You have probably been Rickrolled, but there is a non-zero chance you don’t know what Rick Astley looks like:

His famous single actually spent five weeks at Number 1 on the charts before the label even made a video for it — scared that people would reject his look and thus the song — unheard of in the late ’80s, where the unabated influence of MTV was unavoidable.

The producers of the song, SAW (Stock Aitken Waterman), also admitted to subconsciously holding it back for the same reasons, taking their time before they presented the track to the label. They were trying different forms for the song, sending it to a number of different producers, trying to find a sound for the single that would harmonize with Astley’s look.

That is until one day someone was playing it in the production studio’s office and Pete Waterman, coming down the stairs, and Mike Stock, going up the stairs, heard the track beaming from one of the rooms and they both stopped in their tracks. “And we said, ‘Bloody hell.’ This sounds fantastic,” Stock related. “We heard it there at that moment and realized it was all hands to the pump. Let’s get it out there. Let’s not hold back.”

Stock, blind to visuals and acting from a state of autopilot, finally realized what he hand on his hands. His opinion on that experience is sagacious:

“We could often tell when we wrong, but you didn’t know when you were right a lot of the time.”

Mike Stock

---

Much of this anecdote comes from the fantastic Song Exploder podcast. Please consider listening!