PWL Stock Aitken Waterman / PWL Records / Love This Records
PWL, 4/7 The Vineyard, Sanctuary Street, London SE1 1QL, UK


This page describes Stock Aitken Waterman (or SAW for short), the ubiquitous pop writing and producing team of the 1980s, and Pete Waterman Limited, the independent British record that was home to the producers and most of their releases.

For those that don't know their story at all, here is a brief description of Stock Aitken Waterman's story from their Ton of Hits compilation's liner notes.

Why are the producers important? Well, SAW wrote, produced and arranged most of the songs they were involved with. Usually the artist did little more than sing. Pete Waterman wrote a small article about Motown and how it relates to what SAW were trying to achieve.

For an idea of just how popular SAW became in Europe, take a look at Billboard's Hits of the World chart (250k) from April 23, 1988. For that week, 5 of the Top 40 UK singles were written or produced by SAW; in addition SAW has #1 singles in Canada, West Germany, and Australia, as well as on the Pan-European chart.


Music Listings

If you write to PWL, they will send you a listing of singles and albums that Stock Aitken Waterman and its various permutations have been involved in. Here are the listings as of December 1993:

- Singles released by Stock Aitken Waterman
- Singles released by Stock and Waterman
- Albums containing SAW or S&W material


SAW and HiNRG

Perhaps the musical genre that SAW best fits into is HiNRG, conventionally (or stereotypically) known primarily as the music of gay discos. Here is a description of HiNRG. Many in Europe would probably consider SAW to be pure pop, but pop and HiNRG have always enjoyed a large crossover in Europe. HiNRG afficionados in the states have held a yearly HiNRG awards ceremony since 198x, and Stock Aitken Waterman have won the "Best Songwriting Team" and "Best Producing Team" awards for every year of the awards (at least through 1993 or so).


Where are they now?

Matt Aitken left the group for an extended sabbatical in 1991 and never returned. Stock and Waterman continued to write and produce, despite a number of high-profile defections of artists and mixers from PWL. In 1993, Mike Stock left PWL, and now has subsequently rejoined Matt Aitken. Stock and Aitken's reunion single, "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" by Kym Mazelle and Joycelyn Brown, was released in 1994 on Arista UK.

Mike subsequently created a number of independent labels under the umbrella of Love This Records. Love This has released a number of records by Nicki French (notably "Total Eclipse of the Heart"), Newton, Robson & Jerome, Tatjana, and others. In the US, many of Stock & Aitken's Love This singles were distributed by Avex/Critique/BMG. A number of PWL alumni, including Peter Day, Julian Gingell, Dave Ford, Mae McKenna, and Miriam Stockley rejoined Stock and Aitken in these recent efforts. Unfortunately, Love This records went bankrupt after some trouble with the nearby subway in London. Now, Pete Waterman is enjoying something of a pop renaissance with Steps, a band he has described as "ABBA on speed". Not far behind, Mike & Matt are producing Scooch. Their second single, "More Than I Needed To Know", hit the UK charts at no. 5 (sheck out sound samples here.


(l-r) Pete Waterman, Matt Aitken, Mike Stock
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jeffop@leland.stanford.edu (comments & suggestions welcome)