![]() But the classics – Better the Devil You Know, Never Gonna Give You Up, Toy Boy – are as good as anything in the wider pop pantheon. When it didn’t work – as with Mandy Smith – they just gave the record to Kylie or Sinitta and then it did. When it worked – as with Kylie – they were unbeatable: as throwaway as a bag of chips but as memorable as a first decent snog. You needed only the barest modicum of singing talent (bolstered by the mysterious Calrec Soundfield Microphone) and the ability to do exactly as you were told. Yet collectively they formed a magnificent DIY army that almost anyone (see The Reynolds Girls) could join. ![]() It’s always been easy to scoff at what S/A/W achieved – none of their acts (bar Kylie) posed a genuine threat to any of the superstars of the time. It’s almost impossible to discuss pop music at the end of the 1980s without mentioning Stock, Aitken and Waterman. For the last two years of the decade they essentially colonised the UK charts, scoring 13 number ones and more than 100 top 40 hits, subsequently inspiring a level of hate not seen since the “Disco sucks” campaign of 1979.
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