Day I See You Again
Songwriter Steve Hillier
Date Written March 1995
Place Written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne & RAK Studios, London
Released When October 1995
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland S-760
Spotify Link
“If the man you’ve grown to be’s more Morrison than Morrissey…”This lyric went down well in the music press of the mid 90s. I’m not sure how it would go down if I’d presented it to them in 2020.
Day I See You Again, which really should start with a ‘The’, is the last song to be written for Disgraceful, and another example of a melody that had been hanging around in my head for years before being incorporated into a song for Dubstar. Like so many others, this was written in 3/4 time and changed to 4/4 for the album. It was conceived as a Viennese Waltz, as you can hear in my piano version (replete with the original middle eight section…I think I prefer what we did for the album but thought it would be interesting to include here). On the Disgraceful version you can still hear the triplet rhythm in the vocal performance, with Sarah sounding slightly unsure of where the beats are supposed to fall, especially in the first two verses. This undoubtedly adds to the charm of the released version, a vulnerability that resonates with the emotional centre of the song.
The lyric recounts a real situation. I’d met my ex-girlfriend at London’s Royal Festival Hall during the first recording session for Disgraceful in early 1995. The situation was gently tense, like a scene from a rom-com, so on returning to RAK studios I wrote how I felt, a lyric that said what I wanted to say but hadn’t. Earlier in these sessions, Graeme Robinson had told me that there were two types of Steve Hillier songs, the jolly ones you could dance to and the daggers through the heart. Day I See You Again is definitely the latter, the hope and the fear as the blade pierces your chest for the final time.
Stars and Day I See You Again are my most successful songs from this era, a superb opening statement of intent from a new writer, a new act. And this is the only Dubstar song where neither I nor Chris appear! If I recall correctly Sarah did a vocal session with Graeme Robinson and Jon Kirby in Darlington where they’d put together a new arrangement of my song and played it to Food Records without our knowledge. The record company loved it so much there was no chance we could go back to my original orchestral arrangement (some of it does remain though, such as the brass and pizzicato strings). We had no choice but to go with theirs, and although that was probably for the best…
I can’t imagine I’d be so relaxed about an arrangement of mine being nearly totally removed today. At least I’d written it and Sarah sang it, so it still qualifies as Dubstar.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now: