Song of the Day Mar 11

March 11, 2024

This month I’m focusing on One Hit Wonders of the 80s.

Today our song is:  You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)

Wikipedia tells us this about the song:

Dead or Alive's lead vocalist Pete Burns stated in his autobiography that he composed "You Spin Me Round" by using two existing songs as inspiration for creating something new:

How did I write "Spin Me"? I listened to Luther Vandross's 'I Wanted Your Love'. It's not the same chord structure, but then that's the way I make music – I hear something and I sing another tune over it. I didn't sit and study the Luther Vandross album – I heard the song and it locked. [...] I'm trying to structure the music and I know what I want. [...] It's like do this, do this, do this – and suddenly it hits. I don't want to do Luther Vandross's song, but I can still sing the same pattern over it. And there was another record, by Little Nell, called "See You 'Round Like a Record". [...] So I had those two, Van Dross [sic] and Little Nell and – bingo! – done deal.

— Pete Burns, Freak Unique (2007)

Desiring to move on from the sound of the band's debut studio album, Sophisticated Boom Boom (1984), Pete Burns wanted "You Spin Me Round" to be produced by the then little-known production team Stock Aitken Waterman, in the Hi-NRG style of their 1984 UK hits "You Think You're a Man" by Divine, and "Whatever I Do (Wherever I Go)" by Hazell Dean.

In a 2009 interview discussing the song, Burns disputed the Hi-NRG label, saying "to me it was just disco". He also described the song as "a pop hit, not a hi-NRG hit", and claimed Sylvester as a major influence. Burns later said he had wanted to make a "glittery disco record", while Pete Waterman, asked to define the song's sound, said it was "techno-disco; without a question that's what it was. It was new technology playing Motown; that's all it was. Taking out the musicians and bringing in technology for the first time."

Burns claimed the song was "completed" by the time the producers were then chosen to work on it, stating that "the record companies don't trust a band to go into the studio without a producer". According to Burns, the record company was unenthusiastic about "You Spin Me Round" to such an extent that Burns had to take out a £2,500 loan to record it. After it was recorded, he recalled, "the record company said it was awful" and the band had to fund production of the song's video themselves.

Interviewed for BBC Radio 4's The Reunion: The Hit Factory, in April 2015, Burns said that a confrontational attitude between the producers and band led to "quite a bad vibe" during production and "a time of intense friction". Engineer Phil Harding, who mixed the track, said tensions were running so high between the band members and producers Mike Stock and Matt Aitken during mixing, that it almost escalated to violence. Aitken has confirmed that tensions were high, with the producers clashing with band members over the latter's desire to keep adding new elements to the mix. Stock has disputed the seriousness of studio tensions, alleging that Burns, Harding and Pete Waterman have all "exaggerated" what happened in their recounting of events.

Enjoy!