Interview with Dubstar

DMA: You released Disgraceful in 1995, and then pulled it apart and put some of the songs from it onto the US release of Goodbye which also takes a few songs from that album for the US release. How did you decide what made the grade? Isn't that like a mother trying to pick her favorite children?
HILLIER: The thinking behind it was that, because this will be our first release in this country, it would be better to do an album that was sort of an introduction to Dubstar rather than going into the weird and wonderful stuff that we've got on the international version of Goodbye. We sort of picked the best of Dubstar for the album . It was kind of easy because in Britain the singles for "Stars," "Manic" and "Anywhere" were sort of critically acclaimed and there were a few album tracks as well such as "Just a Girl She Said" which was a great song which should have been a single but never was. So we wanted to put those songs on with the 'best liked' songs from the new album as well as a few of the classic remixes which have been done to sort of get the Americans up to date with what we've been doing.

DMA: Well, your band was quite an obvious record to even come out two years ago, why didn't EMI here just steal you guys from their UK label? It's not like you guys write obscure music that can't find a following...
HILLIER: There were two main problems as to why we never came out over here. One was essentially that they didn't believe they could do a good job with us. Rather than put something out half-heartedly, they opted not to do it which turned out to be good for us. The other thing that stopped the US release was that all through the time of our first album we were not being managed so essentially we were self managed and trying to get signed without management is a bitch, especially when you have to make music, then make all the decisions about the music. We decided for ourselves that we only wanted to focus on the UK because we just didn't have the time or sanity to do much else. With this new record, we are sort of branching out to the rest of the world -- especially in Japan where we have a sizable following. We can do whatever we want now because we've got the management as well as two great record companies behind us.

DMA: When you guys were working on the promotion for Disgraceful, were you sort of disgruntled that nobody seemed to be biting from the record companies over here?
HILLIER: No, not at all, because like I said, we were a new band and we had enough to do. We were touring all the time, doing radio all the time, going to Europe all the time as well, so we wouldn't have had all the energy we needed to do well over here. Now were coming out with what's essentially our second album, we have some history behind us and have proven ourselves in Britain and Europe. We've come here with a certain amount of confidence. If things should go terribly wrong here though, no-one in the band is gonna kill themselves; we want to do well, but it's not going to be the end of the world if we don't.