If I Can't Change Your Mind

We made our first release as Dubstar for nearly a decade all the way back in 2010. A cover of The Passion’s ‘I’m In Love With A German Filmstar’, it was released by Buffet Libre as part of a compilation for Amnesty International and remains a favourite of mine from the late Dubstar period.

We actually recorded two songs for the compilation earlier in 2009, the second being this cover of the Bob Mould classic ‘If I Can’t Change Your Mind’. There were two versions. Like Filmstar, South Central completed a mix (which sounded great)...and there was this demo, recorded at Gavin’s studio 'Base HQ' behind Newcastle Central Station.

‘Filmstar’ and ‘Change Your Mind’ were the initial songs we recorded after the sudden ending of the relaunch of Dubstar in 2008. I think you can hear a tangible sense of ‘nothing left to lose’ in these tunes, a sense of fun and just doing something because we could. The noughties were nearly over, the opportunity to revisit old glories squandered. The act could only ever be a hobby for the three of us now…in many ways it was a relief.

My strongest memories of this time were the evenings where we'd finish recording and go for a pint with Gav at The Forth Hotel, our local from the 90s… then head back to Jesmond for late night drinks at ‘As You Like It’ before Chris returned to his family in Tynemouth. It was like we’d come full circle from 1991.

There were a further sixteen Dubstar songs recorded in 2010 and 2011. They remain unreleased.

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

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'Just A Girl, She Said' live at BBC Maida Vale Studios

Dubstar was truly getting into its stride when we were invited to play live at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios for the Marc Radcliffe show on Radio 1. We were to perform stripped back, kind of acoustic versions of songs from our first album to promote its release. Exciting times.

And there’s a confidence in this recording that maybe isn’t present in the version on Disgraceful. From the oboes and flutes, to the understated guitar playing and Sarah’s impassioned vocal, this live version is my all time favourite of Just A Girl.

My enduring memory of this session was the studio at Maida Vale, there was a sense of history everywhere I looked. It felt…amazing frankly. But like so many of these extraordinary Dubstar events, it sped by in an instant. I can’t remember what we had to do next, but I know it had to happen IMMEDIATELY, not a chance to take stock and catch our breath. It was great.

The BBC were extremely supportive of Dubstar from our first release right through, and Marc Radcliffe was a particular champion. Thank you everyone, it meant a lot.

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

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Face The Music

Written by Stephen Hillier

When February 2012

Where Brighton, East Sussex

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Analogue Solutions Telemark

“I'd find you again, in another world...”

The Dubstar song that actually features a lyrical dagger through the heart, not simply implies it.

Every year Café Del Mar would get in touch to ask if I had anything that would be suitable for their compilations. And every time I’d said no, but as we were now in full reformation mode it seemed this was the moment to reconnect with our Ibizan roots. I said ‘si, here’s Face The Music’. Cafe Del Mar said ‘non’. Dammit.

This song was originally known as ‘Sorry’, but I thought it best that I would rewrite the words. Chilling out with a Negroni watching the sun going down to a song where someone is repeatedly telling you they’re ‘sorry’ didn’t make sense to me. On reflection, it also didn’t make sense to submit Face The Music, which had a sullen and obviously incompatible mood running throughout. Unfortunately, knowing what’s appropriate and when has never been my strength.

In the winter of 2012 I’d seen The Robin Guthrie Trio at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar in Brighton. A basement venue, it was a totally spit and sawdust kind of place. I loved every second, one of the most important gigs of my life. So I investigated his solo catalogue. He had released three stunning albums with Harold Budd: the Californian ones that were mirror images of each other, and Bordeaux following a few years later. ‘How Close Your Soul’ conjured an image in my mind: What if Sapphire and Steel were to be updated for the 21st Century, like Battlestar Galactica had been? Where would it be set? Who would play the leads? And who would supply the music?

I had answers to all of these questions. It would be in black and white, it would be set at night in a deserted French village, Alexander Skarsgård would play Steel and Karen Gillan would play Sapphire. The music would be by Budd and Guthrie, ‘How Close Your Soul’ specifically. And who would write the main theme? Me of course, and Dubstar would play it.

That’s what Face The Music is, not a tune to chill out to as the sun sets into the Mediterranean, but the theme to a romantic remake of an obscure 1980s Science Fiction TV show. You don’t get more Dubstar than that. Seriously, think about it… you don’t.

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

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The Last Song

WRITTEN BY STEPHEN HILLIER

WHEN JANUARY 2000

WHERE HOVE, EAST SUSSEX

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

FEATURES ROLAND S-760

“What's our future, where are we going, who'll pay for us now?”  

In the winter of 1999/2000 Dubstar felt like it was going to end soon, well before Make It Better was even released.

I loved the idea of closing the act, a dramatic flourish, leaving the trio I’d worked in for the previous seven years with a song. My way of saying goodbye to the fans and meaning it this time. Swansong had been my first attempt at this, but even in the turmoil of the turn of the millennium it felt way too spiteful for me. Maybe I should have another go, write a song that could have come from the Disgraceful sessions. Something more conciliatory?

So in January 2000 I wrote ‘The Last Song’ as part of the duets idea for the Self Same Thing EP, hoping Holly Johnson would sing it with Sarah. He rang me up, was the very personification of politeness and consideration and told me it was too camp for him, have we considered Marc Almond? This has become one of my favourite moments of my entire career, to be turned down by one of the biggest voices of the 20th Century because my work was too dramatic (or overly emotional? I’ve never been sure what camp is…). Quite an honour.

Sarah sang it solo round at my place in Hove. One take, and there it is, a true account of how it feels when the curtain finally closes. Maybe it was the knowledge that this act was going to end, and pondering the question of ‘where do you go when the music finally stops?’

It wasn’t my intention when I wrote it, but revisiting ‘the Last Song’ yesterday I imagined it as from a musical, a finale for the supporting characters who are having to leave the play as the rest of show continues. More Brectian tragedy than Andrew Lloyd Webber.

I particularly like the way the song closes, lyrically the door is left ever so slightly ajar…it’s only the year 2000, we’re just turning thirty, this might not be the end, maybe we’re freaking out and there are more songs ‘yet to come’? Little did I know there would be around fifty of them…

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

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We Still Belong

WRITTEN BY STEPHEN HILLIER

WHEN NOVEMBER 2005

WHERE HOVE, EAST SUSSEX

ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD

FEATURES ROLAND S-760, YAMAHA CP-70B, FENDER RHODES, KORG MS-20

“We never lied”  

There was talk of Sarah doing more Dubstar. We’d stayed in regular contact over the years and our vapour trails probably crossed on her way to Slovakia to play gigs with Client and me on my songwriting trips to Stockholm. I was excited, it felt right. I had an ongoing sense of Dubstar having more to say, we were cutoff too soon.

So I started writing songs specifically for the return. But given the heartache and drama from the 1990s which were constantly nagging in the back of my mind, I needed to reassure myself that this was a good idea…

I wrote this song to prove to myself it could be done, that it should be done. Initially We Still Belong was a statement: ‘hey, we’re back!’ Did you forget about us? Well we’re here, now please move over and make space’. Hooray! 

But that’s simply not the kind of song I write. Also, I’d spent the previous three years listening to nordic heroes such as Sigur Rós and Mew in the villa in Spain. That was the music I wanted to make, huge melodic and dramatic expressions of joy and angst. Isn’t that what Dubstar always was anyway? 

So I changed my song. ‘We Still Belong’ became a lyrical development on the theme that Human League explored in their classic ‘Dreams Of Leaving’ from Travelogue. It concerns that feeling of having to get away…and not knowing whether leaving will make things better. An expression of fear. It’s my favourite Human League song by far.

And ‘We StIll Belong’ is one of my favourites of those mid-00s compositions because I felt I’d hit the balance right on every level. The melody, the words, the structure, the pianos, the direction. And, crucially for me, it sounded like 2005, not 1995. This song was pointing the direction ahead and the space we could occupy. We still belonged.

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

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DUBSTAR Preludes Volume 1

There are demos of songs. There are live recordings. There are ‘works in progress’ and first drafts of songs that appear on collectors’ editions of classic albums.

But what do you call it when you complete a song, forget about it…then it re-emerges somehow, years later when you think you’re writing something new? That’s what you’ll find in the Dubstar preludes, the precursors. The original songs that were the unconscious starting points for new, often completely different songs.

Most of these tunes didn’t have titles, there wasn’t time. They only survive on cassettes, scraps of notebooks, sometimes even Minidisks (I LOVED Minidisks). Luckily, what I lack in photos and diaries I can more than make up for with a huge archive of my writing that stretches back to the 1970s, covers the entire Dubstar era and much more. There are a lot of these tunes.

So the Dubstar Preludes are a curio, a minor release, a glimpse at a different road that a songwriter could have pursued.

I often visualise writing as a spider’s web of possibilities, many of which can lead to a positive outcome, a good song. But no matter how much you practice, study, how often you write, you simply have to pick a creative thread and hope for the best. That’s how songwriting works.

Many of the completed Dubstar tunes are what happens when you get a second chance to pick a thread. The preludes are the original silk. I hope you enjoy them.

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It’s Raining in my Mind

Prelude to ‘Disgraceful’

This melody and the lyrics that accompany it were a precursor to Disgraceful, as I think you can hear clearly in the chorus section. Disgraceful had a rather sad birth in a house on Windsor Terrace, South Gosforth. This precursor was the last song I wrote on my piano back in Jesmond before temporarily moving out. It was hugely influenced by Franz Liszt, I think that’s clear. It’s funny, but hearing it in this form, it seems obvious to me that this isn’t a Dubstar song at all. Little did I know that a rewrite would be the title track of the act I’d formed with Chris earlier that year and go on to be an international success.

The title is a something Chris said to me as we were driving over the Tyne Bridge during one of the United States of Being sessions…

After the Valentines

Prelude to ‘Everything’s Alright’

I’ve been a Shoegaze fan since before the term was invented (By Andy Ross who singed Dubstar…I don’t think it was supposed to be a compliment). So it was an incredible treat to see the reformed My Bloody Valentine play at the Roundhouse in Camden, sixteen years since I’d seen them at Whitley Bay Ice Rink. And they haven’t mellowed, that’s for sure. The gig was so loud that despite my aviation quality ear protectors I had to put my fingers in my ears lest they bleed. And when I took them out, it was like someone had smacked me on the side of the head. Or what I imagine it would be like to accidentally open the door of a submarine on the sea bed.

Anyway, this tune was written a couple of days after on the train back from meeting Stephen Hague in Hastings. I was still shaking, actually physically shaking from the gig, it was more of an experience than a joy really. I’d had the chord sequence in the back of my mind since a very young age. My grandfather had bought me an organ with single keys for chords on the left hand and I loved playing a succession of majors or of minors, no regard to key, I was too young. I think these early experiences with harmony have hugely influenced my writing.

I used the tune as the basis of ‘Everything’s Alright’, the song I wrote with Cat.

Just a Woman

Prelude to ‘Just a Girl She Said’

I’ve mentioned before that ‘Just a Girl’ was a combination of my composition submission for my O’ Level music and one of Sarah’s poems. It was the discovery of this piece, one of the easy drafts of that work that was the inspiration of this entire prelude series. I was looking through my scrapbook in my loft down here in Brighton when I came across a piece of manuscript that I must have put in the encyclopaedia of music that my parents had given me for my studies for O’ level. It was very rough, my manuscript writing has never been that great frankly. My reading’s not much better, but I played it on the CP-70B and remembered from way back that this was the original doodle for Just A Girl. It might be a bit of a stretch but I think you can just about hear the Dubstar themes, especially towards the end.

A Stranger to Everyone

Prelude to ‘When You Say Goodbye’

This is the only piece on this volume that had a title before its inclusion. Again, it had a rather sad origin, written in the days before Dubstar’s headline appearance at the NME tent at Reading 1996, when my relationship was ending. I enjoyed the way the music is very simple, cheerful, it could be an exercise by J. S. Bach…but the mood in my head was one of utter bleakness. Isn’t it curious how sometimes the most cheerful of compositions arrive in the midst of serious upset?

As the final writing sessions for Goodbye got underway in late 1996 and early 1997, this was the perfect starting point for another Dubstar tune in 6:8, the best time signature. After 5:4 of course.

Oh, and I played this piece as part of the GGGGHOST sets in 2015/16. It was always one of my faves, and sounds gorgeous on a Yamaha DX7.

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

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In The End

Written by Steve Hillier

Place written Umbertide, Italy

Date Written September 2006

Originally Sung By Steve Hillier

Features Yamaha CP-70B, Roland JX-8P & Jupiter-6

“It all works out in the end”

Stephen Hague recorded a superb version of this song. The world should hear it. Maybe it will one day.

In The End was written at a writing retreat in Umbertide, Italy, that was organised by Chris Difford of Squeeze. Chris and I had spoken a few times over the years at the BBC Radio studios in Brighton. I was a regular guest on Phil Jackson’s ‘Introducing’ program, where he would play demos of local bands and people like me and Chris would decide if they were any good. 

He invited me to a writing retreat that was happening in September 2006. These are often strange affairs…ten or twenty songwriters in a farm house with a studio and some pianos, writing songs together for a week. Not my ideal way to work, but it can be fun. On this occasion I arrived a few days later than everyone else from Barcelona. I’d been at Shelton and Philo’s wedding with Bill Brewster, the legendary DJ and author… and by the time I’d arrived in Umbertide, a no-horse town that seemed to be closed on Mondays, I was exhausted, utterly wrecked. This put me on a bit of a back foot for the rest of the week. Friendship groups and alliances had already been formed, I was struggling to get any writing done. I’m not a natural cowriter…my approach can be infuriating to my collaborators by the same measure as they infuriate me.

But by the end of the week I’d managed to spend some time alone with a Fender Rhodes and a view of the Umbrian hills in the distance. I wrote ‘In The End’, a message from someone who has died to the loved one they left behind, a topic I’ve returned to in recent years. It’s a classic Dubstar song.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

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Gemini

Written by Steve Hillier

Date Written September 2007

Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood

Features Yamaha CP-70B, Boss Dimension-C Pedal

“Newcastle stone”

At the heart of every Dubstar song is the lyric, it’s the reason the song exists. The lyric within Gemini was inspired by Frog Prince by Keane, although you’d never guess that from hearing it. It’s one of my favourite Keane songs (and they have two others that come close, why do I never like the hits???). What appeals is that sense of story telling, but without actually telling a story. Just hinting at what’s going on. 

Gemini is the tale of a man trapped in the past, a metaphorical castle that his love created, long gone, from which that he could never escape. This song was inspired by many conversations I’d had with men of my age. There seemed a creeping bitterness among them, cynicism, a sense of defeat in their voices. Their youth had evaporated and they no longer had a role in the world. They’d even stopped trying to find one and resented the rest of the world for carrying on. And so often this sense of being forgotten began in relationships where they had been ‘done wrong’ by a woman…although whenever I listened carefully it was obvious that the women in question had done nothing of the kind. It was the men who’d messed it all up by being reliably useless (at best), reliably destructive (at worse) or unreliable (most commonly). 

Gemini is seeing someone stranded in their life, trapped in a past that’s receding into the distance every day. Where they don’t realise it, but they’ve spent years blaming others for their own mistakes, blaming others for how disappointing their lives have turned out to be. I think this is one of the best songs Dubstar ever recorded, definitely in the top ten.

It’s unusual for a song of mine as there’s no chorus of any kind, just verses. Another reason why I love it so much.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

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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:

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A view of Christianhavn from the spot where So Say We All was written.

We're Great

Written by Steve Hillier
Date written September 2006
Place written Hove, Sussex
Originally sung by Steve Hillier
Featured instruments Yamaha CP-70B

“We're not good, we're great"

The Yamaha CP-70B changed my life, in the middle of the naughties this was my instrument.

I’d fallen in love with the sound of this piano working with Keane in 2002. A hybrid between a piano and an electric guitar, it looks like a box made of Tolex and sounds like nothing else. The Keane boys made it theirs on their first two albums, and pretty much have the final say on what you can do with this electric grand.

I bought mine from Gary Numan in 2006. He’d had it stored away in his garage for decades, and when I came to take a look, it stank of mould and neglect. Truly. But it was a wonderful moment…two keyboard fanatics setting up an ageing bit of kit on a driveway in Sussex, a piano that hadn’t seen the light of day in decades…and it worked perfectly. No need to remind me to smile eh?

Many of the Dubstar recordings from this era are dominated by the sound of the CP-70B, with We’re Great being a prime example. You can bash away for hours on this instrument, and as long as you have the sustain pedal down you’ll probably end up with something worth listening to. We’re Great is another example of my writing inspired by the work of Vini Reilly. He’d released what would be his best album in Keep Breathing and was an inspiration on many levels, that an artist could release so many records and yet still have his best work within him almost thirty years into his career.

This song was completed between Chris and I but Sarah never managed to sing the vocals. It was abandoned after the whole Client kerfuffle, so the only surviving recording has me on vocals, just like The Joans. I imagined it could be the opening song on the new album. Sadly not.

INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:

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