Dubstar: I Don't Want to Die on a Tuesday DEMO
It was a wet Wednesday night at Waterloo Street in 1997, no Dubstar activity. Andy, Collie, Bill, Greg and myself sitting around in the lounge. We’d just watched Deep Space Nine, we were in a good mood. And like all good blokes, when there’s nothing to do and no women around, we made lists:
A band with the word Simpson in its name?
A band whose name starts and ends with the letter ‘O’
An album with more than ten words in its title?
Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out)
A singer better known for his real name than his stage name?
David Bowie (easy one that, but got a steward’s enquiry because his surname was Jones)
A song with the word Tuesday in the title?
Er…
No one could think of a song title that includes the word Tuesday. Even now I can’t think of one. There must be one and a quick search on Spotify would surely reveal it, but we barely had dial-up in the late 1990s so as far as we were concerned there were no songs with the word Tuesday in the title. So I wrote one.
DON’T CENSOR YOURSELF
I Don’t Want to Die on a Tuesday (IDWTDOAT) was recorded during the first demos for the third Dubstar album Make It Better in the summer of 1998. I’d established some ground rules for myself for the album, the first of which was:
Live by the hit, die by the hit
We needed them for Dubstar to survive, but I can’t intentionally write them. Consider this: Dubstar had eight UK Top 40 singles, five of which were written before Sarah had even joined the act! One was a cover of a song that was two songs put together, one was an adaptation of an instrumental with a huge sample in it (later removed). Only the final one was written under the live by the hit, die by the hit regime. It peaked at number thirty-seven.
Every song we had recorded that had done well had done well by accident. So with this third album I decided to write and write and write, and finish every idea that emerged. The idea was that hit songs would emerge eventually, it was inevitable. With Worf in my mind I looked through the window in my new flat in Hove at the Sussex Downes through the rain, and thought ‘fuck me, what a dreadful day to die’*.
And there it was, a song fantasising about dying, and how it would be such a letdown to let go on a grey rainy day. And what day of the week is the worst? Tuesday*.
The song’s subject was preposterous but better to be preposterous than pretentious right? So to counter the melancholy subject matter, I thought it would be amusing to write the arrangement in the style of a 1970s TV theme tune. I completed the song in a flash, not expecting it to work, or even survive. But Chris came down from Gateshead to play on his guitar, Sarah sang the song with relish, and it became one of my favourites from this session. It’s not a hit, it’s a comic song that’s certainly not taking itself seriously. And yet musically I think it’s a nice moment.
THINKING BACK NOW
Maybe IDWTDOAT is a songwriter’s indulgence. And yet I can’t help but like it a lot. In some ways, it is the perfect Dubstar song. The melody is maddeningly catchy, the lyrics close to black and yet somehow life-affirming. I was explaining it to my mother last week and pointed out that the song is not about dying, it’s a list of things which are important to the singer: Avoiding embarrassment, hating grey days, hating rain, the endless torment of seeking approval, missing your favourite TV show, partying with your partner, having a bath.
As I say, the perfect Dubstar song.
Jim Corr came round to my flat to hear the new Dubstar songs. There was talk of The Corrs covering Stars, which would have been nice. They were looking for songs for their next album so I played him IDWTDOAT.
Sometimes, late at night when I’m struggling to stay awake, I replay that moment in my mind repeatedly.
*This wasn’t entirely true. We’d gotten into a habit of going to VATs bar underneath the Star of Brunswick pub, where BIMM is now, most Tuesday nights. Liz, Paul Wadsworth’s girlfriend, had given the habit its name: ‘take a Tuesday’. This meant staying out until 1.00am on a Tuesday night drinking…then phoning in sick for work the following morning. Luckily I hadn’t had a proper job in over a decade and could do whatever I wanted, so I took a lot of Tuesdays.
This article includes excerpts from DUBSTAR.COM. 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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