“You Spin Me Round” was the first UK #1 hit from Britain’s Hi-NRG scene—an electronic dance genre that bridged disco and techno.

It was also the first charting single by both the pop band Dead Or Alive, and the Hi-NRG production trio Stock Aitken Waterman—who went on to be one of the most successful production teams in history.

Dead or Alive frontman Pete Burns was inspired to sing the hook when he was listening to Luther Vandross’s “I Wanted Your Love”—he changed “I wanted your love, baby your love” to “you spin me right round, baby, right round.” He later took the song back to his bandmates, who changed the lyrics.

They next took the song to Stock Aitken Waterman, who had a big reputation in the Hi-NRG scene, but had yet to achieve financial success. Waterman later recounted the story to Burns:

We’d been fighting to make a living, fighting to make a reputation, and then here you walked in with a piece of gold and said to me “Would you shine it?”

The producers worked for 36 hours straight (helped by cocaine), and the result was a radio hit that not only climbed the Hi-NRG charts but cracked the British mainstream.

Burns said:

It was the sound of the underground. It was a sound that was fundamentally only accessible at gay clubs, and he’d taken it out of gay clubs and put it onto mainstream radio, which was a triumph.

The singer, especially in the video, is noted for being ambiguously gay.

The song was used by fashion designer Christian Cowan, sung by Sam Smith, as accompaniment to the presentation of his collection at Paris Fashion Week in 2024.