So Say We All
Songwriter Steve Hillier
Date Written September 2010
Place Written Christianhavn, Copenhagen
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Yamaha CP-70B, Korg MS20, Korg MONO/POLY
“All that we leave behind”This work is my proudest moment as a songwriter on the entire Dubstar journey.
So Say We All is the sound of acceptance and unity. If the song ‘United States of Being’ from four years previously was an explosion of glorious intent, So Say We All is the moment where you sit back and reflect on where that unity has taken you, what you have learned about yourself.
It was written on a walk into central Copenhagen after a party at Solveig’s place in Christianhavn. There was something about the Nordic air, the view of the canals, my ongoing love affair with Scandinavia (then in its fifteenth year), the proximity to Christiania, my hangover...the lyric and melody came to me in an instant:
“All that I was meant to be
Every way that time has changed me
All that I was meant to do
Every word I said that was not true
And all that we leave behind, all we resign
Like a child in my arms is
All that we leave behind, it…
Crumbles to dust
And sand in my hands
And drifts away
But it stays
While you learn to live again”
I sang it into my phone and brought it to the Dubstar demo sessions at Gavin’s studio ‘Base HQ’ in Newcastle later that month. A classic Dubstar song was born. And through the long crescendo coda, or Danish Ending as I like to call them, I mixed in vocal snippets from all of the other songs that were destined to be on this second attempt at a finished album. It was a direct and clear homage to Looking Glass by The La’s, one of the songs that had brought myself, Chris and Paul Wadsworth together all those years previously. It felt right.
If ever there was a song I’d written that worked exactly as I’d wanted from start to finish, it’s So Say We All. I put it next to Stars, Song No.9, I Lost A Friend, In The End and Manic… these are the finest Dubstar songs of them all.
We will not hear their like again.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
A view of Christianhavn from the spot where So Say We All was written.