You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
Crowded House formed in 1985 in Melbourne, Australia.
They've released eight albums, including their most recent one,
Gravity Stairs, 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 mixtape 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 Ends.
My brother was nearly six years older than me,