sued that would have been a great news story for the music press…what could be cooler than litigation from a highly regarded LA based Hip Hop act? It probably would have only cost £3000 to clear the sample and the publicity would have been worth ten times that.

I learned an important lesson from this. In the business of music, nothing is quite as you would imagine. You agree to a clause that you think is protecting the record company from an artist recklessly ‘stealing’ other music, but sometimes it’s in everyone’s interests to have a public falling out. ’Reckless artist’ was a great look in the music press. I’m much too polite to be completely reckless, especially with my ongoing gratitude that Food wanted anything to do with us. Consequently Goodbye To You in its original form was pulled. This version, a complete rerecording on the B-Side of No More Talk, was made and mixed at RAK studios on my venerable Apple Powerbook 5300cs. In terms of computing power it seems laughable now. It felt like the future at the time. 


UNCHAINED MONOLOGUE/VINI

WRITTEN BY Sarah Blackwood, Steve Hillier & Chris Wilkie

WHEN March 1987, January 1994, refined March 1997

PLACE WRITTEN Welling, South London & Jesmond, Newcastle

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

FEATURES Roland S-760 & JV-1080

LINK TO PIANO VERSION OF VINI

“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 and played on the JV-1080, another on guitar 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 out 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 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 trite. Every word was true though, I meant them all and that’s what matters ultimately. And I accept that 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 would attempt.

LA BOHEME

WRITTEN BY jacques Plante & CHARLES AZNAVOUR

WHEN 1965

WHERE Paris, France

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY CHARLES AZNAVOUR

FEATURES Roland S-760 & JV-1080

SPOTIFY LINK

SPOTIFY LINK TO ORIGINAL

“I stand upon that hill until I drink my fill and leave it all behind”  

Stephen Hague wasn’t sure if we should record this song. He was right to question my idea, I was wrong not to act on his concern. Note to self: other people can be correct sometimes.



I have loved Charles Aznavour since a child. While other kids were listening to ABBA and scouring their parents’ record collections for The Beatles, I was transfixed by French chanson. As the mixes for Goodbye were finishing and we needed some B-sides (plus I didn’t have the inclination or energy to write anything new, see above) I thought we should do an Aznavour song. This was the perfect opportunity, and La Boheme was the perfect candidate.

The French version is the story of a couple of painters in Montmartre struggling with life and their art, whereas the English version was less personalised and described exactly how I felt leaving Newcastle to move to Brighton: utterly bereft yet standing proud and ready for whatever was coming next.

Unfortunately, the Dubstar version does not work on any level. Stephen pointed out that a song like this lives or dies by its vocal delivery. Aznavour made every syllable sound like it had been torn from his soul. Sadly Sarah’s detached delivery flattens the whole recording, plus chanson sung in a Halifax accent sounds bizarre (see also Poupée De Cire, Poupée De Son). This wasn’t Sarah’s fault, it was simply the wrong song, in the way that covering a rap song would have been just as mad (Duran Duran had recently released their version of 911 is a joke as a joke, I presume). 



JEALOUSY

WRITTEN BY Chris Lowe & Neil Tennant

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY NEIL TENNANT

FEATURES ROLAND S-760 & JV-1080

YOUTUBE LINK

SPOTIFY LINK TO ORIGINAL

“I wish I’d never met you more than I can bear to let you go”  

Bauhaus were regularly compared to David Bowie. Then they recorded a cover of Ziggy Stardust and achieved legendary status at my school. What better way to put to bed the comparisons than to endorse them? Dubstar was being compared to the Pet Shop Boys, so why not cover one of their songs, just like Bauhaus did with Bowie?

EMI wanted each of their roster to record a cover of another of their act’s repertoire, and Jealousy was our contribution. It’s dreadful, incomplete and for some reason I decided to do the string arrangement on the JV-1080 rather than the S-760. So it sounds like a cheap 1990s facsimile of an orchestra, and in a bad way. Elton John was recording something or other in the same studio complex as us. Chris called out ‘Hey Elton, come and see what Dubstar are doing! We’re recording out-of-tune guitars!’. And we were. Inexcusable frankly, but…

Sarah does such a good job with the vocal that she nearly rescues the whole thing. The programmer chap should have taken a look at himself, realised this was actually an opportunity to do something excellent and done that rather than this. And if we really had to cover a Pet Shop Boys song we should have chosen this one.

While checking this recording from 1997 I’ve realised I accidentally changed one of the lyrics from the original (see above). I prefer mine.

IN MY DEFENCE

WRITTEN BY STEVE HILLIER

WHEN May 1997

WHERE Hove, SUSSEX

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

FEATURES ROLAND S-760

SPOTIFY LINK

 “I take precautions... if little caution”

Winner of second most morose Dubstar song.

I grew up surrounded by classical music and French crooners, such as Serge Reggiani. The work of Polish composer Henryk Górecki fascinated me; I found it peculiar that he was creating classical music and was still alive. Everyone else I liked had been dead for decades, sometimes centuries. One night in The Conqueror I had the idea of making a song built around short repeated string lines, much like his Symphony No 3. In My Defence was the result, layers of samples from the S-760 and Sarah singing my mea culpa lyrics. I think it worked well. I know it’s a favourite with Dubstar fans.

My enduring memory of the writing of this song was working in my bedroom in Waterloo St, Hove. It had been a brothel before I’d moved in, each room had a large sunken bathtub and mirrors. I wrote this lying in mine, surrounded by equipment from our studio in Newcastle with Star Trek Deep Space Nine playing on a TV perched just to one side of the water. A death trap. How I survived this period God only knows.

LET DOWN

WRITTEN BY Chris WILKIE

RELEASED WHEN AUGUST 1997

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

SPOTIFY LINK

“Rest my head where you’ve shit the bed”  

Nice.

The B-sides for Cathedral Park were recorded in a hurry at Studio24 near Portslade, just along the coast from Brighton. Consequently, this acoustic number is a solo effort between Chris and Sarah recorded straight onto the Roland VS-880.

I discovered months after this song was released that everything that I’d recorded on that machine, from No More Talk through to In My Defence had been made on the lowest quality setting. I’m amazed I didn’t notice at the time. I don’t think I’d have ever noticed if it hadn’t flashed up on the screen one day.

THIS IS MY HOME

WRITTEN BY STEVE HILLIER

WHEN June 1997

WHERE HOVE, Sussex

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

FEATURES Roland S-760 & JV-1080, Steinberg Recycle

“It amounts to nothing…”  

The sound of someone trying to settle into their new town. It took four months before I realised I hadn’t woken up without a hangover since leaving Jesmond. Not a good sign. I barely drink at all now.

So I went round to The Conqueror, the pub behind the house on Waterloo Street I was sharing. It’s still there, now known as the Bottom’s Rest, a classic Hove pub. But in 1997 my block was known primarily for heroin and brothels, neither of which I’d known before arriving. The girls would come into the pub between clients and chat with the locals. And if you knew the barmen (and women) you could put in an order for contraband booze and cigarettes from across the channel in France. I couldn’t believe it, I’d moved three hundred miles to the seaside and my local was literally a smuggler’s pub. I loved it, this definitely was my home.

Listening back twenty years later I’m wondering why I put all those mad Jungle breaks into what is essentially a ballad. Trying a bit too hard to be relevant possibly? I’m not sure, I didn’t know what could work musically anywhere but Newcastle so I was scrabbling about trying to find something new, some way to fit in. I think Sarah did a great job and This Is My Home is ok, much better than I remember. Maybe the Jungle drum thing wasn’t such a bad idea? This song features a guitar solo from Chris played through a ring modulator so it’s impossible to know which notes he’s playing. Why?

IN CHARGE

WRITTEN BY STEVE HILLIER & Chris Wilkie

WHEN November 1996

WHERE Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

FEATURES Roland S-760 & JV-1080

YOUTUBE LINK

“Playing with my boyfriends in the sun”  

It never occurred to me when we were signed that I’d end up writing a song for Lennie Godber’s daughter. But back in 1996, I had no idea that Kate Beckinsale would go on to be such a star either. I did notice that she resembled my friend Jo from school. That was a good thing, what do you want me to do? 

In 1996 there had been a meeting, director Stefan Schwartz was sourcing music for his new movie ‘Shooting Fish’ and was keen for Dubstar to be involved. There was a scene he had in mind, our role was to replace the music he’d synced with the images. Obviously we said yes, we’d love to help, so I took a VHS cassette of the scene home to Jesmond to get inspired. The writing task was to create a song that fitted the movie better than REM’s ‘Shiny Happy People’, which was their first choice, or maybe it was just an example, I’m not sure which. I’ve come to learn this is a common approach at film studios. 

I don’t recall that this was a particularly difficult job. The music came together quickly and was based on a guitar figure Chris created. He was into REM, this was his territory. I was more of a ‘dance to ‘Stand’ after five pints’ indie disco bystander than a fan.

So we put together a short version that fitted the scene and later a longer one for the OST. I thought it was great, the studio thought it was great. This meant it survived all the way to the finished cut, never a given in the film world and a major relief. 

Chris and I went to the premier in Leicester Square which led to one of my proudest Dubstar moments: seeing our writing credit coming up at the end of the movie. I didn’t take many opportunities to sit back and enjoy success in 1997, but this was one. And I enjoyed the movie too. It’s a proper caper, unashamedly 1990s even down to the 1960s references throughout. If we go into lockdown again I’ll have to dig it out.

What I can’t find is the finished mix of either version of In Charge anywhere around here. Damn, the 90s was a terrible time for archiving digital data. [I’ve heard it on YouTube now. That’s a rubbish mix Steve, even for you in 1997. Chris sounds good though. Also, I can hear how the Roland VS880 clips the very beginning of the phrases on the guitars and vocals.]

And there’s a line in this song I love:

“I’m the one in charge now your phone is on the charger”

It’s a silly little thing, but that was a direct reference to how quickly mobile phones ran down and how annoying that was back then.

Poupée De Cire, Poupée De Son

WRITTEN BY SERGE GAINSBOURG

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY FRANCE GALL

FEATURES ROLAND S-760, Steinberg Recycle

SPOTIFY LINK TO ORIGINAL

YOUTUBE LINK TO DUBSTAR VERSION

“Je suis une poupée de cire…”

We were asked to record this song for Channel 4’s Eurotrash program who were putting together an alternative Eurovision song contest where the producer’s favourite bands would record the winners of previous competitions. He thought we’d be perfect for this Serge Gainsbourg classic, 
so we had another chance to cover a French song, and this time with the legendary Sacha Distel. I did my best but there were some issues with this version. Sacha told me I’d mixed his vocal too dry. He was right, there was no reverb on his vocal at all! I was channelling the kind of feel you hear on Brigitte Bardot’s Bonny and Clyde, another Gainsbourg classic, but…didn’t get there. I was a little hurt but I couldn’t change it, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’d already lost all the files for the song and the only version that existed was the one he’d heard in his manager’s office, probably thinking it was a demo and could be changed. That also explains why there’s literally no bass line on this tune. There was supposed to be a thumping Mono/Poly bump throughout but I accidentally muted it before sending off the DAT for the production, so…

I asked him if Sarah’s pronunciation was ok, the whole French via Halifax thing again. He said it was charming, ever the professional. I think he meant…ridiculous, but she’s cute so it works.

I was asked to produce the Bananarama entry too. The director had chosen ABBA’s Waterloo for them (“the least sexy song of all time”)…and we won. I recorded the vocals in Ray Davis’s Konk studio in Crouch End, London. There was a moment when things weren’t quite going to plan, I don’t remember what the issue was exactly, it could have been anything. One of the Bananas said off mic “he doesn’t know what he’s doing does he?”.

“Of course I don’t, I’m in Dubstar”

And so the Goodbye era ended as it began, in near total confusion. Time to make it better?