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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.
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.
Duran Duran were one of the biggest bands of the 1980’s, but have never disbanded and are still recording today. The band had a string of hits including Girls on Film, Rio, Hungry Like The Wolf and the James Bond theme A View To A Kill, and were initially part of the New Romantic scene, dressing flamboyantly and with crazy big hair styles. They also have the honour of being named Princess Diana’s favourite band!
Chas and Dave were one of those fun musical acts that you would struggle to find in the pop charts these days. You really don’t seem to get many comedy songs being popular any more, which I feel is a great shame.
I always felt that Shakin’ Stevens was kind of a British equivalent of a young Elvis Presley. With his greased quiff hair style, denim jeans and jacket and those crazy dance steps, Shaky, as he was nicknamed, had that kind of an air about him. The style of songs he sang also had an element of The King about them too, being good old fashioned Rock ‘n’ Roll, with a real emphasis on the Roll.
Everyone must remember Adam and the Ants if only for the fact that lead singer Adam Ant (real name Stuart Leslie Goddard) always seemed to have a white line drawn directly across his face, under his eyes and over the bridge of his nose. They were a punk band around during the early 1980s who dressed in a very flamboyant manner, looking like pirates who had been caught in an explosion in a paint factory, but otherwise kick-starting the New Romantic movement.
The first time I heard of Culture Club was one evening when they appeared on Top of the Pops. Said show was on TV, and Culture Club were playing their first big hit “Do you really want to hurt me?“. My Dad walked in and, never being one to mince his words, said, “That’s a bloke singing!“, referring of course to Boy George. Of course, being still of primary school age both my sister and I refused to believe him, since the person on TV was clearly a woman in our eyes, what with the heavy make-up and wearing what appeared to be a white dress.