Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “take/taking.”

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I referenced this song last week in a post about another song by Rick Astley, and this week I get to use it – YES!

From his breakout 1987 debut album, Whenever You Need Somebody, It Would Take A Strong Strong Man was released in November of 1988. It was another successful single for Astley, reaching number one in Canada, number ten on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and number one for one week on the Hot Adult Contemporary chart. It was not released in the UK and most of Europe and I just do not get that! The album sold over fifteen million copies worldwide, and was the seventh bestselling in the UK for 1987–and lead to Astley receiving a nomination for Best New Artist at the 31st Grammy Awards. Why wasn’t this single released accordingly? I’ll never understand record companies.

In 2007, Astley became the subject of a viral Internet meme known as rickrolling. In this prank, Web users are tricked into seeing Rick Astley’s video “Never Gonna Give You Up” when they follow a link that claims to be something else. Views of this video on various websites are now in the hundreds of millions. The phenomenon became so popular that on April 1, 2008, YouTube pranked its users by making every single featured video on its front page a rickroll.

FUN FACTS about Rick Astley

• During the period between his debut release and his fifth single (It Would Take a Strong Strong Man), Astley outsold every other artist in the world.
• In the UK, he was in the Top 40 every week for the first 6 months of his career
• He met his wife, Lene, when she was working as a promoter with RCA in 1988
• A member of several bands early in his singing career, Rick had to overcome extreme shyness when he began his solo career.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for FeliciaDenise.com!

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.