You're listening to Song Explorer, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirwe. Crowded House formed in 1985 in Melbourne, Australia. They've released eight albums, including their most recent one, Gravity Snares, which came out last month.
But on their very first album, they had a big hit with Don't Dream It's Over. When I was a kid, my older sister had a mix tape of her favorite songs that she'd made by taping them off the radio. And we used to listen to that one tape over and over again. Don't Dream It's Over was a big fixture on it.
She and I used to try and imitate Neil Finn's accent when we would sing along. Crowded House made Don't Dream It's Over with Grammy-nominated producer Mitchell Froome, who they went on to work with multiple times. For this episode, I talked to frontman Neil Finn about how the song was first written and then how it developed with his bandmates and collaborators in the studio. And we talked about the profound connection that people have had with the song over the years.
My name is Neil Finn, and I am the lead singer of the band Crowded House. My brother, Tim, started an amazing band when I was about 14 called Split Enz. My brother was nearly six years older than me, so I was watching what he was doing at university and, you know, just absolutely transfixed by it. And I wanted to be part of it.
And then Phil Jarden, the other songwriting partner, left the band. I didn't expect to be asked to join Split Enz as young as I was. I was, you know, 18 years old. But Tim rang my mother to make sure it was okay if he asked me to join the band.
Son to mother courtesy. And she said, yep. Then Tim rang me and, yeah, I got the shock of my life. The band Split Enz continued for seven years after I joined.
Towards the end, Tim announced to us that he wanted to go off and have his own experience of music and of life. But then I was faced with the choice of, well, do I keep going in this band and as a lead singer, but it just seemed too intimidating and I wanted to strike out. Paul Hester was Split Enz's last drummer. Paul was an incredible drummer.
I loved playing with him. We discussed the possibility of forming a new band. We had gone all out to find a bass player. We found Nick Seymour in that process, who impressed us by dancing around the control room as he played on our new demos.
And so I went to my brother's house one day. Paul was living in my brother's house in Melbourne. And he'd invited a whole bunch of people over, which I was not into socialising that day. So I went and hid in the music room and played my brother's piano.
Yeah, the song just emerged at that point. It's quite a fertile state for me to be melancholy when I'm writing because the songs I like have a melancholy tinge. So I suppose I need to be in that state. I was contemplating a few things that really young men don't think about, you know, your place in the world, what's really valid and what's important.
I had a young family at the time, or a young son. And, yeah, navigating, getting up in the night with a new band about to start. I had the ability to be able to go again, you know, to start something. So I was determined to try and do the right thing on all fronts, you know, trying to apply the right level of passion and commitment to my music and trying to be a good human being at the same time.
It's not always compatible. Later that day, I went home and went to my little music room where I had a four-track recorder at that point, a little cassette four-track, and made the demo of the song. There is freedom within. There is freedom without.
Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup. It became a guitar song. I had a delay, a Roland space echo in my room, so I just put everything through it, including the guitar there, obviously. And I created a little snare track by tapping a matchbox with my finger.
There is freedom within. There is freedom without. Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup. When the world comes in, they come, they come to build a wall between us.
We know they won't win. My name is Neil Finn, and I am the lead singer of the band Crowded House. My brother, Tim, started an amazing band when I was about 14 called Split Ends. My brother was nearly six years older than me, so I was watching what he was doing at university and, you know, just absolutely transfixed by it.
And I wanted to be part of it. And then Phil Jarden, the other songwriting partner, left the band. I didn't expect to be asked to join Split Ends as young as I was. I was, you know, 18 years old.
But Tim rang my mother to make sure it was okay if he asked me to join the band. Son-to-mother courtesy. And she said, yep. Then Tim rang me, and, yeah, I got the shock of my life.
The band Split Ends continued for seven years after I joined. Towards the end, Tim announced to us that he wanted to go off and have his own experience of music and of life. But then I was faced with the choice of, well, do I keep going in this band and as a lead singer? But it just seemed too intimidating and I wanted to strike out.
Paul Hester was Split Ends' last drummer. Paul was an incredible drummer. I loved playing with him. We discussed the possibility of forming a new band.
We had gone all out to find a bass player. We found Nick Seymour in that process, who impressed us by dancing around the control room as he played on our new demos. And so I went to my brother's house one day. Paul was living in my brother's house in Melbourne, and he had invited a whole bunch of people over, which I was not into socialising that day.
So I went and hid in the music room and played my brother's piano. Yeah, the song just emerged at that point. It's quite a fertile state for me to be melancholy when I'm writing because the songs I like have a melancholy tinge, so I suppose I need to be in that state. I was contemplating a few things that really young men don't think about.
You know, your place in the world, what's really valid and what's important. I had a young family at the time, or a young son. And, yeah, navigating, getting up in the night with a new band about to start. I had the ability to be able to go again, you know, to start something.
So I was determined to try and do the right thing on all fronts, you know, trying to apply the right level of passion and commitment to my music and trying to be a good human being at the same time. It's not always compatible. Later that day, I went home and went to my little music room where I had a four-track recorder at that point, a little cassette four-track, and made the demo of the song. There is freedom within.
There is freedom without. Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup. It became a guitar song. I had a delay, a Roland space echo in my room, so I just put everything through it, including the guitar there, obviously.
And I created a little snare track by tapping a matchbox with my finger. There is freedom within. There is freedom without. Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup.
When the world comes in, they come, they come to build a wall between us. We know they won't win. Home demos often have some degree of intimacy about them that's almost impossible to recreate in the studio because you're sort of discovering a song at the same time as performing it just after you've written it. So you've got this sense of extra yearning because you're going, I think this is great.
I think this is great. I'm going to make it sound great. So I don't know, there's some real force of will applied to demos that give it a unique atmosphere. I played it to my wife.
She's usually my first audience if I've got something I like. I'm always greatly reassured by her grooving to it. She's a very good dancer. And I have a vague memory of her hips starting to move, listening to it.
That's her way of telling me that it's a great song. I do remember taking it to rehearsal a few days later and we knew it was good, but it really didn't sound good at rehearsal at all. We couldn't figure out how to translate the song into a band arrangement. It's hard to translate a matchbox snare drum into a full drum kit.
But the song really emerged in its record form when I got together with Mitchell Froome. He was really young in that whole field of production, but I really liked him and he had some good ideas. I got together with him very soon after making that demo and he actually did immediately respond to Don't Dream It's Over. He was the first person to sort of pick that out and say, wow, that's a really special song, that one.
He had a little set up in his shed out the back with a blaster box that he'd record onto. Mitchell played a little, really subtle pad in the early parts of the song. He was playing a Hammond and I played guitar with him. It was, you know, really surprising to me to have these new angles suddenly put in front of me that I would never have come up with.
One being the Hammond organ solo, which I'd never have dreamed of. I'd never even The band was breaking up, we decided to call it quits. And we had an audience of maybe 150,000 people on the steps of Sydney Opera House. There's just a very intense feeling attached to that performance.
There's a very poignant shot of Paul shedding tears as we were singing Don't Dream It's Over. So, you know, I'll always remember that one. And somehow the song has seemed to be resonant and appropriate for people on a number of different occasions. Ariana Grande sang it in Manchester when they were mourning the loss of a lot of people at one of her concerts.
And Bono and Edge just performed it in Las Vegas recently as a response to world events and to the loss of Alexei Navalny. And it continually surprises me where it turns up and who finds their way into singing it, you know. It's a very interesting process, songwriting, because I haven't really figured it out. And I can honestly say I don't know what I'm doing most days.
Which is not something I deliberate over. I don't think, oh, I've got to write something that's going to mean something in 30 years' time. It's not like that. It's never that deliberate.
It's a really wonderful thing about having songs become part of people's life story. And I'm eternally grateful for that connection. I can't fully explain it. You know, I'm really grateful.
It's also a great mystery. Coming up, you'll hear how all of these ideas and elements came together in the final song. And now, here's Don't Dream It's Over by Crowded House in its entirety. There is freedom within.
There is freedom without. Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup. There's a battle ahead. Many battles are lost.
But you'll never see the end of the road while you're traveling with me. Hey now, hey now, don't dream it's over. Hey now, hey now, when the world comes in, they come, they come to build a wall between us. We know they won't win.
Now I'm towing my car. There's a hole in the roof. My possessions cause me suspicion but there's no proof. In the paper today, tails of war and of waste.
You turn right over to the TV page. Hey now, hey now, don't dream it's over. Hey now, hey now, when the world comes in, they come, they come to build a wall between us. We know they won't win.
Don't let them win. Hey now, hey now, don't let them win. Don't let them win. Don't let them win.
To learn more, visit songexploder.net. You'll find links to buy or stream Don't Dream It's Over, and you can watch the music video. We also put up links for you to check out Crowded House's new album, Gravity Stairs, which is out now. This episode was produced by Craig Eiley, Theo Balcomb, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and myself.
The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, you can sign up for my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website.
You can also follow me and Song Exploder on Instagram, and you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishikesh Hirwe. Thanks for listening.