Read why songwriter Tony Macaulay sang verses of this hit song to his dog.

British songwriter Tony Macaulay has a catalog of songs that is chock full of hits. But his smash No. 1, "Don't Give Up on Us," he says is his favorite of them all. Maybe because of how it came to be, maybe because of who sang it and maybe because it seemed like a bit of an outlier with its non-traditional chord structure that ended up going straight to the top of the charts.

Nashville Songwriters Association International Executive Director Bart Herbison sat down with Macauley recently to talk through how the 1977 hit sung by the hunky star of "Starsky and Hutch" David Soul came to be.

"I wrote the first few bars on the guitar, but it's a piano song," Macauley said. "Went home a few days later and I was playing this piano and the chords were nice. I got the first 12 bars. It's a 12-bar melody, but it's structured like a 32 to measure song. (Sorry. We say bar, you say measure.) So I had a sort of scratch lyric, but my first thought was you can't dance to this. It isn't a verse/hook song. It seems to be its own formula. It doesn't have the peaks and troughs of a good verse/hook song."

Macaulay admitted he liked the idea of the song, but didn't know what he was going to do with it. The second verse came to him one day and the wheels started to roll.

"I walked round the park with my dog and I remember when I got the second verse together which I thought was really sweet the way it all paid off and hung together as an idea, I remember kneeling on the ground singing it to my dog and several people walking past thinking 'poor man should be in a mental home.'"

Maybe singing it to his dog was the special sauce the song needed.

Out of the blue, Macaulay's manager at the time called him and said "I've got David Soul." Soul was one of the stars of the original 1970s series "Starsky and Hutch," which was arguably the most popular show on television at that time. Herbison put it this way: "This show ran, I think, from 1975 to '79. His (song) became number one in '77. You couldn't have had a hotter actor record this song ever in the history of the United States."

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Producers had recorded an album with Soul, but they needed a single. Macaulay's song wasn't even finished yet. There was no demo. Macaulay said no one outside of his wife — and his dog — had heard it. Macaulay jumps on a plane to Los Angeles and writes a third verse on his way to meet Soul at the recording studio.

"So when we get to do the voice, David has never sung a song like this in his life," Macaulay remembers. "He was absolutely lost to how to do it. So it was quite a job to get him to sing softly. I said, 'Act it. Breathe it. Lots of breath. Get really close to the mic. Don't push the voice because you'll break the mood.'"

They captured Soul's performance and Macaulay jetted back to London to mix the song. He's exhausted. He's had no sleep and says he can't hear anything good about the song. "By now, all I can hear is what's wrong with it," he added.

"By this time I never want to hear it again. I go home and go to sleep on the Monday night and stay asleep until Wednesday morning. I was so tired I slept like 35 hours or something. I get up, I turn on the radio and the third or fourth record is 'Don't Give Up on Us.'"

Turns out, that London recording studio was next to the BBC offices.

"From the time I started writing it, to it coming out was about 10 days. From finishing writing it to it coming out was a week. I think it came in the charts at 14 and went straight to one and stayed there for a month."

About the series

In partnership with Nashville Songwriters Association International, the "Story Behind the Song" video interview series features Nashville-connected songwriters discussing one of their compositions. For full video interviews with all our subjects, visit www.tennessean.com/music.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Hear the Story Behind the Song 'Don't Give Up on Us' sung by actor David Soul