Rick Astley

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With his rich, deep voice, Rick Astley became an overnight sensation in the late '80s with his well-crafted dance-pop. Astley was discovered by the producer Pete Waterman in 1985 singing in the English soul band FBI. After that, Waterman's production team -- Stock, Aitken & Waterman -- took Astley under their wing, writing and producing such impeccably crafted pop singles as "Never Gonna Give You Up" and "Together Forever." After two hugely successful albums in the U.S. and the U.K., Astley grew tired of being labeled Stock, Aitken & Waterman's "puppet" and severed his connections with the team; he resurfaced in 1991 with the soul-injected Free, which contained the Top Ten hit, "Cry for Help." ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

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Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" Ignites Viral World Wide Internet Meme!

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Two decades after it became a mantra of late-’80s pop – and rode the charts in over a dozen countries around the world, hitting # 1 in more than half of them – “Never Gonna Give You Up” by British hitmaker Rick Astley took on a YouTube life of its own in 2008, when the classic video sparked the ‘Rickrolling’ phenom as a viral Internet meme. To date, according to SurveyUSA, as many as 18 million Americans have been ‘Rickrolled,’ with more than 30 million views registered at YouTube alone.

Discography »

Rick Astley
1/8/2008
Rick Astley
3/9/2004
Rick Astley
3/19/2002

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