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Stock, Aitken & Waterman, sometimes known as SAW, were a British songwriting and record producing trio who had great success during the mid-late 1980s and early 1990s with many of their productions. The three can be considered to be the most successful songwriting and producing partnership of all time, scoring over 200 top 40 UK hits in the mid 1980s to early 1990s.
The trio consisted of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman.
On January 15, 1984, shortly after meeting Aitken and Stock, Waterman asked them to work with him and his recently formed production company, Pete Waterman Limited (PWL). Their initial style was Hi-NRG with a cover version of "You Think You're a Man" by Divine (
16 UK Jul 1984) and "Whatever I Do" by Hazell Dean (4 UK Jul 1984). They struck gold in March 1985 when "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" by Dead or Alive reached number one in UK. However, Pete Waterman has said in interviews that the trio were still in dire financial straits at the time.
This success, and the trio's unique sound attracted the attention of female pop group Bananarama, Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama member), wanted to record a cover version of Shocking Blue's "Venus". The result was a Hi-NRG reworking which became a worldwide chart hit, achieving the coveted number one spot in the U.S Billboard Hot 100. Bananarama went on to make Stock Aitken and Waterman their main producers, and would collabarate with them on some of their biggest hits, including "Love in the First Degree", "I Can't Help It", and "I Heard a Rumour".
Following their early success, their style evolved into a more mainstream bubblegum synth pop, with attractive singers. They typically worked by writing the songs, although many of their early acts (such as Hazell Dean, Dead or Alive, and Bananarama) wrote their own material, recording the music with extensive use of synthesizers, drum machines (drums were often credited to "A Linn", a sly reference to the Linn brand of drum machine) and sequencers, and then bringing in a singer solely to record the vocal track. Their prodigious, production line-like output led to them being referred to as the hit factory (not to be confused with the record label of the same name) and attracted criticism from many quarters. However, Pete Waterman defended their style by comparing it to the output of Motown in the 1960s.
In later years one of their most successful artists was Kylie Minogue, a young actress from Melbourne, Australia who was well known for her role in the soap opera, Neighbours. Her first thirteen singles reached the UK top ten and her debut "I Should Be So Lucky" spent five weeks at number one in the UK singles chart. The album Kylie was the highest selling album of 1988, and fifth highest-selling album of the decade. They were also responsible for the 1987's highest selling single, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". At the height of their fame, Stock, Aitken & Waterman also had a top twenty hit as themselves with the largely instrumental "Roadblock".
In 1989 they wrote and produced the highest-selling album of the year, Jason Donovan's Ten Good Reasons. Donovan was Minogue's co-star in Neighbours and his success for a time equalled hers. In 1988-89, the trio recorded three tracks with Judas Priest. These tracks were never released, and are said to be in Judas Priest's possession.
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.)
Waterman made no attempt to hide his hostility towards the sampling culture prevalent at the time, and when M/A/R/R/S sampled "Roadblock" for their track "Pump Up the Volume", he was quick to instigate legal action against them. However, he always stated that it was a matter of principle rather than profit and pledged to donate all the royalties from the court case to charity.
Pete Waterman's career as a record producer preceded his collaborations with Stock and Aitken, and continued after the demise of the trio as an entity.
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List of acts who have performed songs written or produced by SAW
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UK number-one hits
The following hits produced by S/A/W made it to the top of the UK pop chart:
In addition to these, "Venus" by Bananarama, "That's What Love Can Do" by Boy Krazy and "Together Forever" by Rick Astley held the number one position in the U.S. pop charts (though did not achieve the same success in the UK).
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See also
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Trivia
The ubiquity of their productions led some who were less impressed with their style to re-interpret the abbreviation "SAW" to mean "Stop Aitken Waterman!"
Also referred to by some critical of them as "Shock, Ache and Water Torture". Another epithet (applied by the Guardian) was "Shlock, Aimless and Waterdown".
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