Dubstar: The Sweetest Love Song

The Sweetest Love Song was somewhat overlooked as we assembled Dubstar ’s fourth album, still untitled at this time. It was a favourite of Sarah’s, though I must admit I wasn’t particularly keen on it.

I had written the song in 2008 at a moment of great frustration with the state of politics in the world. Claire and I had caught the first signs of the Credit Crunch the previous year while on holiday in Hawaii. At breakfast we would read American newspapers filled with reports of a collapsing housing market and increasing difficulty in securing mortgages. Nine months later, the British media was running stories daily, trying to explain a crisis that, to many, seemed to come out of nowhere—one that would soon cost them their jobs. Nearly eighteen years on, it’s both interesting and disheartening to see how little the UK economy has recovered.

My current Roland Juno-106, the synthesiser that features all over the fourth and fifth Dubstar albums

Lyrically, TSLS reflects the state of the world at the time and questions what role musicians should play in such circumstances. Dubstar was never a party-political act, despite all three of us having strong opinions. Our music didn’t lend itself to protest—we were perhaps too ephemeral for that. Besides, I saw little value in adding to the white noise of dissent unless we had something truly different to add.

In that sense, TSLS is less about protest and more about the feeling of powerlessness in the face of adversity—something that feels just as relevant today. Potentially more relevant.

Musically, the track leans heavily on Roland equipment. The drums are highly processed samples from my old TR-909, while the bass and pads come from my ever-reliable Juno-106. There are also Mellotron lines courtesy of G-Force’s software. But the song’s most striking moments come from our guest vocalists who appeared in sample form.

So, where did these samples come from?

DANCE OF THE MAD

Back in 1989, I was sent a promo 12” of Sly One by an unknown artist named Marina Van Rooy. What caught my attention wasn’t just the track itself but the writing credit, which included a familiar name—Peter Coyle of The Lotus Eaters. A year later, the song was sampled in Dance of the Mad Bastards by Pop Will Eat Itself (a record I love), and in 1997, it became the featured sample in Gus Gus’s sublime Purple.

I actually met Peter Coyle at a Lotus Eaters gig in a basement in Hove in 2002. there was about a dozen people there and I think I was the only one who didn’t know the band personally. I asked if he realised his song had been sampled in so many brilliant records. He was very polite about it—but I’m not sure he knew what I was talking about…

Anyway, while struggling to finish TSLS, I decided to drop in the "oooh ah ha" sample from Sly One—and just like that, boom! It worked instantly, bringing the song to life.

But why stop there? Inspired by Durutti Column’s Otis from the Vini Reilly album, I thought it’d be fun to add more. And if you listen closely, you’ll hear the "who-ohs" from Gary Numan’s Absolution and a falsetto from Morten Harket—the opening vocal flourish from A-Ha’s Living a Boy’s Adventure Tale, one of my childhood favourites (produced by Tony Mansfield, too).

Were any of these samples cleared, permission gained? Of course not. My philosophy was that you had to push boundaries to create something magical—no one ever made great art by playing it safe. And it’s much easier to ask for forgiveness, right? As with so many things in Dubstar world, it was a problem for another day.

THINKING BACK NOW

It’s clear to me that TSLS wouldn’t have survived in this form. Clearing the samples alone would have been far too expensive, and beyond that, the song itself feels incomplete to my ears—almost as if I’d started the writing but never quite finished it.

That said, coming back to it after all these years, I can definitely hear why Sarah liked it so much. For one thing, it gave her another chance to tap into the energy she’d found singing in Technique/Client—something we rarely heard in Dubstar. And musically, it grooves along nicely, with Chris’s funky guitar licks being standout features, holding everything together.

But is it really a Dubstar song? The vocal samples remind me a lot of The Sun Rising by The Beloved, which makes sense given that both acts share an alternative-dance influence. There’s also a strong ’80s feel to TSLS—something that occasionally surfaces in our own records (and record collections).

Would it have ended up on United States of Being? That’s a tougher question. It feels quite different from the other tracks, which is likely why it was overlooked for so long. In the end, it might have worked best as a bonus track on another release. And considering that some of Dubstar’s best songs arrived in that form, maybe The Sweetest Love Song could have found success after all.