steve robson wrote never gonna give you up.
who wrote never gonna give you up?
steve robson
as the record climbed the charts, the single ran into legal difficulties. with "pump up the volume" standing at number two, an injunction was obtained against it by pop music producers stock aitken waterman (saw), who objected to the use of a sample from their hit single "roadblock". distribution was held up for several days while negotiations took place, which resulted in an undertaking that overseas releases would not include the "roadblock" sample. dave dorrell later stated that he believed saw would never have noticed the highly distorted sample had he not rashly boasted about it in a radio interview. the offending article consisted of 7 seconds of an anonymous background voice moaning the single word "hey", involved no musical or melodic information, and could never be considered plagiarism in the literary sense. saw member pete waterman wrote an open letter to the music press calling such things "wholesale theft". some publications were quick to point out that waterman was currently using the bassline from the colonel abrams song "trapped" in his production of rick astley's "never gonna give you up", which was competing in close proximity to "pump up the volume" in the pop charts. observers suggested that saw's motives had just as much to do with extending the run of "never gonna give you up" at the top of the chart. saw could afford extensive legal resources and m|a|r|r|s stood little chance of a successful defence. despite all this, "pump up the volume" went on to spend two weeks at number one in october 1987 and was a chart hit in many other countries, receiving considerable airplay on american, australian and european airwaves. while it was stripped from the official american release, the version containing the offending "roadblock" sample was the version that the australian charts credited. in america it was licensed to 4th & b'way records, the original version contained several samples from 4th & b'way releases and were able to provide new samples for the american version which they received clearance for.
pump up the volume (song)
bullet::::4. "never gonna give you up" – 3:32









































bullet::::5. "never gonna give you up" (escape to new york mix) – 7:01









































bullet::::6. "never gonna give you up" (escape from newton mix) – 6:23









































bullet::::- 12" maxi









































bullet::::2. "never gonna give you up" (cake mix) – 5:48









































bullet::::3. "never gonna give you up" (instrumental) – 3:30









































bullet::::4. "never gonna give you up" – 3:32









































bullet::::- 12" single









































bullet::::2. "never gonna give you up" (escape from newton mix) – 6:30









































bullet::::3. "never gonna give you up" (escape to new york mix) – 7:00









































section::::personnel.
never gonna give you up