“Never Ending Story” is the title song from the English version of the 1984 film The NeverEnding Story. It was produced and composed by Italian musician Giorgio Moroder, who worked with Donna Summer in all of her top hits, with lyrics by Keith Forsey, who co-wrote Don’t You Forget About Me with Simply Minds, but both Moroder and Forsey teamed up for the Flashdance theme song. Forsey was a songwriter also for the films Ghostbusters (1984), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), and The Breakfast Club (1985). “Never Ending Story” was performed by English pop singer Limahl (Chris Hamill), lead singer of Kajagoogoo from which he had been ousted from and sung “Never Ending Story” solo. The pop singer didn’t really like the song when he traveled to the German studios to connect with Moroder who presented him the song, but luckily for him given the following success, he changed his mind.
There were 2 versions of the song released, 1 in English and 1 in French. The English version featured great vocals by American Beth Anderson, and the French version, titled L’Histoire Sans Fin, featured vocals by Ann Calvert. It was a success in many countries, reaching #1 in Spain, Norway and Sweden, #2 in Austria, West Germany and Italy, #4 in the UK, #6 in Australia, #1 in Japan and #6 in the US. In Canada it hit #3, in Finland #24, in France #7, in Ireland #4, in Italy #2, in New Zealand #28, in Switzerland #3.
Beth Anderson recorded her words in America separately from Limahl’s. Anderson does not appear in the music video; frequent Limahl back-up singer Mandy Newton lip-syncs Anderson’s part.
As a reference to the film and its title, making the song very unique, it has no clear beginning, nor a clear end. Many songs similarly fade out, but “The NeverEnding Story” also fades in at the beginning, not only fades out at the end, making it “never-ending”, like a loop recording, and infinite melody.
In the final episode of the 3rd season of Stranger Things, set in 1985, “Never Ending Story” is sung by Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and his long-distance girlfriend Suzie (Gabriella Pizzolo) as a way to reconnect after not seeing each other for a while. Following the season’s release on July 4, 2019, interest in “The Never Ending Story”resurged; viewership of the original music video had increased by 800% within a few days according to YouTube, while Spotify reported an similar increase in stream requests for the song. Limahl expressed gratitude towards Netflix for this; while he had not watched the series, he was told of the song’s inclusion by his nephews and watched clips of the duet. A snippet of the song appears again in the 4th season, set in 1986 is sung by Will Byers (Noah Schnapp). Limahl had previously found a similar increase in his past work when the network used his band Kajagoogoo’s song “Too Shy” in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
The Official Video of the song on YouTube has, at the time of writing, almost 22 million views.
