Standstill Satellite

“The Rules in Your Brain” is a song that intertwines personal relationship dynamics with broader societal responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using vivid and surreal imagery, it discusses themes like isolation, the psychological impacts of pandemic restrictions, and the challenges of navigating through such times. The lyrics reference pandemic-specific measures like temperature checks and masks, using these as metaphors for broader concepts of control and confinement. The song critiques social behaviors under stress and explores deep self-reflection and reassessment of values in a crisis, blending intimate relational narratives with a commentary on societal adaptations to express a complex emotional landscape.

The Rules In Your Brain (Live October 2024)

Colin Hilton's Ophelia is a dark reflection on fame, beauty, and the illusions that captivate us. Drawing on Shakespeare’s tragic muse, the song reimagines her as a modern idol — adored, exploited, and ultimately lost beneath the weight of her own image. It’s a meditation on how desire and innocence collide in a world that mistakes performance for truth.



OPHELIA
You stand like shadows on a bleached black chequered stage
Dance unspoken lines of love
Your voice like a lantern shines darkly through a cage
Conjuring words from a paperless age

Ophelia, ten thousand screaming girls will hide
Ophelia beneath this moral suicide
I've nothing to say to you you've caught their minds with beauty that's untrue 
Ophelia are you gonna break their hearts
And all that is left's a childhood memory

Each lyric burns a secret fire for a secret lust
Each twisted gown dressed to undress 
The world now scorns our fierce desire and turns to a cow girls past
Milking the moment to the last

Ophelia, ten thousand screaming girls will hide
Ophelia beneath this moral suicide
I've nothing to say to you you've caught their minds with beauty that's untrue 
Ophelia are you gonna break their hearts
You're gonna suppress their childhood memories

Ophelia, ten thousand screaming girls will hide
Ophelia beneath this moral suicide
I've nothing to say to you you've caught their minds with beauty that's untrue 
Ophelia are you gonna break their hearts
You're gonna suppress their childhood memories

Copyright
Colin Hilton October 2025

Ophelia

“Without Me” is about coming to terms with the end of a relationship — but in a deeper, more existential way. It’s not just about missing someone; it’s about questioning the meaning of words, art, and even the self after love has gone.
It captures the sense of someone trying to reconstruct themselves in the absence of a partner who once gave their life coherence and inspiration.


WITHOUT ME  

I've written and recorded a song based on moments that took me far too long
To mean anything to you
Now you're without me

Collected some words from the street then
Furnished my shoes with crocodile feet 
That walked a thousand miles across Basque mountains 
And all to be without you

I've frowned at all the hairbands and frocks
Ran Olympian speed from olive oil soaked blocks
To turn and stare at pistol smoke
Through a barrel aimed at me

But my love for you is deeper than these words 
deeper than the meaning of this verse 
Deeper than the signified
Beneath the essence of the sign

I've wrestled all my friends to be proud 
Was always up when they were really quite down
They looked on me for inspiration
Which i always had when you were with me

So I tore up these words like a book
Of meanings misquoted & so misunderstood
I cut them and read them backwards to see 
What it might feel like to be without me

I listened to the whispering leaves
Fallen from rows of towering telegraph trees
The words didn't hide me or bruise me or cheat my honesty
Sweet tastes like poison when you rang to raise a glass to memories

My love for you is deeper than these words 
deeper than the meaning of this verse 
Deeper than the signified
Beneath the essence of the sign

Tomorrow brings another backward thought of Memories that are borrowed from what's slackened then pulled taught 
Of memories distorted by a time 
When all was not consuming like this poetry that's fighting for a rhyme 
 
We built this house with only our hands 
Suffering the time hungry gravity of sand 
Now the winds of complacency spin the weather vane
As you try to live without me

Loving you's like swaying through a train with lost stability
Connecting doors below the metal clashes with insanity 
Sunlight flashing on two steel veins 
though a tunnel brings on a yellow flame 
Like the gentle warning whistle of your name 

My love for you is deeper than these words 
deeper than the meaning of this verse 
Deeper than the signified
Beneath the essence of the sign 

Copyright Colin Hilton October 2025

Without Me

“Painting By Numbers” is a reflection on the modern illusion of freedom — a world where rebellion is rehearsed, art is deconstructed, and truth collapses under its own disguise. Through vivid imagery and layered metaphors, the song explores how passion becomes performance and the painter is slowly absorbed into the picture he once tried to change. It’s both an elegy for lost authenticity and a challenge to rediscover it.


Painting By Numbers 

I walked the street until my shadow grew 
like a stencil of an after life 
Drawn upon the concrete's subtle hue
This canvas bears no rebel's brand 

Now these slogans are on city walls
they gasp and fall upon their knees
A cuss on riches, guns and politics
Silent children grow from hot house seeds

The deconstruction of his art
Put the horse before the cart 
To turn them in their slumbers 
So they can feel the lust like pain
Beneath the curd of love’s distain
Just like painting them by numbers

A pretty girl with blood red curls
Can speak much louder to the world 
Than a house of whispered sermons yellow
As the page from which they burl
Disneyland to Bethlehem the irony's divided

And the corset round the world is pulled so tight It's no shock that truth has fainted
In earthy tongues that please revolution plants its seeds 
Mystery falls upon its knees the painter becomes painted 

The deconstruction of his art
Put the horse before the cart 
To turn them in their slumbers 
So they can feel the lust like pain
Beneath the curd of love’s distain
Just like painting them by numbers

Millions will chase and place a snare for you
A ghost who paints rebellion
With the slight of a puppet's hand
Satire through geometry will smile back at you

Copyright 
Colin Hilton October 2025

Painting By Numbers

“The Alpha Gen’ Mirror” reflects on a generation growing up through screens — where identity, love, and truth are shaped by digital mirrors. It explores the blurring of gender and culture, the loss of instinctive selfhood, and the courage to redefine what’s real in a world built on performance. Beneath the confusion, there’s light — a new kind of humanity breaking through the cracks of old structures.


THE ALPHA GEN' MIRROR 

Her reflection grieves the loss of her closest friend the id
While the children of the Alpha Gen' roles become bended
Crosses her clothes and
Powders her nose
Smarting pictures with a dumb phone 

Her alter ego shares under the light
Where boys and girls select their love punching without a fight 
Truth blurs its borders
Night turns sons into daughters 
To blossom beyond battery life

He hasn't the courage he can't be so bold
This girl is from the classroom but can never be told
This theatre is turning and the wings have been splayed 
So love transfers with duty a new generation is made

Desire confuses as identity grows
The young are raised with stories stepping on their toes
Rigid diversity
With quiet adversity 
Imbalances designed to collide

A stylish tale with a daring theme
This generation questions what is true and what is mean
As genders flow
Culture takes on the blow
So structures crack to let in the light

He hasn't the courage he can't be so bold
This girls from the classroom but can never be told
This theatre is turning and the wings have been splayed 
So love transfers with duty a new generation is made

Copyright Colin Hilton October 2025

The Alpha Gen' Mirror

“The Phoenix” is about rebirth after devastation — both physical and emotional — in the shadow of war. The “phoenix” symbol represents the woman’s transformation after surviving the Holocaust, her reconstructive surgery, and her attempt to reclaim her identity and love


THE PHOENIX 

The phoenix 
The phoenix 
The phoenix 
Rose to cross my heart

Through broken stone and shattered street
She drags her soul like a ballet dancers 
Bound and crippled feet
A city drained then filled with ghosts
Staring at her shapeless hope  
behind a sepia screen of desperation's smoke 

Her face has been restored by surgeon’s skilful art
But the deepest scars avoid the scalpel
Remain inside her heart
The woman's gone but girl within 
Will lean against the street lamps as they spin

She whispers 
The phoenix
The phoenix
The phoenix rose to cross my heart

She whispers 
The phoenix
The phoenix
The phoenix rose to cross my heart


The phoenix rises in her heart
From ashes deep in war that
Tore her world apart 
She seeks the man she called her own
But the eyes that should have known her name 
Stare blankly back made of stone 

This monster sees only profit without shame
So he trains her ghost rehearses lies
While longing hides within her guise
Her voice a blade to cut through fear
She sings, unmasked, her truth released
And the song's illusion joins the deceased 

The phoenix
The phoenix
The phoenix rose to cross my heart

She whispered 
The phoenix darling 
The phoenix honey 
The phoenix baby rose to cross my heart

Copyright Colin Hilton October 2025

The Phoenix

Colin Hilton's "River Boy" is a boy’s journey through life – from childhood to adulthood – seen as a river controlled by locks, shaped by his parents’ hopes and worries, by a messy unfair world, and by forces beyond anyone’s control, as he drifts slowly toward whatever “sea” his life ends in

THE RIVER BOY

The headwaters of the river boy
Are surely not so long
From the birth of melting snow
Over rocks of babbled nurseries
Falling as he grows

Trickling like childhood time
Sunlight brushes stones
Magnified and polarised
With the wetness of his eyes
And the floods of buoyant groans 

I sat and watched his teenage years 
When question's can run deep 
The surface growing darker
Hiding secrets of a boy beneath
A man made tide

If I studied every eddy from
The pebbles skimmed and thrown 
Would ripples share their mystery
With reeds that follow faithfully 
The water's flow 
I wondered if the boy would know?

The river boy's his father's son
Operates the locks
Turns the key for hopeful journeys
Lets the water rise
Over the wooden stocks 
Above a weir that questions
Hidden rocks 

The river boy's his mother son
Holds back her strength through loss
Sends the water down again
Let's loose a tide of pointless journeys
Below a weir of worries
That's a mother's cross

His thoughts circle like driftwood
That have fathomed every bend
Bark without a destination
Wider than the banks
Towards the rivers end

Beneath the surface obstacles
Emotionless and blind
Discarded through inequity
Consumerist futility 
Just stepping stones
Or maybe hidden mines?

The river boy's his father's son
Operates the locks
Turns the key for hopeful journeys
Lets the water rise
Over the wooden stocks 
Above a weir that questions
Hidden rocks 

The river boy's his mother son
Holds back her strength through loss
Sends the water down again
Let's loose a tide of pointless journeys
Below a weir of worries
Well that's a mother's cross

The river's tide obeys you
Like the swan commands the lake
Sits silent on reflection 
Where the water surface softens
With a slower pace 
And the moon pulls up 
To draw upon its grace

I watched you smiling sadly
Of what might always be
A boy born of fresh water
As his life meanders slowly 
To a salty sea

The river boy's his father's son
Operates the locks
Turns the key for hopeful journeys
Lets the water rise
Over the wooden stocks 
Above a weir that questions
Hidden rocks 

The river boy's his mother son
holds back her strength through loss
Sends the water down again
Let's loose a tide of pointless journeys
Below a weir of worries
Well that's a mother's cross


Copyright Colin Hilton November 2025

River Boy

Colin Hilton's "New Girlfriend" is about meeting a new woman after the loss of a best friend, developing an intense connection with her and realising that your feelings for her are deeply tied to discovering a “new woman” inside yourself – where friendship, love, sexuality and identity all blur together


New Girlfriend 

Through the trauma and wake of a severed lost friend
One new will rise and amend
To dance away the loss and pain 
'Til love can no longer pretend 

New friends lie within much softer frames
Sketched by prism split pens
With silk lipped smiles
And the laughter of a child
Wisdom in love soon deepens 

Oh girlfriend 
She's the new girlfriend that's true 
But my love for her might become less absurd 
If I weren't her new girlfriend too
Yes girlfriend 
She's a new girlfriend to keep 
If only to see the new woman in me
This friendship could be more discreet 

Hearts conceal what only hearts reveal
Through movement, laughter and phrase 
She finds a new love to explore that keeps 
Self discovery guessing for days

Desire reshapes a tender new play
Grabbing bats to play for both sides
A tantrum of dreams on a bed without seams 
Sows stitches that crochet the night

Oh girlfriend 
She's the new girlfriend that's true 
But my love for her might become less absurd 
If I weren't her new girlfriend too
Yes girlfriend 
She's a new girlfriend to keep 
If only to see the new woman in me
This friendship is more than skin deep

Oh girlfriend 
She's the new girlfriend that's true 
But my love for her might become less absurd 
If I weren't her new girlfriend too
Yes girlfriend 
She's a new girlfriend to keep 
If only to see the new woman in me
This friendship is more than skin deep

Copyright  Colin Hilton 2025

New Girlfriend

Colin Hilton's "Howl" is about queer and artistic people living on the edges of society, drawing on Beat and existentialist imagery to show how their identities and diversity are misread as madness, especially under oppressive laws like Section 28 – and it’s a defiant “howl” against being pathologised or erased


HOWL

The social margins
Of a London page
Burn like oil
I sit and watch the silent cabarets 
A restless head sits upon
A restless heart

Artists addicts and
Radical queers
The spectrum is clean 
And poets swing from woven chandeliers 
The divided self becomes 
A divided sex

Subterraneans suck 
As the altos blow
On the road 
The Beats feedback on open microphones
These smoking bars are full of
All that jazz

So Howl
Go on and howl
A sleepless mind flirts with dark horses 
You spin the wheel of fate
And land upon Section 28
Howl 
Go on and howl
You've lost your head in self diagnosis
I've seen the best minds undress
Diversity mistaken for madness

Like the Mandarines
Of Saint Germain
Existential desire 
The boomerang of love comes back again 
Authentic themes within dreams
Revolutionaries 

Communism plays Colonialism 
She bends their brains 
With a cocktail sipped and then thrown up again
The best minds are shaved
by Occam's razor 

I'm not a wasp
In your factory 
A bird or a bee 
God I'll be anything I want to be
But be careful what you wish for
A Lilac Ward makes Lilac’s whine

So Howl
Go on and howl
A sleepless mind flirts with dark horses 
You spin the wheel of fate
And land upon Section 28
Howl 
Go on and howl
You've lost your head in self diagnosis
I've seen the best minds undress
Diversity mistaken for madness


Copyright Colin Hilton November 2025

Howl

Singer, poet, song writer, musician, performer and producer : London United Kingdom

Howl

Colin Hilton

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