Rick Astley

Do you know this guy in the photo? The question is who did not at the end of the 1980's. They'd thought you were an alien if you didn't. I still have a couple of his LPs or tapes! somewhere.

If I ask any of my teenage students who he is, I swear none of them would know. My father always said that music is never out of fashion. I didn' belive him. When I was sixteen, it was a matter of life or death to know Rick Astley's song lyrics off by heart.

There weren't computers or mobile phones around us at that time. This guy's life changed as he became famous and mine also did, as I grew older. I forgot about him and music in general and became a fan of computers instead. A few days ago, only by chance, I found out that his Never gonna give you up song video was linked to millions of internauts as part of an All Fool's Day joke in 2008. As a consequence of that, he is becoming famous again! Well, that's great, I'm not that old anymore.

To switch to the topic I wanted to talk about from the beginning of this post, when I bring songs to class. I mean, when I'm back to future and get an MP3 copy of my favourite songs and read the lyrics with them (once I have previously found them in Internet), they stare at me as though they did not know what I am talking about. I have to make a very thorough and extensive introduction if I want to play something by The Police or Genesis. Not so If I'm dealing with Madonna or Michael Jackson (R.I.P.) as, one reason or the other, they are still on newspares headlines, TV shows or the Internet.

We all know, or we reach this conclusion as we grow older, that music is a business as any other. It has its own advertising process and music producers look for a target audience. All in all, song themes, situations, places and words are endlessly
repeated by different artists at different times.

I think the right thing to do is a combination of both: old (did I say old?) songs as they are part of our western culture and history and brand new songs by Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Jessie J or Adele (Wow, they are all women!). I confess it's going to be hard to forget about pieces of paper with gaps or errors on them; the typical hand out you keep in a filthy cardboard folder and switch to computers as (to begin with) we'll be contributing to save the environment.

I hope I'll be still alive in ten years from now. What will my students think of my favourite songs? They'll probably think to themselves: "Where's this man come out from? His music is ancient!" I'll be making history and,.....What about MP3 players? Will they still be of any use? At least I hope I can keep my blog or otherwise, I am wasting my time.

I have a little surprise for you. Here is an exercises to practice your English.