We Still Belong

WRITTEN BY STEPHEN HILLIER

WHEN NOVEMBER 2005

WHERE HOVE, EAST SUSSEX

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

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

“We never lied”  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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