Ahead of the release of the fifth D:Ream album Do It Anyway, Peter Cunnah takes Orla Foster on a deep dive through the songs that made him.
As he looks ahead to a summer packed with festival slots, basking in the glow of a brand-new album, Peter Cunnah recalls only too well the trials it took to get to this point.
Before shooting to fame with D:Ream, the dance-pop act behind 1990s hits “U R The Best Thing” and “Things Can Only Get Better”, making music could feel like a thankless business, filled with false starts and lonely bedsit dinners. It was a time of big ambitions carried along by slender hopes, but throughout it all Cunnah never lost faith.
First, there was the uphill struggle of being a musician in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. For Tie the Boy, the group he formed with friends in Derry, even playing live was a nightmare. “We were running around in a cultural desert. There were twenty, thirty bands I knew of all trying to make gigs happen,” he reflects, speaking from his home in Donegal. “For God's sake, my first gig with Tie the Boy was in a place called the Castle Bar, and two weeks before we were due to play, they blew it up.
"Other times we'd play the wrong club. We were Catholics and we'd play a Protestant place without knowing, and at the end of the night we’d get asked to play the British national anthem. And we'd go, ‘We're just the band, we don't want to get shot!’”
Although briefly signed to U2's label, things didn't work out for Tie the Boy. Following a fruitless stint in London, most of the band headed back to Northern Ireland but Cunnah decided to stick it out alone. “I was miserable, sofa-surfing for the best part of two years," he remembers. “My friends used to call me the Hungry Boxer because I'd leave the pub after two beers and go home and record until midnight, then get up for work. I lived on peanut butter sandwiches so I could save up for equipment to make the sounds I wanted to hear.”
Even on a shoestring, London was filled with new horizons, a sense of possibility keeping him motivated as he plodded through underwhelming temp jobs. Growing up during the Troubles had perhaps primed him for a feeling of impermanence, a sensation that the rug might be pulled out from under him at any moment, but he knuckled down and taught himself the basics of home recording, all while becoming a regular at the clubs.
After he met Al Mackenzie, a resident DJ at The Brain Club in Soho, he knew he'd stumbled on something special, the pair bonding over a shared love of Italo disco and Balearic beats. They soon formed D:Ream, with Brian Cox on keys completing the line-up. First single “U R The Best Thing” was released in 1992 and fast became a club hit, before endorsement from Pete Tong brought it to a wider audience.
Although Cunnah first envisioned D:Ream as a dance act, their catchy hooks and furiously energetic sets soon attracted a pop following too. As vocalist, Cunnah was its most visible member, a bright-eyed poster boy in tartan trousers, tailor-made for the cover of Smash Hits. This crossover appeal was key to the band's success, but also something they felt conflicted about, prompting McKenzie to leave the group between 1994 and 2008.
As their profile grew, so did their obligations; with daily schedules that appeared to defy the space-time continuum. One minute D:Ream were being invited onto Top of the Pops, the next they were joining Take That at the peak of their powers on a nationwide tour. Life moved a lot faster than it had in the peanut butter days: “Nothing could prepare me for it. You go from being on the dole and looking for people's attention, then all of a sudden, it's an avalanche.”
By this point Cunnah was in his mid-twenties, with more life experience than the average pop ingénue. He scrutinised contracts and was circumspect about the promises being meted out by industry executives. “I was manipulated, but not to the extent some of my contemporaries were. I was aware of what publishing was, I was aware of what production was. I knew my place and how to stand up for myself with regards to deals and all that sort of stuff,” he explains. “But some of these people are magicians. They get yes’s out of people for a living.”
Labels also kept their acts on an extremely short leash. Cunnah saw firsthand how the pop star reality differed from the carefree, party atmosphere projected from the outside. Arriving straight from the joyful liberation of the dancefloor, he found the pop industry to be defensive, tight-lipped and closed-off, something hammered home by experiences such as the Take That tour.
“It's funny backstage, there are all these egos flying around. It could be petty jealousy, but pop stars find it difficult to go and say hi to each other. I was quite brazen because I was older, I'd happily go up to people like Damon from Blur and tell him I liked the new album.
“For the most part I never saw anything too insightful. Sometimes Robbie might come into the dressing room and hang out with us and steal a cigarette. But pop groups are in bubbles, you know? And they're all having smoke blown up their nether regions. They kind of bounce off each other rather than merge.”
Despite being more worldly than some of their peers, D:Ream weren't immune to industry manipulation, which came to a head with their best-known song “Things Can Only Get Better”. Written by Cunnah after a bad day in the office, it was released twice in 1993 and landed four weeks at number one. But it really took off after Labour adopted it for their 1997 electoral campaign. The song became synonymous with scenes of a jubilant Tony Blair entering 10 Downing Street, a legacy Cunnah has wrestled with since.
“In 1996 Jazz Summers, who ran Big Life Records, came to me and said, 'Labour are going to use the song, you need to get on board',” he reflects. “He was the man in charge of getting a yes out of everyone, and he got a yes out of me. At the time it seemed a good idea, but now I could write you a whole book on why music and politics don't mix.
“I actually believed in Blair, until he took us to war in Iraq. People were saying I had blood on my hands, but I was standing in front of the Daily Mirror with a placard saying, 'Not in my name'. I was so devastated by it.”
He quietly retreated from music in the late 1990s, writing occasional hits for acts like Steps and A1, but focused most of his efforts on his young family. Seeing his song co-opted had been a sobering reminder of the control wielded by those at the top. Now, however, with fifth album Do It Anyway, D:Ream are ready to wrangle with some of those themes – songs like “The Geek Who Rules The World” and “Anthem for Change” explore a grim fascination with the rich and powerful, whether svengalis, spin doctors or technocrats.
“I had all these crazy ideas about the power and censorship Zuckerberg exerted during lockdown, and that image of Elon Musk plucking a rocket out of the sky with chopsticks,” he expands. “Or when Gates turned up at No.10 and all of a sudden they're changing country policy. It's a broligarchy with so much money that they're impervious to governments, they've got this leverage that goes beyond avarice.”
Besides its critique of those pulling the strings, Do It Anyway is a party record, taking cues from multiple genres, but still jammed with the ascending choruses and bursts of soul that made their name. Though Cunnah cites the duo's need to innovate “for our own sanity”, the album also pays tribute to D:Ream's roots, its title track recreating the warmth and abandon of revellers crammed together at an old school warehouse party.
That rapport with their audience has, after all, been part of their ethos since day one. Cunnah can remember shadowing Mackenzie in the DJ booth, taking notes on the crowd's responses and observing which tracks sent energy levels soaring. “I always noticed the record played at the end of an evening: the one the DJ wants to drop last because it's got the human voice, the strings and the piano that makes people go home on a high,” he says. “That's the record we wanted to make.”
While they did exactly that with “Things Can Only Get Better”, for a while it felt like a poisoned chalice; the song's message of hope and perseverance tainted by its political associations. But nearly thirty years on, the song has regained its intended spirit of optimism, as well as absorbing new meanings along the way – this time determined by the listeners themselves.
“When you make a song and it becomes big, people take hold of it and you can't control it,” Cunnah reflects. “So in three decades it's gone from being a club come-together song, to a love song, to a protest song. I like that, because people will come and tell you they played it at their wedding. It's even become a 'Get well soon' song – people ask for it on hospital radio!”
His Nine Songs selections are above all a search for that connection; a nod to the community he found in the house scene in the 1990s, but also of his experiences as an adopted child growing up in a divided city. During our chat, Cunnah spoke at times of his frustration at the ways in which screens have replaced genuine interaction. Maybe that's why several of his choices include live performances, bottling some of the elusive magic that happens when fans come together to hear music in its purest, most immediate form.
“The Little Old Lady From Pasadena” by The Beach Boys
PETER CUNNAH: As a child I was obsessed with The Beach Boys' live album. My dad had one of those 1950s G-plan console record players with a pneumatic lid, and this was the first thing I ever played, when I was about two. I had to get on a stool to line up the needle head – the thing was bigger than me! I was always really curious about the mechanics of objects, not a reckless kid by any stretch.
This song reminded me of my Granny, who lived two doors down. I loved the repetition of the chorus. I'd hear "Go Granny go!", and think of her, maybe in her younger years with her hair caught in a scarf, driving down some sort of Californian highway. That's the thing about music, isn't it? Songs are like little time capsules. They immediately transport you back to those moments, to being shown how to turn on the record player for the first time.
From early on, I showed an aptitude for music. I was adopted, you see, so my parents didn't know what they had. I could have been a tearaway, or a gangster, or an engineer, but I turned out to be into music. So much so that they gave me a little toy guitar with a string on it, and I used to go up to the hearth and emulate Elvis, using a candlestick for my microphone.
BEST FIT: What was it like where you grew up?
I was brought up in a very industrial area of Derry called The Bogside. We were within the shadows of The Gasyard, and during the Troubles, it was always the centre of attention. Things got so bad we moved to the suburbs at one point to get away from all the fighting.
But at that age you don't know what's going on, you just know the adults are afraid. You see rubble in the streets, and kids running, and soldiers. I had a military Action Man which looked like the soldiers I saw – who were only boys themselves, they couldn't have been more than seventeen or eighteen. It amazed me to have my own platoon of toy soldiers, while these guys were patrolling the streets. I just thought, ‘When I grow up, I'll probably be a soldier myself.’ It was normalised.
“A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash was always a big part of my life because my dad was a huge fan. I remember my mum telling me he'd tried to name me Herbert because of "A Boy Named Sue". The plan was that since I'd be growing up in Derry, if my name was Herbert they'd beat the living bejeezus out of me, and I would grow up tough. But luckily my mum, God rest her soul, put a stop to that and said "No, he stays Peter", which is what my natural mum named me.
Johnny Cash is such a brilliant narrator. In "A Boy Named Sue" he finally meets up with his dad and ends up biting off a piece of his ear – then they make up and call each other Son and Dad! It's like a miniature movie. The way he takes each stanza and goes through the story is similar to old Irish songs like "She Moved Through the Fair" or "Danny Boy", where there's a really clear idea of people getting up to nonsense.
At the end of the war he was a radio operator in Germany with the occupied forces and would sit with his pen and paper scribbling lines like "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die". He came up with that, he wanted to write the meanest thing that could ever be said.
When I was twelve, I begged to go with my dad to see Johnny Cash at the Opera House in Belfast. It was the closest thing I ever had to a religious experience. He opened with "Ring of Fire" and it was note-perfect. They could have been playing the record backstage for all I knew, it was that good. He had a brass section, and June Carter Cash and the whole family were there.
At that age I didn't know what adrenaline was, and certainly I didn't know what the shivers on my back were about, but I could feel the energy in the room. I remember the crowd getting to their feet for the whole concert.
Much to my shame, later on when D:Ream were out doing promo rounds, interviewers would ask me what I was into and I kept quiet about The Beach Boys and Johnny Cash and my country roots, because I didn't think it was cool. If I could meet myself aged 30, I would give him a good slap around the head!
“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen
Here I am again, at that same console record player, sitting with my ear pressed against the lefthand speaker. I didn't know the name of the band or the song, but every Sunday for about eight weeks I'd listen to the chart rundown and there was "Bohemian Rhapsody" right at the end.
I remember listening to the story, wondering what was going on – he killed a man, but doesn't say why. It's like the Johnny Cash thing again, isn't it? It's really extreme, but I grew up in an environment where everyone was killing everyone else. This sounded like it was from a different planet though – I was trying to figure out whatever Figaro and Scaramouche were. It's like a classical piece of music with all these little motifs that are repeated: a mini opera.
There's a lot to be said for the old top 40, that feeling of shared anticipation and suspense.
And also, with Top Of The Pops, which I still miss. I think it was a democratic stronghold that helped us all enjoy music together as a country. You could see Led Zeppelin or Take That on the same stage you'd have Nana Mouskouri. My dad would look at some of the stuff, and go, "Well that's just rubbish!" But it brought the family together, and I don't know if there's anything that does that now.
It's something that's been lost with all the metrics, chasing Spotify numbers or whatever.
Yes, all that looking at screens. I wrote a song called "Hold Me Now" when I first became aware how the advent of mobile phones was actually disconnecting people. Something had changed, people would take calls while you were trying to speak to them. That was the slap in the face that woke me up to this thing. I wrote about it again on the last album, a song called "Meet Me at Midnight", which is a prayer for meeting in real life, something that was taken away during Covid, when we couldn't play live shows.
Did you feel that as a music fan as well as a performer?
I think when I go to gigs, I'm there to make the connection not just with the artist, but also the people that are there with us. And you know, we're together as a unit when we sing, we're one voice. I think it must go back to fancying around the campfires, when we killed the wildebeest and had a feast to celebrate, you know?
Anyway, "Bohemian Rhapsody" stands the test of time in my estimation. I don't think it's been surpassed. I haven't heard anyone else with the brass neck to come up with something like this.
“This Charming Man” by The Smiths
I would often sit of an evening doing my art homework, listening to John Peel and Janice Long while I painted. Once I was waiting for Peel to play the new Cure track, but "This Charming Man" came on instead and I thought, "God, The Cure really can change their spots, man! They're so good, they can sound like a whole other band!"
Later we'd go out at the weekend and everyone would dance when this came on. That line: "Why pamper life's complexity when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat?" It's brilliant. I'd not heard anyone with those kind of lyrics before. Morrissey was a Byron-like figure and Marr was like Chet Atkins. It was almost baroque stuff; it was so detailed and full of life.
Back then not many bands would come to Northern Ireland because of the Troubles. You can understand people's hesitancy. But The Smiths came and played the Ulster Hall, and we travelled for seventy miles on really bad roads to see them. We were driving through an area of outstanding natural beauty, let's say, but it's basically a mountain. We didn't get home until three in the morning.
One thing I remember is that Morrissey spent most of the gig with his back to us, and he had the gladioli sticking out of his back pocket, and a hearing aid and the NHS glasses. The other stuff I liked, especially Prince, was bombastic and epic and anthemic and seemed like it came from somewhere really funky and glamorous. But The Smiths were like the rain you get in Manchester, the smog and the dole. It was more our world, because Ireland's covered in rain half the time, there's a lack of colour here. I loved it.
What's your favourite Smiths album?
Probably Meat Is Murder. I once asked the engineer, Stephen Street, how he got the guitar sound on "Meat Is Murder" and he told me it was gates being triggered off. There's no pedal that could make that sound. I was enamoured with it, and the way they brought in the guitar to sound like saws cutting up the cows. I was vegetarian at the time – not through choice by the way, only because I'd no money.
“Message in a Bottle” by The Police
When The Police arrived on the scene, it lit up something inside of me. This song has such a fantastic pick-me-up, in-your-face energy. "Message in a Bottle" was one of the first songs that I learned to play on guitar, but it's really difficult because of the major 9ths, and that big finger stretch on the fretboard. It's even harder to play and sing at the same time, because there are so many cross-rhythms.
It could be an urban myth, but I've heard The Police tried to outplay each other by underplaying. They went for economy. So with songs like "Walking On The Moon", instead of playing loads, they'd play it as minimally as they could.
A lot of the songs you picked seek out a feeling of connection, was that deliberate?
I always loved that little twist at the end of "Message in a Bottle" where after getting no response for so long, there's suddenly a hundred million bottles. I didn't realise, but maybe now you mention it, being adopted has something to do with my choices. Babies should have at least 8-12 weeks with their mother before being handed over, but they used to hand us over within a week, sometimes within a few days. So the bond that you had with your mother was broken. Now it's dawning on me that a lot of my life's been spent trying to fix that. Or is that just the human spirit anyway, to want to connect?
That moment you found out your biological parents were musicians must have been a revelation.
It was mind-blowing. I was 24 or 25 when I met my mother. She was the lead singer in a group in the 1950s called the Marines Showband, and she'd had an affair with the guitar player, but was going out with the bassist. And the moment she saw me she realised which one I was by. She says to me, "You're his spit – you're definitely Patrick Dusky's!" And I said, "Well, I'll take your word for it!"
Bizarrely, and you'll love this, I actually met up with my natural father about a month ago. I'm treasuring the time I have with him now. I've got a half-brother and two half-sisters in England that I never knew about, and they're musicians as well. My brother turned out to be Jamiroquai's bass player. This bloodline's been trying to get people's attention for quite some time!
“Purple Rain” by Prince
By the time I was in my twenties, I knew what the needle was doing in the groove. I was getting into recording, learning how to multi-track and use effects, layer records and do all the parts. I was also obsessed with finding out how bands I liked were making sounds.
Then when I heard Prince for the first time, I was blown away, because he was lightyears ahead of everyone. He was like a reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix, but he has the whole spectrum, doesn't he? He goes from really sexy to really introspective.
I ended up getting all his albums on cassette. My friends and I had shoulder pads and mullets, and our sleeves rolled up, but of course he was wearing Versace, which we couldn't afford. We'd go out to dance to his songs, as well as things like Talking Heads and New Order.
Records were really changing at that time, they were becoming infinitely more complex, with more machines involved making the backbeats. When you think of "When Doves Cry", Prince took out the bass right out, he just stripped it back to the kick drum and the toms. That economy can floor you because it's so raw.
How did samplers filter into your own work at the time?
The thing about a sampler is you can nick a piece of a record, a kick or a snare or a little trumpet, and turn it into a whole piece. When Al Mackenzie showed up on my doorstep, I'd pretty much got the backbone of “U R The Best Thing” sitting on my little mixing desk. But what was missing was his dancefloor knowledge.
I sat him down and sang it to him, because I couldn't record vocals at the time. He liked it, but one of the first things he said was “Make that kick drum last for sixteen bars”. I went, “Who the hell is going to listen to a kick drum for sixteen bars?” He said, “It's not for you, it's for other DJs so that they can lock on from the previous record”.
So “U R The Best Thing” was originally about seven minutes long, and it pained me to cut it down to four when we were invited onto Top of the Pops. Then on the actual day, once the cameras were rolling, they cut it to two minutes! I had a moment where I could have gone full diva or bite my lip. Listen, you get used to that in the pop industry – ‘Is that what we're doing? Alright, 3-2-1 off we go.’ Put a smile on it, do the show. Don't be a nuclear reactor.
Were you still obsessed with Prince at this point? Every Prince fan I know is in it for the long haul.
I was smitten with Prince, but around the time of D:Ream I had to stop listening to him, because I found myself writing harmonies like his. In the same way, any time you picked up a guitar and used a delay pedal, it would sound like The Edge. You ended up trying to emulate your heroes, instead of being your own hero. I needed to expose myself to new ideas coming from coming from Italy and New York, but also to abandon records like "Purple Rain", which I was playing until the grooves wore out.
With "Purple Rain", Prince knew himself he'd written a big record. But he was doing everything to try and get out of that system that contained his talent, because Warner were trying to not saturate the market with too many of his albums. I think they should have saturated the market with as much Prince as we could handle.
“Passion” by Gat Decor
When Alan played me "Passion" for the first time, the house music scene was moving away from soaring vocals and pianos and strings into something very different – progressive house. After that you had Leftfield and Underworld, then all these people going into Drum'n'Bass and later Garage.
I remember the tempo going up and it starting to sound meaner and darker, but still what I used to call "e-friendly", meaning it would put the hairs on the back of your neck. There's something about that sensation which "Passion" has in spades. Go listen to it and you'll know what I'm talking about. It's a track that's never gone away. I went to a rave here in Ireland about three weeks ago and they played it to a whole load of fifty-year-olds just pumping the air, like "Really? We're still doing this?"
What do you remember about house music from the first-time round?
It gave me a sense of home, a feeling that I had found my tribe. Our place was Love Ranch in Leicester Square, and it was similar to The Haçienda but we thought we were cooler because we were listening to house music instead of techno. We shaved our hair and called ourselves psychedelic skinheads.
We had squaddie haircuts and three-piece suits that we got from Oxfam. The girls wore Vivienne Westwood corsets with tutus and angel wings, and they also had shaved heads. And DM boots. It was quite a look!
“There Goes the Fear” by Doves
This one is tied to my wilderness years. I'd wound up D:Ream after the Labour election and I was getting married and being a full-time father, so my music consumption was going down. Then this song came along, and I could not believe what I was hearing. I didn't believe you could squeeze any more size or scale or epicness into a record. When they drop the chorus, it's absolutely massive.
At first, I didn't realise Doves were the guys from Sub Sub. They gave me the idea that you could use house music roots and production but twist it with sort of Sixties guitars. I found it enthralling and enigmatic, and it drew me in. Listening to Doves' other stuff is interesting, because they don't talk about favourite colours or falling in love, they go on about architecture and the atmosphere of a place, like in the song "Shadows of Salford". If Morrissey listened to house and took an E, this is the music he would make.
Did it mark a creative awakening for you?
Very much so – it led to me starting indie bands like Shane, and The Sporting Life. I'd forgotten that when you get in a room with your friends, count to four and start playing, the religion of that moment is wonderful – you're spiritual, you're in communication, you're in the joy zone. There's something about letting the music lead you through a jam session for twenty minutes when some little gem of an idea appears out of nowhere and becomes a song.
Do you think that second chapter of making music took even more devotion, with all the other commitments of adulthood?
There's a golden moment when bands form, probably a five-year window before there's a pram in the hallway somewhere, before the great couple’s conspiracy starts buzzing around you. But by this stage most of the men I was working with already had children. The wives would cut us some slack, and we could meet up to play music, go for a curry and a beer. It wasn't like the complete chaos of D:Ream, with all the drugs and the madness going on. This was much more tame, we'd all be back in the correct beds by midnight.
It was Doves who were really the catalyst for me getting back in the studio, having parked my creativity for a long time. They inspired me to start chasing the idea of making records again. But "There Goes the Fear" tracks a period of time when I wasn't Pete from D:Ream anymore, just a music lover. I still play it to my kids.
“Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven
I've never been able to read music, to decode all the dots on the page. “Moonlight Sonata” was the first thing I learned to play on piano without reading music, and I can still almost do the first sixteen bars. But there's more classical music in my life now than there ever was in the past. I've been listening to Erik Satie and other composers and putting some classical ideas into the new music I'm making.
I've noticed a lot more live events lately celebrating the link between classical music and dance, things like Cream Classical Ibiza. Is that something you're drawn to?
It's interesting you say that, because I did two similar events last year, Lush! Classical for 10,000 people in Belfast and then a night with the Ulster Orchestra for the BBC. It was an amazing experience. When we first put the strings on “U R The Best Thing”, I didn't realise they could be easily transcribed to an orchestra, and the same with all the brass parts on “Things Can Only Get Better”.
I thought there might be timing issues, but there weren't, because the conductor knew that classical people aren't really trained in the discipline of syncopation, so he tightened things up – he slightly delayed the click track with bass drums and guitars and knocked everything into shape.
Next thing I was standing in front of all these boys and girls who had spent about 10,000 hours each to get where they were, and then you put 130 of us together. I can't even calculate how many combined years went into playing our songs that way. Talk about a hair on the back of your neck moment! If I had the money I'd take them on tour.
It sounds like you've come full circle. From the child getting to grips with your dad's record player, to the teenager experimenting on the piano, to now when you're still figuring out your older material in a brand-new way.
Yes, I suppose that's the whole thing for me. If you'd figured music out then you'd probably drop it like an old toy, but I still haven't figured it out, and that's why I'm still doing it. That's why all musicians do it, because if everything else fails, they can enjoy those moments of complete interaction.
When I heard the orchestra behind me that day, the force of it was amazing. It was like being wrapped in all this big warm gorgeousness, with the sound going through you, going past you. Everyone's feeling it and you're like, “Wow, that's my song!” And then you look over your shoulder and want to watch the orchestra as well, but actually you've got a show to do.
I had to check myself and remember there were cameras and an audience – ‘don't get too carried away.’ It was like Top of the Pops again. Have your moment, then get on with it, son!
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