My best friend in high school had parents who were from England. I have never been overseas, but I had the fortunate experience from that family of discovering a different culture of music and food. Each year my friend's Uncle would send her a compilation c.d. that featured all of the chart toppers and hits from the UK- think "Now That's What I Call Music!", but British. I always found the music fascinating because for the most part it is totally different than what US music fans are used to; sure there would be songs from American artists, but a good majority of the music was totally foreign to me.
I don't have to talk up the UK in terms of music because their roster of artists speaks for itself. Since the British invasion in the early 1960's, Americans have been entertained by European artists for nearly fifty years. Artists such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Dave Clark Five opened up the flood gates of creativity and the music has continued to inspire generations over and over again. Most recently artists such as Prodigy, Coldplay, and Radiohead have dominated the airwaves.
Of course there has been a string of quirky one hit wonders over the years that music fans can not get enough of with bands such as Bow Wow Wow and A Flock of Seagulls making the list. One such artist, Rick Astley had a popular hit in 1987 with 'Never Gonna Give You Up'. Does that name sound familiar? It should! Rick Astley was centered around the popular youtube phenomenon 'Rick Roll'd' which began in the spring of 2008 and is still unexpectantley popular . Explaining the concept of 'Rick Roll'd' is a hard to task if it hasn't been experienced first hand, but I will try my best. The most popular method of Rick Roll'ing was to do it through email or by posting a myspace bulletin. The body of the email would usually discuss a serious subject matter where the writer would then prompt the reader to click on a link to read more about the issue discussed. For example, I once received an email that appeared to be from the Houston SPCA asking for donations that would go toward new cages and food. When I clicked on the link titled donations this is what appeared.
So you may be asking yourself what the point of all this is. Why do people find this so funny? Why after all these years has Rick Astley re-gained popularity and notoriety? I'd like to think I could help with this dilemma, but unfortunately for the rest of us it gets much, much more weird.
This past Friday, November 7th the MTV Europe Music Awards named Rick Astley 'Best Act Ever'.
"The singer, who has been the theme of online prank "Rickrolling"--where purportedly serious links actually take users to YouTube clips of the singer's videos--beat the likes of Green Day and U2 to claim the most votes from viewers."
Funny how a prank such as this can resurrect a person from obscurity. Rick Astley himself finds the internet sensation hard to get over.
“If this had happened around some kind of rock song, with a lyric that really meant something -- a Bruce Springsteen, "God bless America" ... or an anti-something kind of song, I could kind of understand that,” Astley said. “But for something as, and I don’t mean to belittle it, because I still think it’s a great pop song, but it’s a pop song; do you know what I mean? It doesn’t have any kind of weight behind it, as such. But maybe that’s the irony of it.”Alas, long live Rick Roll'd.
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