For music the 1980’s was a bit of a mixed bag. Whilst the early 1980’s saw a ton of originality from bands such as Culture Club, Duran Duran and Adam and the Ants, the late 1980’s suffered from an explosion of manufactured pop music, most notably the output from “The Hit Factory” team, as they called themselves, of Stock Aitken Waterman. At their height they dominated the UK music industry, churning out songs for the likes of Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Bananarama and the subject of todays post, Rick Astley.
Rick was originally discovered when he was just 19 by Pete Waterman, but he was at first reluctant to leave his current band, FBI. Eventually he was enticed away, and hit it big in 1987 with his first solo single Never Gonna Give You Up, the song for which he will probably always be best remembered.
His non-threatening good looks and the lyrics for the song itself instantly scooped him a gaggle of adoring teenage girls as fans. After all, he told them that he was never gonna let them down, lie or say goodbye, and more importantly seemed fairly honest about it at the same time. Personally I always thought he looked a little bit like the Harry Enfield character Tim Nice-But-Dim, as the accompanying picture I think shows (sorry Rick). Rick also only seemed to have a single dance routine, called the Rick Astley Shuffle by many, which involved sidling side to side waving your arms up slightly at the extremes of the shuffle.
Released in 1986, The Chicken Song spent three weeks in the UK number one slot, despite it being one of the most irritating novelty songs ever written. To be fair though, being irritating was always the point of the song as it was intended to be a parody of songs such as Agadoo and Superman, and any of the rest of cringe worthy group
Norwegian band a-ha formed in 1982 and comprised lead vocalist Morten Harket, guitarist Paul Waaktaar and keyboard player Magne Furuholmen. The band are still together today, and have been throughout apart from a period of four years between 1994 and 1998. The band took their name from the exclamation a-ha, like you say when you suddenly realise the solution to a problem.
Madonna is still one of todays biggest and well known music stars, but her singing career began back in the 1980’s. I must admit that I always thought that Madonna was just a stage name, but it is in fact her real name. She was born Madonna Louise Ciccone on August 16th, 1958 in Michigan and raised in a strict Catholic family, which probably accounts for her backlash against Catholicism that was evident in some of her work.
Billy Joel stormed the charts in 1983 with his classic song Uptown Girl, reaching number three in the US and claiming the top spot in the UK for five weeks, knocking
If you wanted to know anything about pop music during the 1980’s then the best place to start was with Smash Hits! magazine. For most of the 1980’s and early 1990’s it was the first choice magazine for many teenagers, at it’s peak selling half a million copies every bi-weekly issue. A record breaking issue in 1989, featuring Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, sold more than a million copies!
June 1987, and the UK goes barmy for Star Trekkin’, a single celebrating all that was great (and stereotypical) about the classic Star Trek series - i.e. the series with Captain Kirk and Spock. No Trek cliche was left unused, except perhaps the one about Kirk always kissing the pretty female guest character. The song knocked Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody off the top of the charts (thank God) although it was only at number one for two weeks (also thank God!).
Today we are more likely listen to our favourite band via a digital medium, such as compact disc or MP3 files, but in the 1980’s vinyl records still ruled the roost. Cassette Tapes may have been another popular and more portable media format (thanks to the invention of the