Dubstar: Stars Steve Hillier's Glitterball Remix

My gift to Dubstar fans this Christmas is my new Glitterball Remix of Stars. This song was a defining moment in my career which propelled Dubstar into the spotlight, continues to be played on radio stations across the world and even quoted in pop culture including Dr Who. I could only have dreamed of this success when I wrote the song back in 1992.

Stars was the lead single from our album Disgraceful album which also had a remix sister album featuring some of our favourite producers including Way Out West alongside my own remixes and vignettes. These were all put together at Newcastle Arts Centre. It was a lot of fun.

I also made an early version of this remix of Stars. I suspect it wasn’t included on the album because there were already two versions of Stars plus there were two remixes of other tracks from me and my new version of the Stars Remix was…incomplete, to put it mildly. It sounded good, but simply wasn’t finished. So it landed on the cutting room floor.

Fast forward twenty five years…

I rediscovered this long lost version on one of the hard drives that came back from Puerto Bañus and was blown away. Honestly, I hadn’t thought about this remix in all that time and was struck with how the ‘feel’ of it might not have been ideal not for the 90s, but was spot on for the 00s. And seeing as the Millennial revival officially started this year, I thought this was the time for it to see the light of day.

But there was a problem. It was as clear to me in 2021 as it was to the A&R team in 1996 that my version was unfinished. The component parts were long gone, decaying in a landfill somewhere. What to do?

To bring you this Christmas gift I reassembled the remix from scratch, replayed live all the parts that I’d previously programmed (bass, guitar, two synthesizer solos including one on the Roland JD-800 and one on the Monopoly), went back to an early Stars vocal and retimed the words BY HAND (no time stretching on this version)… and this is the result. Dubstar’s Stars, the Steve Hillier Glitterball Remix. 

I hope you enjoy it, I suspect this will sound great at the office Christmas party tonight (covid permitting).

Merry Christmas everyone, and a very happy and prosperous New Year to you all.

STEVE Brighton 17/12/2021