In tears she poured out words with a faint voice,
lamenting her sad woe, as when the swan
about to die sings a funereal dirge

Last month a cache of hard drives that I’d left for safekeeping down in Puerto Bañus came back to me. In the early 2000s I’d developed the habit of making backups of everything, to the point of paranoia (and security risk). I had a backup up home, a backup at my parents, and in the case of a disaster such as a nuclear war a further backup in a different country.I hadn’t worked out how I would get it let alone what I would use for in the event of annihilation, but it felt good that it was there. Inevitably I lost track of the UK backups, they’re somewhere in Bromley now I think. But on these Spanish drives I found a treasure trove of forgotten recordings from the 1990s including the demos of pretty much every Dubstar song from ‘If It Isn’t You’ through to ‘And When You Laugh’. Amazing.

So I spent last weekend trawling through the files and found some delights, of which this demo of Swansong is a favourite. In an instant I was back in studio-come-bedroom in Hove in 1998…

I had an image in my mind during the writing of this song: a couple dancing together in an empty room with dark wooden panels, much like the Victorian ballroom in Jesmond Dene House. They’re clasping with one hand on the other’s shoulder, and as the couple move gracefully across the deserted dance floor, we see each has a the flat of a blade pressed gently against the other’s back.

In the twenty two years since, I’ve never felt the version of Swansong on Make It Better did the song justice, there was something a little spiteful in Sarah’s vocal, as if she was biting on the words. This wasn’t how she normally sang the song. I seem to recall that Spike had wanted her to project some extra energy into the song as we recorded it at Newcastle Arts Centre. It had the end result of making the song feel camp, whereas I was hoping for something more…Françoise Hardy?

Notwithstanding those sessions on Tyneside, Swansong shouldn’t be an active song. It’s the sound of a couple slowly passing away together, resigned to their fate, a death by their own hands. Hence the title. A ‘swansong’ is the final gesture before death, and no matter how hard the couple in the song has tried they can no longer avoid their fate. The beauty and harmony they had created in their earlier lives is gone and has not been replaced…

”those were the days”

And on this long-lost demo version, Sarah is employing her partner to “dance to the songs”. It’s almost sarcastic, a “see what we’ve done” moment lost forever, inviting her partner to gaze at “who we were”. A fitting end to an era for the act.

So this is by far my preferred version of Swansong. I hope you enjoy it.

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

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for up to be the first to hear new releases and up to the minute news

Dubstar: Swansong Demo