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Am I the only one who never heard of Rick Astley before this whole rickrolling thing? Wikipedia says that he sold a whole lot of records in the eighties but I must not have been paying attention at the time.
Rick was designed for me (or gals my age) with that hair, the "preppy" dress-style you could bring home to mama, with a slight nod to that James Dean shot there seemed to be a lwa that every girl my age must have on their walls in 1985, and singing lines like "I'll never hurt you or let you down" - so I think you needed to be 13 to really "get" him (and find him everywhere). I never admitted that I thought he was so kyoot since the song and dance was just so embarrasing for a girl who just discovered Black and The Cure.
Rick Astley was big target for pop music scorn in the eighties. Pop will Eat Itself namecheck Rick Astley in "Preaching to the Perverted": "Astley's in the noose, hang loose kid, Lift the lid on the crimes he did". And that's a reference to a Wonderstuff song called "Astley in the Noose", with the catchy chorus of "I wouldn't kill you, even if you paid me". Good stuff.
This is great. It ranks right up there with the story linked here a couple of years ago about the cops in some small US town who freaked out because a couple of teenagers were carrying signs during some local protest that said "all your base are belong to us". The law thought the kids were planning a hostile takeover of the town....hee. I still laugh whenever I think of that.
Astley said last month that he thought the fame was “a bit spooky”. “It’s just one of those odd things where something gets picked up and people run with it,” he said. “But that’s what’s brilliant about the internet.”
The best part is that Rick Astley totally gets it.
To be fair to Astley, I wasn't paying too much attention to anything circa 1987. The mid-eighties are a bit of a blur in my memory but I'm sure that I had a good time.
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