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.)

i’m a danish, i’m a danish, rock me, i’m a danish!

okay, my friends katrin or m2k the super brain will have to translate that one for us. in the meantime, for us stupid americans who need things in english, behold the most popular of the late, great falco’s contributions to our musical heritage: rock me amadeus. not entirely sure what the hell the song is about other than the illustrious wolfgang amadeus mozart. yeah, he was great. yeah, he was talented. yeah, he was hot in the ’80s thanks to some feature film time.

but this song? how on earth did it become a bigger hit than der kommissar? (or, for you xenophobic amurikins, here’s the version we all know.) dk actually has a cool hook, even if no one knows even what the hell the english version is all about.

i did find out that falco, or Johann (Hans) Hölze, called himself falco after an east german ski jumper. he left the world tragically due to a horrible car crash. nothing good about that.

but this song? with all the offerings in 1986, this was not something to be remembered. and yet, here i am, remembering it.

i think i’ll just stick with the real thing and get rocked by it. to sleep, perhaps, but still.

i’m screaming, and i don’t know WHY!

(no, he’s not a spelling-impaired relative of  those nevilles.)

robbie nevil knows his way around a pop hook — he has spent time writing for the pointer sisters, el debarge, babyface, and such. in 1986, he shared this hook-laden ditty with the world; and lo and behold, it became his one-hit wonder. the song makes me wonder — it meanders pointlessly, tunelessly, and employs people shouting THAT’S LIFE! as a last-ditch effort to get someone to notice that this here song is going on. i’ve listened to death metal and colicky babies that hurt my head less.

you watch the video and you ponder what the high concept was. hmmm… a demolition crew meets the cast of the grapes of wrath? was it also a set for a fruit of the loom wifebeater commercial? if video killed the radio star, then i think idiocy like this killed the video star.

oh, and to bring it all home — apparently, nevil is somehow connected with the hannah montana and high school music efforts. that alone pretty much seals the deal for me. anyone leading my children down a path of musical ruin is probably not going to be my pal.

that’s life.

i wonder whether mavis staples smacked bruce willis upside the head for disrespecting her song.

now, in case you’re wondering whether i’m about to go on one of my cover-song rants, i am. here’s exhibit a: the way the song ought to be sung.

why oh why is bruce willis singing a song that implores african americans to respect themselves? what the hell does he know about it? cos that’s what the song was all about when it was written in the early 1970s. i know many other groups trying to stand up for their rights took the song on, but there’s something oddly disturbing about willis, smiling broadly while singing to some skimpy blondey Take the sheet off your face, boy, it’s a brand new day.

gah.

don’t get me wrong — i lurved willis in moonlighting. i could gush for days about how my college pals and i would watch that show religiously. the chemistry between willis and cybil shepard was strong and almost hypnotic. but, like eddie murphy, apparently, willis had aspirations beyond acting.

too bad for us.

now, i don’t give a good cahoot that willis enlists ruth pointer to bring some sort of gritty reality to the song. and nevermind the fact that she sings rings around him. if he had any respect, he would have just handed the song over to her instead of interloping with his non-expressive voice.

in other news, what is a good cahoot, and how can i give one?

unce…tice…fee times a mady…

it probably didn’t help that i hatedhatedHATED the eponymous film, but the theme song to 1981’s endless love always makes my stomach turn. actually, most of lionel richie’s output in the ’80s does as well. i always have the urge to throw my hands all over BS’s face whenever hello comes on. i usually smoosh his face around and say this is what you look like to me. ah, those magical days of video… anyway, as for the movie, nothing says romance like a boyfriend who burns down his girlfriend’s house (even when john lennon proposes it as a capital idea in song.)

endless love pairs the king of soulful schmaltz with the queen of divadom, miss diana ross. former supreme mary wilson has written aplenty about miss ross and her selflessness so i won’t tread there myself. suffice to say, pair these two together and you’re going to have a hot mess on your hands, musically speaking. endless love always sounded like it was destined for elevators everywhere. while it was the biggest hit of diana ross’s career, it sounds like one of the worst songs she’s ever sung. she ends up sounding like a yappy dog, barking to be freed from a sweater and a handbag.

and lionel richie just makes me sleepy.

for me, it’s an endless song. pity.

why blemish an entire continent, one might ask. it’s really sweden’s fault.

inspired by david bowie’s space oddity (another song i can’t bear to listen to, though for other reasons — it creeps me out), singer joey tempest of the swedish band europe wrote a song about leaving mother earth in a space vehicle.  with such inspirational lyrics as we’re heading for Venus, and still we’ll stand tall, the song crept into wild popularity in 1986. now, it lives on in practically every sport arena at every level in the world. yes, that is a killer riff that synthesizer is playing, but it’s so killer that no one can remember what comes after it. nor, for that matter, do they care. it’s curious how a song about EVA is now popular in sporting events. who knew fist-in-the-air anthems about standing tall work equally well in arenas and in the milky way.

anyway, the banal song will get stuck in your head, and not in a pleasant way.  oddly enough, the band never did a whole lot that was quite as memorable here in the states. pity. i suspect synchronized swimming still lacks a pumped-up anthem.

i just died in your arms tonight… must’ve been something i ate.

as an english major, i am qualified to tell you that sex and death is a common theme in literature (especially among those crazy victorians.) any one of us card-carrying bores devourers of writing across the ages can probably cite poems, such as john donne’s the flea, which link the concept of sex with death. (you can read all about it and figure it out. my masters isn’t in lit, so that’s about as far as i’ll take you.)

thus, the modern-day variation on this theme, (i just) died in your arms tonight by that one-hit wonder cutting crew produced in 1986 pretty much treads on familiar ground. sadly, the lyrics aren’t even a third as clever as those words by donne. in fac, the wuss who sings the song is probably damned lucky he got laid considering his pathetic turn of phrase.

and don’t get me started on the overblown synth orchestra. oh, i could hardly stand the crap that some bands, like OMD, emitted — all those machines to sound like violins, all those cold sounds that are somehow meant to sound warm and meaningful. don’t get me wrong – i like synthesizers when they’re used properly. but songs like  IJDIYAT make me wonder who out there actually could relate to the feeling of the song. the execution is poor.

one-hit wonder coincidence? i think not.

i grade this one an F.