How we wrote Mimi Webb’s ‘House On Fire’ by Ines Dunn

Ines Dunn: “Mumble singing is my favourite thing to do in the whole world”

The fast-rising topliner on writing a song that started as an indie demo before setting charts ablaze across the world

Ines Dunn is a songwriter from London’s Crouch End. Specialising in topline writing, her budding career has already seen co-writes for Maisie Peters (Not Another Rockstar), Griff (Walk), METTE (Mama’s Eyes) and Jo Hill (Ask How I Am). Such is her growing contribution to the British pop landscape that she was nominated by The Ivors for 2023’s Rising Star Award. The accolades don’t end there, Dunn was chosen for Spotify’s RADAR program, championing emerging artists and songwriters. To celebrate the achievement, the streaming giant honoured her with a featured playlist and billboard in Leicester Square.

It’s understandable that Spotify would want to recognise Dunn’s increasing significance. Take House On Fire, for example, a co-write for pop star Mimi Webb that now has just under 121 million streams on that platform alone. An upbeat anthem in which revenge is exacted with the help of a lit match, the song remains Webb’s highest-charting UK single and also reached No 32 in the US Mainstream Top 40. So it’s over to Dunn to tell us about a global hit that was born in a writing room near Manchester…

First published in Songwriting Magazine Summer 2023

Released: 18 February 2022
Artist: Mimi Dunn
Label: Epic
Songwriters: Mimi Webb, Pablo Bowman, Charlie Martin, Ines Dunn, Joe Housley
Producers: Cirkut, The Nocturns
UK Chart Position: 6
US Chart Position: –

“I wrote the song with Pablo and Charlie. Charlie I’d met, on Zoom. During the pandemic, we did one session and never saw each other again. Then Pablo, the week before House On Fire was written, he and I met at a friend’s surprise birthday party that I was throwing. We got in touch and then he messaged me four days later and was like, ‘Do you want to come up to Manchester, we’re doing a writing camp and I want you to be there?’ And I was like, ‘I’ll drop everything.’

“So I went up and there’s a whole crew of them called The Six. They’re a collective that is run by a guy called Rick Boardman. We were all up there together in Manchester and I met Charlie again. Rick owned the house and it was the most amazing haven. It was a really magical place near Stockport. You’d walk outside and you’re in this field that looks over the whole of Stockport and Manchester. It was the perfect place to be swept away and have a little sanctuary to make music.

“On the first day, Pablo, Charlie and I were put together and it was the first time Pablo and I had ever written together. We’d spoken a bit at the party but there wasn’t much interaction as there were 30 people there. So it was the first time that we really got to hang out and get to know each other. We were in the main studio room and there were 20 synths all stacked up around each other. There was this big red leather sofa and the whole house just smelled of a wooden semi-unlived-but-loved smell. It was always freezing in there but the room was a music haven. Then it was just the easiest thing in the whole world.

“House On Fire was the first song we ever wrote together. Charlie and I slotted back in really quickly, remembering each other from that Zoom a year ago, and knowing that, ‘Oh wait, we wrote a good song, and then we never spoke to each other again.’ Pablo is an absolutely insane guitar genius and he sat down and started playing this riff. The song was way more indie; the demo version of that song is completely different to how it came out. It’s this really guitar-driven thing, and it’s a duet with me and Pablo on it. Pablo was playing the guitar and I think I started singing the chorus melody, and he was like, ‘Oh, it sounds like you’re saying, “Set your house on fire.”’ Then we were like, ‘That’s funny, let’s just do that.’ So then we started writing House On Fire.

“Mumble singing is my favourite thing to do in the whole world, and I wish it was a genre. Unfortunately, it’s not, and you have to put real words to it, which is the hard part. So I was mumble singing and then we started to piece together the chorus. That was the first thing and I remember it taking a while to figure out. We did the, ‘You liar, I’m gonna set your house on fire,’ and we knew that that was good.

“So we had that, but then it was like, ‘What’s he lying about and why do you want to set his house on fire? Is it cooler to be that he’s lying about something big or about a really small thing that he’s done that you’re just so angry with?’ So we went down that route, and I remember Pablo coming to the whole, ‘Hands right under your sleeves, you said you don’t get cold,’ thing. We were like, ‘That feels really good, and right.’ We did that and followed wherever it took us.

“We got the chorus, and then I remember we took a little break and then came back and were like, ‘Let’s write the verses.’ And it was the easiest thing in the whole world. It was Pablo and I, stream of consciousness, and we were going and going. We had a couple of different lyric changes, but basically, that was it. It was there and existed. It was one of the easiest endings to a song. We didn’t touch it. We were just like, ‘That’s it. We’re just gonna leave it.’

“Pablo and I recorded it as a duet. We did the whole thing together. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, he’s going to take this verse and I’m going to take this verse,’ it was just, ‘We’re going to sing the whole song.’ We had the funnest time doing the gang vocals and making it sound insane. But the demo is super indie, and kind of emo-ish.

“We were there for a couple of days up in Manchester and every night after our sessions, I would find Charlie, and be like, ‘Play it again. I want to hear it again.’ I have this voice note of me asking him to loop it. I made sure I had a voice note of it because you never know when you’re gonna get a bounce of it or hear that song again. I really liked the song and wanted to listen to it for myself. I went home and listened to it 200 times. And I was like, ‘Oh my god, I love this song.’ Then we got a bounce of it maybe a month later.

“I think we forgot that it existed. And then I was like, ‘Oh, Charlie, do you have a bounce for that song?’ The mp3 version of the song, we call that a “bounce” and it’s the thing that you listen to on your phone, the polished song version. I’d played the voice note to my publisher and I’d been like, ‘You’re gonna hate this song, but I love it.’ I played it to him and he was like, ‘Why would I hate this song? It’s so good. I love this song.’ Then I sent him the bounce of it and his first thought was, ‘Mimi should sing this and we should get it to her.’

“He knows Mimi’s manager, Rob Ronaldson. So he was sending it to Rob and was like, ‘Rob, have you heard this song? It’s quite a good song. You should think about that one.’ They finally managed to convince him to take it seriously and get Mimi to come in and record it. She came in and we had a day with Charlie, Pablo, Mimi and me. It was the first time I’d met her, she is this ball of energy and was like, ‘Oh my god, guys, I love the song.’ She thought we should write an outro and maybe change the melody in the second verse.

“She came in to start vocalling and making edits on the song and Charlie was being told to make it a bit more of a pop space, so he was starting to move it into the production that you hear now. We cut her vocals, we did all the gang vocals again, we changed the key and then we did the outro. We changed the melody in the second verse, which I think she made a million times better. Then we had the final form of the song, from that first session of her being there.

“Then it was a whole production journey; mixes and making sure gang vocals were right and her lead was right. There was a swear word in it that we changed. All those little things that you start to tee up the details on. It was a really quick turnover, we wrote the song in June of 2021, Nov 2021 she came in to do the first session on it, and then it was out in February. It’s the fastest turnaround I’ve ever had for a song; I am usually sitting on songs for a year.

“I was precious about that song, and the way it sounded, because I wanted it to be the best version of itself. But at the same time, my job as a songwriter is to really let go of songs and to distance myself from the attachment that I have to them. The world has that one, but I still have the little indie version from the first day we wrote it that has this weird magic about it.

“Mimi’s a pop star, and she just killed it and it was a really exciting avenue for her. I think they were really bold to take a risk on a song like that, which I’m really grateful for. She’s done such an amazing job with it and gave it such a lease of life that we never would have gotten had we stuck with the indie duet.

“When we were writing it, we’d been sent briefs and “who’s looking” lists that labels send out going, ‘Ariana Grande is looking for this kind of song with this kind of beat.’ A lot of the people at that camp were going, ‘Oh, Ava Max is looking for this thing, let’s write a song like that.’ But I remember Pablo had been angry about something and he was just like, ‘Fuck it, who cares if they take the song, let’s just write something really fun for us.’ I still try and capture those moments in every session I have, because the magic comes from being, ‘Let’s just do whatever we want to do and make something that we love.’

“It’s a very selfless job where you base your life around what people are looking for and where they’re at in their lives. That session felt like, ‘Oh, let’s do something for us.’ Let’s do something that we are going to care about and want to hear and listen to in our headphones when we’re driving around. I’d listened to that demo 500 times by the time it came out. I haven’t listened to a demo more.

“That song was my first big cut, I guess, a major label single that had a big budget behind it and was going to be this big thing. It ended up being the most insane month of my life where the song went Top 10 in the first week and was performed at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. It was more than I could have ever hoped for.”

Follow Ines Dunn on Instagram and check out her Spotify playlist

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.