The Last Song

WRITTEN BY STEPHEN HILLIER

WHEN JANUARY 2000

WHERE HOVE, EAST SUSSEX

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

FEATURES ROLAND S-760

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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