July 1984, London: British singer Limahl (Christopher Hamill, the former frontman of Kajagoogoo) releases the single “The Never Ending Story” - the main theme of the eponymous German film by Wolfgang Petersen. By October - #4 in the UK. By November - #17 Billboard Hot 100 in the US. In Germany - #3 for 12 weeks. In Norway - #1. Total global sales by the end of 1985 - over 3.5 million copies. For the solo record of a singer just fired from his own band, a triumphant comeback.
How the song came about
German director Wolfgang Petersen was finishing The NeverEnding Story (Die unendliche Geschichte) in early 1984 - a screen adaptation of Michael Ende's 1979 novel. Warner Bros., financing the film, insisted that the international version have an English-language pop theme for promotion. That required a singer with British credentials and international name recognition.
Composers Giorgio Moroder (the same man who made “I Feel Love” in 1977) and his protégé Keith Forsey wrote the melody in two weeks at Moroder's Los Angeles studio. Lyrics were written by Forsey alone - Moroder disliked writing words. When it came to choosing the singer, Moroder initially suggested Donna Summer. But Warner insisted on a British singer, so the track would get UK radio play.
Why Limahl
Christopher Hamill - stage name Limahl (anagram of his surname) - was in a rough spot in early 1984. In February he had been fired from Kajagoogoo, the band he had effectively founded and whose 1983 hit “Too Shy” (UK #1) he had fronted. After being fired, Limahl signed a solo deal with EMI and released two singles that flopped. For Warner, he was an ideal candidate - known, inexpensive, and on a long EMI contract that gave the label a share of any release.
Moroder recorded a demo in his own voice, then flew Limahl to Los Angeles. At Westlake Audio Studios in Hollywood, Limahl tracked his vocal over two days - 18 takes on the lead melody, one on the bridges. Moroder kept the fourth take of the lead: “it was the youngest, with a slight British push on the vowels”.
“Giorgio told me: "You're not just singing a song. You're the voice of Atreyu, the hero searching for Fantasia. Sing it like a pop star and you lose. Sing it like a kid who lost his horse in the swamp, and you win"”, Limahl told Smash Hits in 1985.
The arrangement
“The Never Ending Story” is a pop ballad, but structured like a cinematic synth anthem. Key of E♭ major, BPM 114, standard form verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-double chorus - but with an unusually long intro (16 bars) and a drawn-out outro (32 bars).
Instruments:
- Roland Jupiter-8 - main pads, the famous “windy” intro sound (PAD 2 preset with open LFO)
- Yamaha DX7 - electric piano in the verse (E.PIANO 1 preset)
- LinnDrum - drums, mixed as softly as possible
- Emulator II - sampled female choir in the chorus
- Prophet-5 - lead in the bridge
No live instruments. Even the brass and strings in the orchestral bedding are samples from the Emulator II. Moroder retained complete control of the sound - something an orchestra would have compromised.
The numbers
- UK: #4, 16 weeks in top 40
- Germany: #3, 12 weeks
- France: #5
- Norway: #1, 6 weeks
- Sweden: #2
- Switzerland: #4
- US: #17 Billboard Hot 100; #5 Adult Contemporary
- Australia: #13
- New Zealand: #3
Total global sales by end of 1985 - 3.5 million copies. That's more than Kajagoogoo sold across their entire career. For the solo release of a singer who had left the band six months earlier, a very visible comeback.
Why the track outlived the film
The film The NeverEnding Story grossed a modest-by-Hollywood-standards $100 million worldwide and today is remembered as “an 80s kids' movie”. But Limahl's single outlived the film for two reasons.
First - composition. Moroder and Forsey wrote a melody stronger than the film. Without the visuals, without context, without knowledge of the plot, “The Never Ending Story” works as a standalone synth-pop ballad - because by construction it is a ballad, not a soundtrack cue. Second - generational associative memory. Millions of 80s kids first heard this song in a cinema, and what they remembered wasn't the film but the song. By the 90s it had become a nostalgic code, by the 2000s an international classic, by the 2010s a TikTok meme.
In 2016 the track was used in Stranger Things season 3 - and Spotify streams leapt from 15 million a month to 180 million. By 2024 - over 1.2 billion streams of the original across all platforms. Nobody rewatches the film about Bastian and Fantasia any more, but they still listen to Limahl's song.
What it meant for the genre
“The Never Ending Story” demonstrated how the soundtrack-single model works. Until 1984, soundtracks grew out of films; this song took the opposite path - it had its own life, and the film became its promotional platform. The same model was repeated a year later by Berlin - “Take My Breath Away” from Top Gun (also Moroder), and two years later by Phil Collins - “Against All Odds”. By the end of the 80s the “song-grown-out-of-a-film” had become an independent commercial type earning more than soundtrack albums.
For the synth-pop scene, this meant Moroder - already legendary as a 70s disco producer - had entered a new role: creator of international pop hits for cinema. More on his production school and the synthesizers of the era in their own pieces.