Q&A

This page contains answers to the questions that fans sent in to celebrate thirty years of Dubstar. You’ll find the video here and a transcript beneath each.

Very soon I'll be recording the 30 years of Dubstar Q&A session and thanks to all of you who have sent in questions. I'm looking forward to getting to that probably next week. I wanted to get this message out today because it was on this day 30 years ago that Dubstar's first single, Stars, reached number 40 in the UK top 40 singles chart. Over the years I've been asked, "What did that feel like? What did that mean?" Mainly by aspiring songwriters who have a view of the 1990s because they were never there. I don't think I've given a conclusive answer because it's so hard to know what it means to have a hit and, more specifically, what it meant for us.

On a personal level for me it meant that what we were doing was real because up until this point all Dubstar had ever been was a lesser-known act on the Newcastle band scene who, to everyone's surprise and probably even annoyance, had become the first act in many years to land a major record deal.

In some ways, all that meant was that someone down in London lied to us enough to get us to record some songs. That's great, but it could happen to anyone. In fact, I discovered over the years that getting label interest, or what used to be called a development deal, could really happen to anyone who was just about plausible. It didn't often amount to much. In fact, it was normally a career kiss of death. We'd avoided that. I didn't really know how significant that was at the time. Now I do. We were in a different place. Food Records had released a song by us and it had charted. That meant we were more than the latest signings. We were actually in the game. We had shot and we had scored. Well done us. And all in public as well. It meant that Dubstar had changed in an instant.

I had always imagined that we would sign to a small indie label and release a string of boutique records to be sold in indie record shops, probably somewhere towards the back, and have a career that would be just bubbling along as a middling alternative act. This wasn't through lack of ambition on mine, Chris’s, or Sarah’s part. This is just what the people that we liked had done and were doing. It seemed that would be okay because as long as the indie label liked us, they'd keep putting out our songs and that would be terrific. That's what we wanted.

But we hadn't signed to a fly-by-night indie. We'd signed to a major label. We'd signed to Food Records. And Food meant business, by which I mean Andy Ross, the ANR chap who signed us and is sorely missed. Andy did things properly.

We weren't intending to bring records to a lot of those great bread. So no pressure. And here we were with our very first release hitting the top. Next release, we'd need to be even higher, and we managed it just a bit. This was the beginning, a small version of the big time, and it was really exciting. Getting to number 40 soon seemed like a lowly achievement, a stepping stone to higher in the charts, and we actually did have a future. The radio had played us. We'd be on TV. The press seemed to love us. The record itself said terrific. Well played, everyone.

How did it feel? I was elated, then immediately daunted, then elated again. Typical me. I walked up from our flat on Groveno Avenue in Jesice on Acorn Row and bought a bottle of champagne. That's not something I normally do. Someone has a picture of myself and my partner toasting this moment to Lucy, the gray zerobic cab, who was staring out into the backyard at the flat, trying to understand what was going on and what would possess her humans to be dancing around in the drizzle. She stayed in. We stayed out.

What did it mean? It meant there was a huge amount of work to do. Let's get on with it. Let's dance first though.

On reflection, getting to number 40 in the charts was not very high, but it was high enough and it started a chain of events that has echoed through the decades right to where I'm sitting today. The currency of the music business is confidence. Nothing puts more confidence in the bank than having a visible, tangible success. No matter how small. A big success is better. Once that success has been banked, unless you do something really foolish, its value grows over time.

Number 40 in 1995 wasn't very high by the standards of the day, but it was enough for the record company, the press, and the media to back Dubstar for the next single, Anywhere, which charted higher, then Manic, and eventually the Stars re-release. The period between the release of Stars the first time and the release of No More Talk two years later was all about ever-growing confidence. That confidence led to more tangible achievements. It allowed us to tour the world, find life partners, make some money doing what we loved, and then move into other roles in the music world, such as songwriting and production, singing with a different act, education, and more. All of that was built on having a string of top 40 singles, eight of them for us.

When I was lecturing, I would tell my students something our publisher Mike Smith had said to me, paraphrasing him: the key to success is to have hits. Everything happens when you have hits.

So congratulations to Dubstar 30 years ago today.

When we were first rehearsing to promote the Disgraceful album, I don't remember where the idea came from, but we decided to do a Gary Numan cover, which was Everyday I Die. It suited Sarah, it suited the band, and we did a version that rolled along like a mid-90s trip-hop, poppy kind of track.

Word got around that the new band Dubstar were covering Gary Numan in their live shows, and Steve Malins, who was managing Gary at the time and also working at Q magazine, reached out to the record company. Eventually, Steve and I met, and he told me about a project he was working on where a whole load of contemporary acts were covering Gary. This was part of Gary taking advantage, in a good way, of the interest being shown around him. He had spent a long time in the wilderness, and now the people who had grown up with his music were making music of their own. So we did Everyday I Die, which we had rehearsed live.

I do remember that I wanted to do a different song, but there wasn't time to do anything else. We had rehearsed this song, and it was the one Gary liked that we were doing, and Steve liked it too. So we stuck with it.

Later on, I revisited Gary Numan’s work that I had missed after the Strange Charm album. I was quite late to the Sacrificealbum, which many considered the beginning of a Renaissance in his career. If we had had another chance, I would have really liked to have done the song A Seed of a Lie, the last song on the original release of Sacrifice. I liked the words to that tune, and I thought it had a really haunting quality that Sarah could have done justice to. But it didn’t happen. Instead, we just stuck with Everyday I Die. I quite like it, and apparently so does Gary.

Clarabel Snickers asks, "Hi, was the Disgraceful cover the only idea for it?"

I don't think there was any other image that was a contender for the front cover. Once the record company and the band saw Rob Steele's artwork, there was something striking and compelling about his photography and the original pencil case design. It was clear that this was going to be the cover for Disgraceful all along. That’s how it remained until the cover was changed, as some people found it a little troubling. The original pencil case was replaced with a secondary, more fluffy rabbit pencil case.

Although I really liked Rob Steele’s photography, my vision had been much more artsy for Dubstar. That’s because I grew up with the artwork on the record covers of bands I adored, like the Cocteau Twins, the designs on 4AD records from Thorn Oliver, and the photography and design of Chris Biggs. All of that was really where I grew up, along with the amazing sleeve designs used on Factory Records releases by artists like New Order and Happy Mondays.

Maybe that didn’t ultimately suit the band. I think the cute photography Rob Steele made, which combined the feeling of something childlike with something a little more complex, was a fantastic choice. I’m really pleased that we did that for Disgraceful and also for Goodbye.

Les Lightbound asks, "Barley Mo or Egypt Cottage?"

Very few of you will know what Les is getting at, but I do. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, there were two fabulous pubs in Newcastle. There was the Barley Mo, which had a view over the Tyne, and the Egypt Cottage, just a couple of streets up the hill, right next to the Tante Studios.

If you watched the early Tube television program, they often cut to the Egypt Cottage pub, right next door, where some of the artists and locals would be. You might see someone like Jools Holland from Plumstead or Deptford, hanging out with all these other musicians, looking a bit like a fish out of water. The whole thing was brilliant as a television program, really pivotal.

If it was a choice between the two, the answer for me was this: for a night out on the riverside in the late 80s or early 90s, it would be the Egypt Cottage, then walk up to the riverside. For a night out in Newcastle city center, you’d go to the Barley Mo, then either walk up from there under Swan House or head off wherever you wanted. Alternatively, you might walk down from the Barley Mo along the banks of the Tyne to the Quayside and some of the bars down there, which was great.

In fact, my favorite bar down on the Quayside back in the day was the Cooperidge, where I DJed a few times. Old pubs of Newcastle—where are they now?

Is Disgraceful going to be re-released on vinyl?

I'm afraid the answer is, as far as I know, it’s not going to be re-released on vinyl this year. And I don’t know of any plans to release it on vinyl either.

I’ll explain why and maybe put some rumors to bed. Firstly, there are no problems with the rights. Warner Music Group has all the permissions they need to release Disgraceful again. There’s also no problem with permission—it’s not like Warner has to go to me, Chris, Sarah, or anyone else to get permission to re-release it.

It’s simply not happening because no one has done it. And that might seem obvious, but there are a few reasons.

Firstly, from Warner’s perspective, there’s little reason to re-release Disgraceful on vinyl. Primarily, there’s no Dubstar to promote it. The band’s final gig happened more than 12 years ago. If they were to repress some vinyl, there’s no one available to promote it.

Also, there’s no compelling reason to make the release now because there hasn’t been a profile-raising event for Dubstar in a long time. You could argue there hasn’t been one since the early 2000s. No tour, no high-profile cover, no songs sampled, no Dubstar songs in a movie—nothing. So, unfortunately, there’s no increase in interest that would justify a release.

Additionally, Dubstar hasn’t had a manager or spokesperson in decades. There’s no one wandering around the offices of Warner saying, “We should re-release Dubstar albums.” So, unfortunately, Dubstar just isn’t on Warner’s radar.

What about a smaller label?

I actually went quite far with a label that specializes in these kinds of releases. We were talking about an expanded version of all the Dubstar albums—a kind of compendium, including vinyl. But in 2018, it became clear that demand for the project wasn’t as high as we’d expected, and then the pandemic hit. Something that was always going to be a long process basically stopped. So, unfortunately, another label wasn’t an option.

Why not just do it ourselves?

That’s tricky. Releasing any album physically costs a significant amount of money, and there’s a lot of admin involved. You need specialists to handle rights, manufacturers, artwork—the whole thing. I’ve never done that before, and hiring someone to manage it gets very expensive, very quickly.

Time is another factor. When we were planning a Dubstar compendium with that label, the timeframe was measured in years. Quite frankly, I don’t have that kind of spare time, and I suspect Chris and Sarah don’t either. If we had to hire someone else and fund it ourselves, the costs would rack up quickly.

Another issue is who benefits. The chances of making a profit are low, and the chances of spending a lot of money and losing it are high. I also don’t feel comfortable charging the surviving fan base for songs they already have. In fact, I don’t really feel comfortable charging for songs people haven’t heard either, which is why the Dubstar archive is free to access. It just feels exploitative to monetize that goodwill.

Maybe it sounds pompous or self-righteous, but I’d much rather keep this work free, which unfortunately makes a vinyl release impractical.

Ultimately, it’s just not an enterprise for me. There’s no new music, no act to promote it, and no one to play live. I’m afraid we’ll have to wait for renewed interest in Dubstar before a vinyl release is likely. That means there won’t be a vinyl version of Disgraceful for the 30th anniversary, unless something amazing happens and no one’s told me.

I know someone may have been given the impression there would be a re-release for the 30th anniversary. I’m not sure where that came from—I hope it wasn’t me.

Sorry.

I have a question from Last Pyian, who says, "Hi there. I won't ramble about how much of a super fan I am, so I'll just get right to the question."

There were loads of other really interesting music around during Dubstar's first three albums, and they asked if there were any other bands we were really into and found inspiring. They also asked what my favorite Dubstar album was.

Other bands were around at the time that we found inspiring, though I’m not sure there was any we all agreed on. All three of us really loved the work of William Orbit, who is most famous for working with Madonna on Ray of Light, but he did a lot of other amazing music before that, and we met him a few times. I think he and Sarah ended up being quite friendly at some point as well. William Orbit was something we all had in common.

In the mid to late '90s, I was really into Boards of Canada. They made some fantastic albums, particularly Music Has the Right to Children, which is a classic of electronic music. I also enjoyed the Cardigans album Life, and the first three Massive Attack albums, which I thought were superb. One perennial favorite was the Cocteau Twins, especially Heaven or Las Vegas.

My favorite Dubstar album? Disgraceful is very important, but in terms of my personal favorite, it has to be the first attempt at United States of Being. Many of these songs are on the Dubstar archive. I love these songs because they represent a moment when we had matured enough to know exactly what we were doing musically, but were also relaxed enough to just do what came naturally.

Disgraceful was a bit like that as well, though we were obviously much younger, around 12 or 13 years younger. For Disgraceful, and particularly for Make It Better, we were under a lot of self-imposed pressure to remain successful. By the first attempt at United States of Being, there really was nothing more to prove. We just relaxed and made, I think, the best music of our career.

My second favorite would be the second attempt at United States of Being, because it followed a similar pattern. It was simply what happens when you make an act out of Sarah Blackwood, Steve Hillier, and Chris Wilkey.

If I were to rank the albums from most favorite to least favorite, it would be:

1. United States of Being (first attempt)

2. United States of Being (second attempt)

3. Disgraceful

4. Goodbye

5. Make It Better

I should also mention the B-sides we did throughout the '90s and the Make It Better period. If that had been released as an album, it would probably be my second favorite as well, because it was another period where we were relaxed and doing what came naturally. That, I think, is how the best music emerges.

This is a question from Bradley from Birmingham, who asks how much more is there from the Dubstar archive and whether there are any rarities from the Disgraceful album that we can hear.

So far in the Dubstar archive, I've only included songs that I thought would be interesting. Consequently, I've avoided putting up minor alternative versions of songs that everybody has heard already, and I've concentrated on songs that have an interesting story behind them or are great music that hasn’t been heard before.

There is still a vast amount of music, stretching all the way from the very earliest days when it was just me and Chris, right through to the end of the United States of Being album sessions, which ended effectively in 2013. Overall, we’re just around a third of the way through these recordings.

In terms of Disgraceful, there will be some recordings from that era that have never been heard before. I intend to put them up around the time of the 30th anniversary of Disgraceful, which will be in October.

There are also a bunch of other recordings that are works in progress. I’ve been considering whether they should be released at all, largely because I’m not sure they count as Dubstar recordings. Dubstar is me, Chris, and Sarah, so these recordings—songwriter notes, mixes, or productions without the others’ involvement—may not truly be Dubstar. However, there is a lot of fabulous music from that nearly 20-year period that I’m wondering whether to complete and release in some form.

If you’re curious about what this stuff might sound like, I’d point you to the Dubstar Prelude EPs I put up on Spotify in 2021. These eight tunes are examples of compositions that weren’t completed during the Dubstar era but were always intended to be Dubstar songs.

Including those, we’ve really barely scratched the surface.

Ollie asks, "Why did you say the time for more Dubstar had long passed in 2014? It's a quote I've seen from you in many places, but I don't understand why you would say that."

Ollie, it's a good question, and I’ll try to explain. The most important thing in any music I've written is that it was done with sincerity and good faith. The music was intended to be the best it could possibly be. Ultimately, the motivation is to make music that I think is good. What other criteria can you use when making music? It has to be that you believe it’s good. That’s where the old but useful cliché comes from: we make music for ourselves, and if anybody else likes it, it’s a bonus. You have to make music for yourself for it to be any good.

I realized that the parameters of what Dubstar could be had been defined decades earlier. The songs and lyrical concerns of Dubstar were largely about the chaos of being in your 20s and how your life would unfold after that. Sonically, Dubstar was very ‘90s in some ways, but what made us a little different from many contemporaries was that we were unconsciously using the aesthetic of the ’80s. Between me and Chris, we were influenced by the more arty end of the ’80s, while many contemporaries were focused on recreating the ’60s or ’70s, which was never our thing. That approach was useful 30 years ago, but musical culture has moved on.

I’ve also realized that I’m no longer the man who wrote those songs. I don’t have that kind of chaos in my life anymore. I’ve been settled and happy for a long time. I don’t think it’s easy to write Dubstar-style songs about being happy or reminiscing. I try not to rely on nostalgia because it can be a bit of a cop-out. Any new Dubstar material would have to come from trying to remember what it was like to be melancholic, which is a different place to write from, and it doesn’t suit the Dubstar brand.

Earlier today, I was listening to Rollercoaster by the Red House Painters, an album I love. Chris loved it too back in 1993. I hadn’t listened to it in a long time and realized how much I loved it. I remembered being that younger self listening to it and feeling like the album expressed exactly how I felt. I’m still that man, but I won’t feel that way again. Much of the writing you hear in Dubstar comes from that same emotional place, which is the concern of someone 30 years my junior.

Now, I do think there are things to explore in song about being in my mid-50s. There are interesting topics to tackle—you can hear this in the work of someone like Nick Cave—but it doesn’t suit the Dubstar act. That’s why I said the time for more Dubstar was long gone. You could do something else, write about something else, make music that sounds different, but it wouldn’t be Dubstar. Having completed five albums and more than 100 songs is enough. Any more would no longer be sincere or done in good faith. There are other things to explore musically, and that’s where my focus has shifted.

Jonathan Cowie has been in touch. He says, "Hi, Steve. I always love the Dubstar artwork. Do you have a favorite album or single cover? Also, from the third album, the artwork completely changed using images of Sarah. How did that change come about?"

John, my favorite album or single cover has to be Anywhere. I love the yellow rubber duck, the orange background, and the little purple shapes. I really like it because it looks how I imagine Anywhere sounds. I have a mental condition called synesthesia, where all audio I hear I also see visually. It sounds like a disability or a superpower, but it’s really neither. I assumed everyone had it, but apparently they don’t. I only discovered it was relatively rare in my early 20s. The shapes and colors I associate with Anywhere through my synesthesia are perfectly matched with Rob Steel’s photography, so that’s my favorite by far.

As for why the artwork changed: there’s more to the story than I know, but here’s what I understand. The first two Dubstar albums were done on the EMI wing of EMI Records. We were signed to Food Records, which was part of EMI. Most releases went through Parlophone, but Dubstar went through the EMI wing. Whatever the reason, it worked well for us. For the first two albums, we had fantastic support from EMI, and our product manager, Aaron Moore, did amazing work for the band. With Andy at Food Records contributing to the artwork and Rob Steel handling photography, it was really distinctive and worked perfectly for Dubstar. That team remained for the first two albums.

For political reasons I don’t fully know, we ended up doing the third Dubstar album on the Parlophone wing. We had a very different team from the record company side. Andy was still there, but the people at the corporation were completely different. We didn’t use Rob for the third album. I wouldn’t call it pressure, but there was an idea at Parlophone to try something new. They suggested focusing on how great Sarah looked, rather than the slightly more esoteric artwork we had before. Although Sarah wasn’t entirely comfortable—she’s quite self-conscious—the idea was compelling enough that we did a number of photo shoots, and the images were used as the album artwork.

By the late ’90s and 2000s, when Make It Better came out, the music environment had changed. Disgraceful and Goodbyehad a more arty approach that reflected late ’80s and early ’90s pop. By the late ’90s, we were in the boy band and girl band era, and it made sense to have the fantastic-looking singer on the front cover. I have to admit, I don’t like that approach. I prefer to see an artistic representation of an act rather than a literal photographic depiction. Most of the time, it doesn’t add anything to the music—it might give a sense of the characters involved, but you can find that out in other ways. Even in the ’90s and early 2000s, you could read interviews and see photographs of bands anywhere you wanted. Today, it’s mostly about photography. I think it’s a bit of a shame, but it is what it is.

Jamie asks, "What was it like touring with Erasure?"

We were all Erasure fans, so it was really exciting to be invited on the tour. Our new manager at the time, a chap called Steo, arranged it, and the tour took place in the latter part of 1996. It fitted perfectly for us. We had already toured Disgraceful a few times, and although there were no new singles coming out, it was a perfect opportunity to promote the album to a larger audience just before Christmas.

Meeting Vince Clarke was really exciting. We met him a couple of times, and he was very friendly, great company, and genuinely interested in what we were doing. He was also very jovial with fans, handling even awkward questions with ease. Touring with Erasure was our first experience as an opening act for someone much bigger than us. The pressure was off to some extent, and we usually finished our set around 8:30 or 9:00 pm. This gave us time to explore cities like Glasgow, Manchester, Swansea, and possibly Belfast. It was a chance to enjoy ourselves both on stage and afterward, which felt like a classic Dubstar environment at the time—work hard, get a great reception, and then go out and enjoy the night.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if it was strategically the right move. Chris pointed out that we had already played many live shows, and touring again in the UK might have been too much. Live performance was never really Dubstar’s strongest suit. Perhaps we should have just guested at certain shows rather than doing the whole tour. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

My highlight was one of the early shows in Cambridge, where my family and Andy Bell’s family showed up. It felt like a hometown gig, even though Cambridge wasn’t anyone’s hometown in Dubstar, though my sister was living nearby at the time.

Recently, I was at Pride in Brighton, where Andy Bell played. It was absolutely brilliant and so much fun. I hadn’t listened to Erasure in a long time, and hearing those songs performed again was a real highlight.

Alan J. Woodward asks about the thought process behind choosing songs to cover and who is involved in that process.

For all the songs we covered, we started by loving them. Any act has to love the song they’re performing—if you don’t, other pressures creep in beyond the love of music. Fortunately, we mostly avoided those pressures.

For example, Manic was a song I discovered on a cassette given to us by Graeme Robinson in a Middlesbrough nightclub. He later became the band’s manager for a while. Chris, Sarah, and I all fell in love with it, and it went on to become the legend it is.

St. Swithun’s Day was another interesting choice. It’s a Biddy Bragg song, and I loved it as did Chris and Sarah. Billy writes with real sincerity, especially in his earlier romantic songs, from a male perspective. I thought it would be fascinating to hear a woman sing lyrics written from a male point of view. Lines like “with my own hands when I make love to your memory” are rare from a woman’s perspective, especially in the ’90s. This was our way of giving the song a new light or perspective.

My favorite cover after St. Swithun’s Day is Astrud Gilberto’s A Certain Sadness. I first heard it through Delino Moscadini, the person who had left a cassette of Sarah singing in my flat years before. I wasn’t familiar with Astrud’s lesser-known songs, but this one immediately resonated. Astrud reminded me of Sarah—they both had a gentle, detached singing style and had become famous without seeking fame. The song’s lyrics were perfect for Dubstar: melancholy, dealing with relationship difficulties, yet ultimately empowering—the singers emerge as heroes who will live to fight another day.

Another reason I loved A Certain Sadness is that we recorded it toward the end of 1995, during the peak of Britpop. While our contemporaries were looking to British music from the ’60s and ’70s, we went contrary and sincere, covering a song from Brazil. It felt like a statement that we occupied a bigger musical space than just Britain.

Alan J. Woodward also asks about how the sound design—the composition and arrangement—of a cover is arrived at. For example, do we hear a song and experiment with multiple arrangements, or do we have a singular idea for a “Dubstar” treatment from the start?

I think it really depends on the song.

With Manic, the original arrangement, which you can hear on the Dubstar archive, was more upbeat and funky. It reminded me of the kind of sounds you love in Heaven. The idea there was to take a graceful song and make it more suitable for the dance floor. That arrangement didn’t work as well as the one that ended up on Disgraceful, which was closer to Brick Supply’s original. That was a self-conscious change from the original.

St. Swithun’s Day evolved more organically. I started playing with an old hip-hop break and a bassline, singing the Billy Bragg song over it in an idle moment. Chris later added his guitar part, Sarah sang, and the song naturally evolved. I think that’s always the best way for music to develop.

With A Certain Sadness, there wasn’t much to change—it’s harmonically sophisticated, a late bossa nova style, reminiscent of Stan Getz. We simply kept a natural, Latin-inspired feel.

For Everyday I Die, the Gary Numan cover, I preferred the live version from Living Ornaments over the studio version. The main riff lent itself to a slowed-down, ’90s hip-hop/tripop beat, and the song evolved naturally from that.

Labahhem was an attempt to transform a ballad into something more dance-floor friendly, but I don’t think it fully succeeded.

Finally, I’m in Love with a German Film Star, recorded during the United States of Being sessions, was about toughening up the original arrangement. The song already felt like it could have been a Dubstar tune, so the cover is very similar to the original, just a bit more energized.

In all these cases, except for Manic, the arrangements and sonic designs grew naturally from what the original songs suggested.

Sophie from Stockholm — hello Stockholm, hello Sophie — asks:
“Are there any lyrics you look back on now and feel differently about?”

I think I’ve mentioned on many occasions that with the passing of time, your perspective on certain topics changes.

For example, the lyric to A Northern Bride. If I were to write that song today, I’d probably focus more on the trauma of a breakup with an abusive partner, rather than just a list of events. That’s essentially what A Northern Bride is. With time, and hopefully greater understanding, it would feel more fitting to address that side of things, instead of doing the rather dispassionate thing we did in 1996.

With the exception of a couple of songs on Make It Better, every lyric written for Dubstar was sincere — an attempt to communicate something emotional and hopefully interesting. So I don’t think I’d change anything outright, but I do know there are songs I couldn’t write today.

Take Ghost, one of my favourites. It was written from a position of heartbreak and sadness, but it only gives one side of a breakup. There’s no reference to what it was like for the other person. To write a song like that you almost need the self-absorption of your mid-20s — raw emotion, tunnel vision. By your mid-50s, that’s harder to tap into. These days it would inevitably turn into a more circumspect “on the one hand, on the other hand” sort of song — which would, of course, be a very different song.

So it’s not so much that I feel differently, it’s that some songs just couldn’t be written at this age. I’ve been wondering whether it’s even possible to write a Dubstar song 30 years out of your 20s, and what it would sound like. Some people have pointed me to other writers who are doing interesting things from a more mature perspective, but my own sense is simply that there are songs I couldn’t write now.

Just a Girl is Sarah’s lyric, but again — the directness, the almost dispassionate tone — I don’t think I’d want to record that now. If you were tackling the same subject today, you’d probably want more anger in it, or energy, or edge. Something that probably wouldn’t feel like Dubstar.

If you’re looking for songs that could still be written now, I’d point towards The View from Here and I, Friday Night — though I still think of it as just I. Also some of the tracks in The United States of Being. These songs are a bit more energetic than some of the older ones, with a strong positive message. That’s more where I am in life now.

The flip side of that is there are whole groups of songs I simply wouldn’t write today. From the Goodbye album: It’s Over.From Disgraceful: the title track itself. Not because they’re bad songs, just because that isn’t where I am anymore.

One song I definitely feel differently about is When You Say Goodbye. I really don’t like it now. The implication is of a woman attacking another woman for a man’s behaviour — and that’s not something I’d put in a Dubstar song today. That’s a clear example of a lyric I no longer stand by.

And, while we’re at it, I’d also leave out the “prostitute” line in I Will Be Your Girlfriend.

(Someone’s trying to get into my computer while I’m talking — I wonder why…)

I have a second question from Sophie here. She asks, “Is there a Dubstar track that fans consistently misinterpret or one that means something very different to you than people think?” I’m thinking of Manic here.

Fans misinterpreting a song, I think, is one of the most fantastic things about being a songwriter. When you write a song like Stars, for example, there’s nothing in Stars that points directly at what inspired it. So what you’re left with is a whole load of maybe abstract thoughts and feelings that leave huge spaces for the listener to fill in with their own experiences and interpretation. It’s one of the reasons why it took me what, 30 years, to really explain when asked what Stars was about—because I didn’t want to spoil it for other people, or at least I didn’t want to change what other people thought the song was about. Other people’s interpretations of a song are always more vivid and resonate more emotionally than the artist’s original intent. So it happens a lot, and most of the time I like to leave it that way.

Manic, though, I am pretty certain a journalist had written a review of the song and interpreted the words to be about, you know, a violent attack on a pensioner, which captured the rest of the journalist’s imagination. And so Manic, which seems like quite a sort of jolly, happy song, turns into something really very dark and quite sinister. But if you look at the words in Manic, it’s a bit of a leap to think that it’s a song about the rape of a pensioner, which is a terrible thing. No. In fact, actually, when you look at the words in Manic, you can really see that Manic is two different songs that have been crammed together. And the way you can tell is how the perspective of the lyric changes—from a third-person omniscient telling of a story to the first-person telling: “I was making myself the usual cup of tea, you know, advantageously took away her pride.” It doesn’t make sense, and that’s because it’s two different songs.

I suppose at the time we were powerless to change how people were interpreting this song. And I suppose also there was something really powerful about the idea that this song, which previously appeared to be really jolly, was actually really very dark. So we just kind of let that go. Plus, I suppose, there’s something a little obtuse about correcting an interviewer’s interpretation of what a song is about, so you just kind of go with what they said, I suppose.

Yeah, it’s starting to rain. I’m going to go inside.

So Andrew Foracer says, “Hello, Steve. Congratulations on 30 years since Disgraceful first graced my earlobes and became the start of an enduring appreciation for all things Dubstar.”

Thank you, Andrew. He goes on: “For me, the Disgraceful era will always be remembered for giving us the best B-sides. My personal favorite is A Northern Bride. Can you recall what inspired you to write that track? And were any of those tracks on the first four singles ever contenders for the album’s track listings before they formed part of the EPs?”

Well, I’ll answer the second question first. Actually, no—none of those songs were contenders for Disgraceful. I think we just had so many songs that were of single quality or album track quality that those extra tracks didn’t really get a look. But I have mentioned before that there were two B-sides from that era that Andy Ross at Food Records had wanted to include on the next Dubstar album. That was Song Number Nine, which I think was the B-side on Manic, and The View from Here, which was the B-side on Elevator Song. Both of those were considered strong enough to be on Goodbye. In fact, there was a brief period where The View from Here was even going to be a single, although that didn’t happen for various reasons. So yeah, these songs were quite strong; I suppose maybe they just got pushed out in the ANR process.

So what was the inspiration for A Northern Bride? I remember very clearly: I was sitting on the steps around the back of my flat in Grosvenor Avenue in Jund, listening to my partner at the time talking to her friend about how her relationship—which was pretty young—had broken down. There was a very small child, like a baby, involved in this breakdown as well. I was listening to the details of what she said, and I was just struck by her sense of innocence in all of this. She was entirely blame-free, but it was almost like here was somebody who had never expected to be in what amounted to an abusive relationship, and yet here she was, and how difficult it was for her to break free. That was the starting point for writing the lyric.

But also the name A Northern Bride—as I mentioned in the blog relating to that song—up until the point where we started to release records, I never really thought of Dubstar as being a northern act. And yet I suppose it was inevitable: we were based in Newcastle, Chris is from Gateshead, and, most importantly, Sarah was from, and still is from, Halifax in West Yorkshire. So if you combine Newcastle, Gateshead, and Halifax, you’ve got a northern act. I thought it might be interesting to reference this, even if it was just in the title of the song, to make a nod to the northernness that was part of Dubstar.

Also, people in reviews and interviews were often referencing how the lyrics in Dubstar songs would reference day-to-day things, which was often called “kitchen sink drama.” So I thought maybe, for once, I’d play up to this—and that’s where we get A Northern Bride.

Rosie asks: “Was there a song that you wish Dubstar had never released?”

Well, I think I’ve mentioned on a few occasions in the past that there are songs we released that I don’t like. For example, It’s Over. And there’s a handful of songs on Make It Better that I don’t like.

But if there’s a song I really wish had never been released, I think the closest is Cathedral Park. It really should have worked out better, but it was completely the wrong song for the day it was released.

A little recap: if you weren’t around in 1997, or you don’t remember, Lady Diana Spencer, the wife of now King Charles, died in a car crash. It happened on a Sunday night—I think it might have been Saturday. What I remember is waking up in the morning and seeing a flatmate I was living with at the time, and him telling me that Diana had died.

I know this sounds terribly selfish, and it was, because I never knew Diana Spencer. But I realized, oh no, Dubstar is just about to release our most jolly single. It’s supposed to set us up for the second album, and now the Queen of Hearts has died in tragic circumstances, and the single isn’t going to work.

What happened was that we had a whole load of playlists that were going to play us—Radio One and that kind of thing—which would have been perfect for this single. But Cathedral Park was taken off and replaced almost exclusively, it seemed at the time, by 17 Seconds by Na Cherry.

Looking back, I feel a little awkward about this because obviously it was a tragedy. But I do wonder whether we should maybe have pulled Cathedral Park and just not released it at all. I don’t know. It’s one of those counterfactuals—would things have been different if we hadn’t released it? I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is that Cathedral Park was the only song Dubstar released that didn’t make the UK Top 40. It got to number 41.

Oh well—worse things happen in Gateshead every day.

Danny asks: “Did the 1990s shape you, or did you help shape the decade?”

Before I answer, I should point out that I don’t tend to prepare for these questions. I just look through emails or Facebook comments, read them, and start speaking. I think you can get a more interesting answer that way than by preparing.

So, did the decade shape me, or did I shape it?

First, regarding Dubstar, I really feel like we didn’t exactly fly under the radar—we were in the media—but we weren’t really part of the way culture was moving at the time. Music in the mid-to-late ‘90s was moving away from that kind of vocal-led electronic stuff, which then came back in the naughties. If we’d been born ten years later, we probably could have had a great career in the naughties. But no, I don’t think Dubstar really shaped the ‘90s very much.

We were certainly participants in it, though. We had all the tropes and markers of a ‘90s act: dozens of remixes, CD singles with different tracks, videos (some good, most not, in my opinion), very expensive albums recorded in very expensive studios… all very ‘90s.

As for the decade shaping me personally, I don’t think the ‘90s did. If any decade shaped me, it was the ‘80s. I was a bit embarrassed to admit that at the time in the ‘90s. People sometimes said I was the ‘80s person in Dubstar, though Chris was just as much ‘80s as me. I was teased, I suppose, because I was the oldest in the band. The ‘80s had more of an effect on me than the ‘90s.

I also think the naughties had a big effect on me. The way my career changed during that decade really shaped how I work today. For example, I’m recording this on a laptop, using Wi-Fi, answering emailed questions. It’s not a huge deal now, but I’ve always been hugely interested in computing. That’s why my original billing on Dubstar was “Steve Hillier – programming,” though I actually played keyboards. I thought “programmer” sounded more interesting.

It was the naughties when the internet, iPhones, and related tech became dominant culture, and that’s had a big effect on me as well.

So what do I carry with me from the ‘90s personally? Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe that’s a question someone else should answer on my behalf: when you talk to Steve, does he sound like someone from the ‘90s? I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

Julian writes:
“My son is about to start studying songwriting at BIM, which I know you worked at. Is there something about the music industry that nobody will ever tell a student?”

That’s a fantastic question. And just to say — I no longer work at BIM, so I can speak freely here. I won’t talk about what’s happening there now, because that wouldn’t be fair. But I will mention something I personally learned the hard way in the 1990s.

When it came to making the third Dubstar album, Make It Better, I was really worried about the band being dropped. In fact, we weren’t dropped — but at the time, I thought the best way to keep that from happening was to make amazing music as cheaply as possible. I assumed that the more money spent on an act, the more likely they were to be dropped. Naive, I know. But I thought if you could do something brilliantly and cheaply, that was better than spending a fortune.

That attitude shaped how Make It Better was recorded. I did all the prep and writing in my flat in Hove, and instead of going to a commercial studio, we built one at the Newcastle Arts Centre. It cost about £400 for a month. Crazy, really. Huge thanks to Mike Tilley for that.

What I didn’t realise — and it seems obvious now — is that the more money spent on a project, the more attention it gets inside a corporate structure. If nobody signs off a big budget, then nobody feels responsible for the act’s success. Whereas if an act racks up, say, a £200,000 recording bill — which is mad now, but Goodbye actually cost more than that — whoever approved it has to make sure the record does well. Or leave before it flops. Either way, back then you didn’t win any favours by saving money. Quite the opposite.

I wish I’d understood that at the time. It would have made life easier. For instance, when we were recording Make It Better, I decided the best way to save money was to stay in what was basically a bedsit on Osborne Road in Jesmond. Meanwhile, Sarah stayed at the Malmaison down on the Quayside — still there today — and had the right idea. She was perfectly comfortable. I, on the other hand, was turning up from what I’m reluctant to call squalor… but compared to how I live now, maybe it was.

So that’s something no one told you in the ’90s: there was so much money around that the expectation was to spend it. If I could go back and speak to myself in, say, 1998, I’d shake myself and say: “No, no, no — take off that hair shirt and spend somebody else’s money.”

Stony from Teesside asks:
"Steve, did you see Oasis and what do you think of the ’90s revival?"

Well, Stony — no, I didn’t see Oasis play this time around. To be honest, they were never really my kind of band, not even in the ’90s, although I didn’t dislike them. I quite liked Definitely Maybe.

If you’d asked me a couple of years ago how I felt about Oasis getting back together, I’d probably have been quite annoyed. There’s been so much ’90s revival stuff already that the inevitability of Oasis reforming for the money would have felt a bit wearying. But now, having seen the reaction of fans, the excitement, and how great the shows clearly were, I think: you know what, this is fine. Nostalgia is powerful. Mix it with music and you’ve got, at the very least, a great night out.

I should say, I’ve actually seen Oasis four times — well, three and a bit. I DJed for them at Middlesbrough Arena just before Shakermaker came out. They were known, but not yet famous. So yes, technically I’ve DJed for Oasis — though who hasn’t?

Then I saw them again at Middlesbrough Arena about a month later. That was an infamous show… you can look that one up. I also saw them at Glastonbury ’95, almost by accident. But my favourite Oasis moment was in 1997, and it wasn’t even at a concert.

We’d been out doing some Dubstar thing in London, and I went back to the hotel early — the Swiss Cottage Marriott, near Regent’s Park. Really nice part of London. I thought I’d have a pint in the swish hotel bar, sit quietly, gather my thoughts. Drink in hand, I sat down — and in the corner there’s a group of people singing. Loudly. Hard to ignore.

I looked over — and there’s Liam Gallagher, some bloke with a guitar (not Noel), and a bunch of mates having a singalong. Fantastic atmosphere. I thought: Right, I’m just going to sit here. I’m not going over. I’ll just have my very own Liam Gallagher moment.

I went to the bar for another drink, and by the time I came back they’d all gone. I figured I’d tell the others later about my brush with Liam. I finished my pint, went to the lift… the doors opened… and a massive bloke blocked my way. Looked me dead in the eye and said: “Get the next one.” Not menacing exactly, but clear enough. And in the corner of the lift, there was Liam — slumped, clearly on his way to bed. I caught the security guy’s eye again, and it was obvious: time to go. So I did. And that was my Liam Gallagher moment.

The ’90s were fun. But do I want to revive them now? I don’t know. Next month in Brighton — or maybe even this month — there are gigs from Sleeper, The Bluetones, Echobelly, My Life Story… Jake’s doing some shows too. Do I ever feel like Dubstar should be part of that? Honestly, sometimes, yes.

On the one hand, if you want to go and see those bands you missed in the ’90s, or you’ve just discovered them, or you simply love them and want to hear the songs live again — brilliant. Go. Enjoy. And for the musicians too: if you had big hits in the ’90s, play them now. There are people who want to hear them. You have my blessing.

But for me, personally, the ’90s revival isn’t really my thing. I’m lucky in that I’m still out DJing two or three times a month — sometimes a Dubstar set, sometimes a ’90s set, sometimes techno. Basically, if you’re having a party and need a DJ, give me a call. I get to go out, play music, and have a great time regularly, so I don’t feel the need to recreate what we did back then.

That said — for everyone who does love it, I’ll probably be in the crowd with you at those Brighton shows. Because music is something we share. The best music is timeless. And when you throw nostalgia into the mix, a couple of pints, and some singalongs — well, you’ve got yourself a great night out.

See you there.

Just a quick one today, following yesterday’s longer discussion about Oasis and the ’90s.

I’ve got a message here from Mark Hammond, who asks:
“Steve, what are the chances of a reunion Q&A with the three of you to mark this milestone?”

Well Mark, I think that would have been a great idea, but as you can probably tell, it’s not happening. We’re only about five or six weeks away from the actual 30th anniversary of the release of Disgraceful, and I’m afraid there hasn’t been any discussion between the three of us about doing anything like that.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, we haven’t worked together in a really long time — it’s coming up to 12 years now — and we’re not in regular contact. We all live in different parts of the country.

So unfortunately, there hasn’t even been a conversation about it. Sorry to let you down, Mark, but it’s not happening.

That said, I am open to it. So maybe one day.

Victoria Stern asks:
“Why isn’t Disgraceful available on streaming services in the USA?”

Victoria, it’s a long story, and I don’t have all the details — but I can tell you what I do know.

When we signed to EMI via Food Records back in 1994, our record deal gave EMI the rights to release our music worldwide. But there was a special clause for the US: if we got a release there, it had to be on a major label, and it would trigger a whole separate set of arrangements compared to the UK, Europe, and the Far East.

We did actually get an American release through Phonogram — I think that’s right — sorted out by our manager at the time. That was fine in the mid-’90s, but it left the album Disgraceful in a kind of licensing hole. It was licensed for release in the US under that old deal, but of course, streaming wasn’t part of the picture back then.

To complicate things further, EMI no longer exists as a record company. Its rights and catalogue have since been absorbed into Warner Music Group. And while Warner is no doubt excellent if you’re a priority act, Dubstar isn’t exactly high on their list. From my own dealings with Warner, I’m not even sure they know who Dubstar is.

On top of that, we don’t have US management or representation, so there’s nobody actively pushing for Disgraceful to appear on American streaming platforms. The result is that the album sits in a kind of licensing limbo — available everywhere in the world except the US.

I’d love it to be available, but to be honest, I haven’t personally done anything to move it forward. I suspect Chris and Sarah may have tried to see what rights they could access via the Dubstar Spotify account, but I don’t know the details. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon.

Sorry about that.

PLEASE NOTE: there are some extra details to this story included in the comments to this video

Brad Peterson asks:
“Where did some of the pieces of Dubstar’s unique musical style come from? I recall there was a famous guitarist who passed away recently that influenced Dubstar’s guitars. You also mentioned a knack for chromatic melodies?”

Thanks, Brad.

When it comes to influences on the guitars, that’s really a question best answered by Chris, being the guitarist. But I know he was influenced by Johnny Marr, James Honeyman-Scott (the Pretenders), and Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins). Guthrie in particular was a big influence on me. His “wall of sound” guitar style, created with effects pedals, was one of the foundations of what we now call shoegaze and dream pop. He was one of the first to approach the instrument that way, and he’s still a favorite of mine.

As for chromatic melodies, you’ll hear a lot of them on the Disgraceful album — the title track itself is a great example, especially in the chorus. I’ve always been fascinated by modal borrowing: in music theory, that’s when you take a chord from the parallel minor or major key. For example, in C major you might play an E major chord instead of the expected E minor. That shift creates unusual, interesting chord sequences.

The chorus of Disgraceful uses Cmaj7, Gm7, Fm7, and back to C. If you stuck to the key of C, you’d expect C–G–F (all major). But by shifting G to minor and F to minor, you open up melodic possibilities in more chromatic, exotic directions.

I think my taste for unusual chord sequences came from childhood. My grandparents gave me my first keyboard — an organ with regular keys on the right and chord buttons on the left. The top row gave you major chords, the bottom row minor chords. I got into the habit of stringing together sequences of all-majors or all-minors, enjoying the strange ways they worked — or didn’t work — together.

So I think that’s where my chromaticism comes from: being used to playing chords you wouldn’t normally find together in any one key.

I hope that answers your question, Brad.

The importance of Newcastle upon Tyne to the Dubstar sound

Adrien Spencer asks:
“How important was Newcastle to the sound of Dubstar?”

That’s a fascinating question.

I think one of the most important things about Dubstar coming from Newcastle wasn’t the sound of Newcastle itself — I’m not sure that’s directly reflected in the sound of the albums we made, even when we were living there. It was more that Newcastle was so geographically, musically, and maybe culturally separate from the rest of the UK. That gave us the space to just do whatever we wanted, without even realizing we were doing something different to what was happening elsewhere — in the country generally, and in the Northeast in particular.

In the 1980s, the music scene often seemed dominated by London bands. Then, towards the end of the ’80s and into the early ’90s, Manchester took over, with a whole scene built around acts from there and the Northwest. Amongst musicians I knew in Newcastle at the time, there was a sense of frustration — even jealousy — that a city as vibrant as Newcastle didn’t seem to have a comparable music scene.

But Newcastle isn’t like Manchester, and it’s certainly not like London. It’s always felt like a little island, set apart. The nearest city is Edinburgh, about 100 miles away. To the west you’ve got Carlisle, 70 miles away, and to the south York and Leeds, both close to 100 miles off. Beyond geography, it’s the accent, the history, and above all the attitude of the people — unique, distinctive, and something I hold dear.

I don’t think I’d be the person I am today without those 10 formative years in Newcastle. So yes, Newcastle was fundamental to the sound of Dubstar — not because we grew directly out of its “sound,” but because the city gave us the freedom to shape our own.

Thank you, Newcastle.