Stock Aitken Waterman: 80-90-шы жылдардағы британдық поп-музыканың флагмандары

English songwriting and record producing trio

Stock Aitken Waterman (abbreviated as SAW) are an English songwriting and record production trio consisting of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken, and Pete Waterman. The trio had great success from the mid 1980s through to the early 1990s. SAW is considered one of the most successful songwriting and producing partnerships of all time, scoring more than 100 UK top 40 hits, selling over 150 million records and earning an estimated £60 million. SAW started producing underground club hits, but earned worldwide success with a mix of hi NRG influenced sound, romantic Motown lyrics and Italo disco melodies. During 1984–1989, their musical style was labelled Eurobeat. They also put swing shuffle elements into their songs. The producers' legacy has been increasingly positively reassessed, with contemporary analysts praising the quality and enduring impact of their music.

SAW's greatest success was in fully exploiting the underground music scene that was booming in Britain in the late 1980s. SAW's goal was to harness the dynamic energy of club culture (and the sound of Hi NRG music) and bring it to a mainstream audience. In this regard, they were extremely similar to Motown, with SAW reportedly making use of the "artist development deal" just as Berry Gordy had two decades earlier. Under such arrangements, all facets of a young artist's career would be controlled and dictated by the record company, and often the artist's publishing rights would be co opted in the process and the record company would fill the role of manager on the artist's behalf. While SAW seem to have worked equally well with artists under their control and with those more established and independent acts, it obviously made more business sense for them to focus on the development of new talent under the terms that gave them the most control. As the 1990s rolled in, they increasingly focused on their young teenage signings (through PWL and the publishing arm of All Boys Music). PWL was championed by the music papers for their fresh sound and seemingly underground aesthetic, but not for long. They incurred bad reviews from the British music press establishment when they strong armed the group M|A|R|R|S into a legal settlement; M|A|R|R|S had taken from SAW's own recording, "Roadblock", and used it in their surprise hit "Pump Up the Volume". Waterman wrote an open letter to the music press calling such things "wholesale theft". The press fired back that Waterman was currently using the bassline of Colonel Abrams's "Trapped" in Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". Indeed, "Roadblock" itself could be described as inspired by the classic Average White Band hit "Pick Up the Pieces". Waterman's production company later lifted the entire basic rhythm arrangement from "Pump Up the Volume" (complete with the chorus) in a remix for a Sybil record (titled the "Red Ink Remix"). As a result, relations between PWL and much of the UK's music underground were for a long time acrimonious. Waterman said it was a matter of principle rather than profit and promised to donate all royalties from the court case to charity. As the epitome of creating very popular teen pop music, the trio were often satirised or criticised. Comedy group Morris Minor and the Majors' parodied the SAW style on "This is the Chorus", specifically referencing Kylie Minogue's hit song "I Should Be So Lucky" as well as Mel and Kim's "Respectable". The popular satire puppet show Spitting Image also parodied Minogue, depicting the Australian singer as being brought to life by a big headed scientist. SAW also appear as puppet heads with their bodies forming a tape machine with arms who sing along with a SAW style song about how 'lucky' the singer has been. Comedians French and Saunders also parodied "I Should Be So Lucky" in their television show in 1990 where the song features as an opera. In later years, Kylie Minogue became one of SAW's biggest artists. Her first 13 singles reached the UK top 10 and her debut "I Should Be So Lucky" spent five weeks at No. 1 in the UK. The album Kylie was the highest selling album in Britain of 1988, and fifth highest selling album of the decade. They were also responsible for 1987's highest selling single, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". At the height of their fame, SAW also had a top twenty hit as themselves with the largely instrumental "Roadblock" and "Runaround". These tracks were never released, and are said to be in Judas Priest's possession. In 2015, a snippet of their cover version of The Stylistics' hit "You Are Everything" was posted on the hard rock news site Blabbermouth. net. In 1989, SAW also recorded and produced Donna Summer's Another Place and Time album, as well as writing or co writing all the tracks including the hit "This Time I Know It's for Real". Summer, an American pop superstar singer, hired SAW in order to revive her career, just as an earlier European pop music producer (Giorgio Moroder) had launched it. However, a followup to Another Place and Time was never to be realised, reportedly because of scheduling conflicts between Summer and SAW. Another of SAW's most successful hit singles was the 1989 number one single "Ferry Cross the Mersey" (a charity single featuring The Christians, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney and Gerry Marsden). They also produced the 1989 edition of "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Being the top producers in 1989, with seven number one singles, SAW started the 1990s with high hopes. January 1990 brought their last UK No. 1 single, Kylie Minogue's cover of "Tears on My Pillow", and a top 10 hit with new recruit Lonnie Gordon, "Happenin' All Over Again" which hit No. 4. However, by mid 1990 SAW artists were having problems placing singles in the top 10 (with the notable exception of Kylie Minogue), and the week of 13 October 1990 became the first with no SAW produced singles in the UK top 75 in over two years. In mid 1991, Aitken left the team due to stress Stock and Waterman carried on. With their sound no longer in vogue, they still had notable hits with Jason Donovan (who left them in 1991)

In 1994, Stock and Aitken began working together again, forming Love This Records and achieving some success in the UK during the mid 1990s through the early 2000s; they achieved further top 10 hits with Robson & Jerome, Nicki French, and Scooch. Meanwhile, Waterman kept running PWL Records and continued to collaborate on music productions, most notably with Mark Topham and Karl Twigg, finding success with artists such as Steps and Tina Cousins. In 2005, the three producers reunited again and released a CD+DVD album, Stock Aitken Waterman Gold, with some of their best known singles. Despite their reunion, Aitken soon left. 2007 saw the release of a new Stock/Waterman produced single, the first in 14 years, The Sheilas' single "(I'm So) Happy Happy (You're Mine)", which reached No. 91 in the UK. A reunion concert event called Hit Factory Live was scheduled to take place in Hyde Park, London, in July 2012 featuring many of the acts associated with Waterman's record labels but was cancelled due to safety concerns caused by the ongoing heavy rain during that summer. The rescheduled concert took place on 21 December 2012 at London's O2 Arena. In December 2015, SAW made a return as a trio to their Hit Factory roots, producing a remix of the Chris Martin written Kylie Minogue song "Every Day's Like Christmas". In 2023, the trio reunited for the filming of the Channel 5 documentary Legends of Pop: Stock Aitken Waterman, each giving interviews both individually and as a group. On 21 March 2023, it was announced that a musical entitled I Should Be So
Lucky, making use of SAW songs, would premiere at the Manchester Opera House before embarking on a UK tour. Nativity! creator Debbie Isitt has written and will direct the show.

One of SAW's first collaborations was the Cypriot entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 1984, "Anna Maria Lena", performed by Andy Paul. The song finished 15th, with 31 points. Stock and Waterman collaborated on the UK Eurovision 2010 entry "That Sounds Good to Me". It was revealed in the final round of Eurovision: Your Country Needs You on BBC One, in which Josh Dubovie eventually earned the right to perform the song at the contest. He finished in 25th place in the Eurovision Song Contest 2010, receiving 10 points in total.