egregious '80's music: never gonna give you up (rick astley)

no, you are not being rickrolled. though you might prefer that to be the case here.

throaty singer rick astley burst onto the music scene in 1987 with his monster hit never gonna give you up. his forgettable, sound-alike followups, like together forever, still litter easy listening stations and grocery store PA systems to this very day. he was produced by a UK machine known as stock aitken waterman — and when he left them, his career took a nosedive. sad about his career, but at least my ears were spared…for a time.

i still have nightmares of the time i spent in a windowless office on the second floor thanks in part to mr. astley. it was 1991, and i was working in education policy. (that was not the nightmarish part. i liked the work.) i shared said tiny office with a Ph.D candidate who was grumpy and cranky all the time. did i mention it was a small, windowless, and sometimes airless-feeling office? there was a library in the building, and at times, when i did not need to be near a phone, i would escape to the library for a sanity break.

anyway, the Ph.D candidate had a clock radio in the office. i like music in the background, so i didn’t mind in principle. however, as he was most certainly a southern boy, he liked playing the local country station, which i DID mind. seeing as he wasn’t going to play the late great 99.1 WHFS (which existed at the time), we made our peace and listened to easy listening. if i had a dime for every time i heard never gonna give you up, i would certainly have enough to have bought myself a very fine pair of bose noise cancelling headphones, i can tell you that.

(that year, i had to work on yom kippur. i fasted in that awful little room. and to further the punishment, i let the Ph.D candidate play the country station. oh, how i suffered for my sins.)

of course, now that the rickrolling phenomenon came about, astley is alive and well and showing up all over the place on the internet. like here.

(i suspect only my old pal leifer will get that one.)

8 thoughts on “egregious '80's music: never gonna give you up (rick astley)

  1. Excuse me while I slink away and pull this CD off my shelf. I always thought Rick Astley had a remarkably big voice for a white boy.

  2. If I recall, the Macy’s Day parade was rickrolled last year… *snort* I always thought he had a one octave range… dull dull dull.

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