Hope, style and principles

It came out at a point when punk and new wave had just turned the music scene upside down and shaken up the hippie values and political priorities of the 1960s and 70s.

New topicality
The general shift in attitude did not really affect Sebastian, whose attitudes and principles are still clearly apparent in his music. "Wind & Weather Vanes" ("Vind og Vejrhaner") is an onslaught on superficiality, while "The President" ("Praesidenten") is a comment on the war policies of the world's great powers. "If we are not on his side - then we are against him/ we are either in front or behind his cannon" are words which have taken on a new, topical meaning in the case of the Iraq war, a quarter of a century after they were first penned.
 
But the soulful, original songs deal both with the world outside us and inside us. "Romeo" ("Romeo") describes lost love in lines such as: "What does it help to wait/for someone who has long since flown past you/I am sure she knew every single note of your tune."

Atypical rock record
It's seemingly impossible to be finished with Sebastian's melodies in a hurry. They seldom take the straight way home, but tend rather to abound in finesse, colour and detail. Sebastian has some of the country's most competent musicians in tow as support and they endow the music with a wealth of sound, all of which makes Stars to Dust a completely untypical rock record.

But this did not prevent the album from being a great success. Not least due to the number called "Calm Before the Storm" ("Stilhed Foer Storm"), a grand hymn to the power of love, sung by Lis Soerensen. The song has since become something of a classic with its high keyed refrain: "As far as we know the heavens are blue/and our course set for Cape of Good Hope."

And that is just what it is - hopes are always high in Sebastian's music, which still insists that the world is a better place than it is reputed to be.

Peter Elsnab is a music journalist and Jesper Nykjaer Knudsen a culture journalist.