Song No.9
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written January 1991, Refined January 1995
Place Written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Released When January 1996
Originally Sung By Steve Hillier
Features Roland S-760, EMU Drumulator, Korg M3R
“…You can’t face me, I’m just your flatmate’s girlfriend, and Monday I’ll be gone”Student life, another song inspired by real events. I’m particularly pleased with this lyric, every time I hear it I’m taken back to Shortridge Terrace in Jesmond, a shared house I stayed in with my girlfriend before eventually moving north in 1998:
I came to this town, a weekend with my boyfriend, his final year away this time, but..
Remember how we sneaked around the last time?
And without a sound, we knew that New Year's just around the corner, somehow
I should be somebody's partner, but we know he's working late, a barman at the Union… and left me in the house…
You were there
Remember your alarm clock on his bedside and thinking we'd be heard?
No one came
Christmas seemed so far behind me, we know New Year couldn't be the same
You can't face me
I'm just your flatmate's girlfriend
And Monday I'll be gone , and until then
I won't touch you, I won't smile, I won't try,
You will laugh and be the same,
And I won't cry , because
New Year's going to be the same
Song No.9 was part of The Joans’ live set, although the Dubstar version was a significant update. The drums were supplied by my Drumulator drum machine in an overt homage to Robin Guthrie’s unique style of programming. There’s also a reference to Frazier Chorus’s Forgetful in the intro of this song. Their album Sue had been one of my favourites in my first year in Newcastle when the events set out in this song occurred.
This is one of the rare Dubstar songs that began life as a chord sequence, and I think you can tell. There are three distinct melodies that fit under the main sequence (the first you hear on the piano version above). They don’t work together, you have to hear them separately. So you begin with the string melody, then the vocal melody, then the dulcimer melody. I simply don’t write like that, but it happened on this occasion because I wanted to refine this song from the Joans live set to fit into the Dubstar set. In its original incarnation, it was mainly instrumental, with a middle section where I would sing almost entirely unaccompanied. That’s the vocal melody you hear in the verse in the Dubstar version. But it wouldn’t make sense to have Sarah standing there on stage with nothing to do for four minutes, so I rewrote the song to include a lot more singing, and an entirely new lyric. Trying to avoid Sarah having nothing to do onstage explains why on Make It Better there’s hardly a pause from the singing at all. Take a listen, there’s hardly time to take a breath.
I am aware that I’ve enthused about so many of the songs in this series… and I’m going to do it again now. Not only do I think that Song No.9 is the best Dubstar song, I think it’s the best song I’ve written. It has everything that I love about music. A soaring melody, drama, the lyric is concerned with something real between two people. Something that actually happened. And when it’s over, you feel like you’ve been taken somewhere.
I even like the fact that it was tucked away on a B-Side so very few people ever heard it. Funny like that.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now: