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Stock Aitken Waterman
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Stock Aitken Waterman was an English writing and production trio consisting of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman. In January 1984 Stock and Aitken sought out the DJ Waterman in London, and that same year they made their first records. These caught on in gay clubs and discos, where the fast dance music was called Hi-NRG. In March 1985 they scored their first British number 1 with You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) by Dead or Alive.
Music and breakthrough
In 1985 they built a studio of their own in London, which soon came to be called the Hit Factory. One hit followed another there: Venus by Bananarama, Respectable by Mel and Kim and, in 1987, Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley, perhaps their greatest success. That same year Waterman started his own label PWL. One of the first artists was the Australian soap star Kylie Minogue. Stock and Aitken wrote and recorded I Should Be So Lucky with her in forty minutes, and it became a number 1 in 1988. Her colleague Jason Donovan also had hits with the trio.
Influence
The formula combined the beat of Hi-NRG with romantic lyrics in the Motown tradition and melodies from Italo disco. In the years 1984 to 1989 that style was called Eurobeat. The trio scored more than a hundred hits in the British top 40 and thirteen number 1s. For a long time critics regarded it as conveyor-belt work, but their music has since been judged more and more positively.
Listening
In School of Rock
The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.
- Mixtape 7: The 1980sNL Reader
- Mixtape 12: The Hit FactoryNL Reader
- Mixtape 13: From Cassette to CloudNL Reader
Mentioned in other articles
- British Eurobeat (Stock Aitken Waterman) Genre
The producer trio Stock Aitken Waterman worked like a factory: the same studio, the same musicians, only the singers changed.
- K-pop Genre
That idea of a team turning out hits at a rapid pace had appeared earlier with Stock Aitken Waterman and Max Martin.
- Venus Song
The three singers wanted to turn it into a dance track and approached Stock Aitken Waterman.
- Never Gonna Give You Up Song
On 27 July 1987 Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley was released; he had first worked as an assistant in the Stock Aitken Waterman studio.
- I Should Be So Lucky Song
When she came to London in 1987, it turned out that Stock Aitken Waterman had forgotten she was coming.
- Blinding Lights Song
The song sounds like a record from 1985: a synthesizer riff as an intro and a drum machine with the sound of the eighties, the Stock Aitken Waterman formula in a new guise.