From the sampled vocals of Mel & Kim to the immediately memorable lyrics of Rick Astley’s largest hits, Inventory, Aitken and Waterman’s songs dominated the UK charts within the late Nineteen Eighties.
At their peak in 1989, Mike Inventory, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman songs made up a whopping 27% of the UK singles market.
It stays one of the vital profitable partnerships within the historical past of pop.
Waterman admits feeling “knocked out” by the 40 or so crowd that got here to observe them obtain the honour – together with Nineteen Eighties artists Brother Past, former workers who labored on their data, and followers.
“These are some of the kids that every day used to be here after school wanting autographs. Of course, they’re all grown up now!” laughs Waterman.
The partnership produced numerous hits for a few of the largest stars on the time.
“We had a method of working, we tried to taper the songs to how we thought the public would perceive the artist and we were quite successful in that regard,” says Matt Aitken.
Waterman provides: “If it didn’t work, we didn’t bother.”
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The trio wrote Kylie’s first hit, I Ought to Be So Fortunate, in 20 minutes
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Additionally they penned Rick Astley’s By no means Gonna Give You Up
In 1988, their success went into overdrive because of a collaboration with a younger Australian cleaning soap actress known as Kylie Minogue who they hadn’t even heard of on the time.
“When she arrived at the studio we were unaware that she was even turning up,” Mike Inventory explains. “So we had to come up with a song pretty quick.”
They wrote her 1987 debut hit I Ought to Be So Fortunate in simply 20 minutes.
“She was a great deliverer of a song,” Aitken says.
“When she was sat in a corner you wouldn’t know she was there but the minute a camera went on… she sparked,” provides Pete Waterman.
Again within the day most of their hits have been recorded on a easy 24-track tape machine however now, with advances in AI software program, songs could be produced straight away.
So how do the trio really feel about synthetic intelligence being the brand new “hit factory”?
“AI? We invented it!” jokes Waterman.
“You’ve got to incorporate influences from the past but… the difference between AI and what we did [is] we had emotion,” he says.
“We fought over songs if a lyric didn’t work. It doesn’t work without emotion.”
