You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)
"You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" is a song by British band Dead or Alive, featured on their second album, "Youthquake" (1985). Released as a single in November 1984, it reached No. 1 in the UK in March 1985, taking 17 weeks to get there. It was the first UK number-one hit by the Stock Aitken Waterman production trio. On the U.S. "Billboard" Hot 100, it peaked at No. 11 on 17 August of that year. In 2003, "Q" ranked the song at number 981 in their list of the "1001  Best Songs Ever", "Blender" listed it at number 289 on its ranking of "Greatest Songs Since You Were Born" in 2005 and in 2015, it was voted by the British public as the nation's 17th favourite 1980s number-one in a poll for ITV. The accompanying music video, which features a disco ball, waving gold flags and an evocation of the six-armed Vishnu, was directed by Vaughan Arnell and Anthea Benton. Background and composition. Dead or Alive's 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: Desiring to move on from the sound of the band's first album, "Sophisticated Boom Boom", 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. 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. 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. "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" is written in the key of F♯ minor Re-releases. A remix version of "You Spin Me Round" was released in 2003 at the same time Dead or Alive's greatest hits album "Evolution" was released . The song reached no. 23 in the UK Singles Chart. The original 1984 recording was re-released on 30 January 2006 because of lead singer Pete Burns's controversial time as a contestant on television series "Celebrity Big Brother" and reached no. 5. Earlier remixes were in 1996 and 1997 (some are included on the US, European and Australian releases of "Nukleopatra"). In 1999 these mixes were issued in the US as a 2-CD set. The first disc held seven mixes of "You Spin Me Round" while disc two has five mixes of "Sex Drive". In 2000, new mixes  appeared on "Fragile" and in 2001, on "Unbreakable: The Fragile Remixes". No videos were made for these. Chart performance. The song has been re-released three times since its original release in 1984. Each time of its release, it achieved success, but failed to match the success of the original. However, after lead-singer Pete Burns's appearance on "Celebrity Big Brother", the single was re-released and managed a Top 5 peak on the UK Singles Chart in 2006. According to Burns, 12-inch singles comprised over 70% of the original sales of You Spin Me Round, and because  these were regarded by the record label as promotional tools rather than sales, the band had to threaten legal action against the label before they received the royalties on them. Impact and legacy. In 2003, British popular music magazine "Q" ranked "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" number 981 in their list of the "1001 Best Songs Ever". In 2005, "Blender" listed it at number 289 on its ranking of "Greatest Songs Since You Were Born". In 2015, it was voted by the British public as the nation's 17th favourite 1980s number-one in a poll for ITV . After the death of Burns in 2016, musician and actor Gary Kemp described the song as "one of the best white dance records of all time." In 2020, "The Guardian" ranked the song number five in their list of "The 100 Greatest UK No 1s". In 2021, "Classic Pop" ranked it number-one in their list of "Top 40 Stock Aitken Waterman songs". Dope version. Nu metal band Dope covered the song on their 1999 album "Felons and Revolutionaries"; the cover also appeared on the soundtrack for the film "American Psycho". This version reached no. 37 on the Hot Mainstream  Rock Tracks chart. Jessica Simpson version. Jessica Simpson's version of the song was released as a promo single from her fifth studio album "A Public Affair" in 2006. Her version of the song failed to break into the "Billboard" Hot 100 (though it did reach no. 20 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles). Simpson's version has new lyrics and only preserves the chorus of the song. Other cover versions. In 2007, Danzel remixed "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)"; his version peaked at no. 32 in Belgium. Flo Rida's 2009 single "Right Round" featuring Kesha , interpolates elements of the song. In 2020, American industrial metal band 3Teeth released "GUNS AKIMBO", a two track set that included a cover version of "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)". The song was previously featured in the 2019 action comedy film "Guns Akimbo".