As one half of GRAMMY-winning duo Eurythmics, Dave Stewart has spent the bulk of his career at the helm of one of the most successful and influential synth pop acts of the 1980s and beyond.

But before he and his bandmate Annie Lennox could reach the height of their success, they had to find international success beyond their home country of England -- and they did so with a little help from one of their signature songs, "Sweet Dreams."

In this episode of Sound Bites, archival GRAMMY interview footage shows Stewart taking viewers back to the early days of the group's rise, when they were relatively well known at home  but hadn't yet gained acclaim abroad.

"When 'Love is a Stranger' came out [in 1982], that started to get quite a bit of play, but we didn't know that there was some DJ in America that had gotten an import of 'Sweet Dreams,'" Stewart recalls. "And he was playing that."

"Sweet Dreams" actually hadn't been selected as a single in England, though Stewart says he and Lennox felt that pushing that song would have been "a no-brainer." Still, at the time, people were confused by the format of the song.

"People would say, 'But we don't understand — where's the chorus?' And we were going, 'Well, it's kind of all chorus for about three minutes,'" Stewart continues.

The label might have hesitated to send "Sweet Dreams" to radio, but as the duo's fame grew, the song selected itself: The DJ who was playing "Sweet Dreams" kept calling their label, but a pronunciation mishap in the group's name led to confusion over whose music he was playing. When the facts finally clicked, Stewart and Lennox knew they had to start making musical moves in the U.S.

"We realized, 'Okay, we need an American manager,'" he continues. They started looking at the bands they felt were similar to their sound at the time — the Talking Heads, the B-52’s, the Ramones. "They were all managed by the same guy: Gary Kurfirst," Stewart says.

They wound up signing with Kurfirst, which furthered their status as a global act — and ultimately led to an all-star tour that Stewart says was the "most fun tour we ever did."

Press play on the video above to watch Stewart chronicle Eurythmics’ rise to international superstardom, and keep checking GRAMMY.com for more episodes of Sound Bites. 

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