It was an iso­lat­ing exis­tence, being a Rick Ast­ley fan at the turn of the mil­len­ni­um. I was in high school at the time, and it was on a week­end-morn­ing cable-TV binge that I hap­pened first to hear his music — albeit just a few sec­onds of it — on a com­mer­cial for one of those order-by-phone nos­tal­gia com­pi­la­tions. Intrigued by the con­trast of the unabashed nine­teen-eight­ies pro­duc­tion, equal­ly ener­getic and syn­thet­ic, against Ast­ley’s pow­er­ful, unusu­al­ly tex­tured voice, I went straight to Audio­Galaxy for the MP3. Even before I’d heard its whole three and a half min­utes, I was hooked. The song of which I speak is, of course, “Togeth­er For­ev­er.” 

You’ve got to remem­ber that, two decades ago, Ast­ley’s debut sin­gle “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” had­n’t yet racked up a bil­lion views on Youtube. Nor could you even find it on Youtube; nor, come to that, could you find any­thing on Youtube, since it did­n’t exist. It was then quite easy to be unaware of the song, and indeed of Ast­ley him­self, giv­en that he’d burnt out and retired from the music busi­ness in the mid-nine­teen-nineties. If you’d heard of him, you might well have writ­ten him off as an eight­ies flash-in-the-pan. (Yet to be res­ur­rect­ed by the retro gods, the aes­thet­ics of that decade were still at their nadir of fash­ion­abil­i­ty.) But in its day, “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” was a pop phe­nom­e­non of rare dis­tinc­tion.

The short Vice doc­u­men­tary above recounts how Ast­ley became an overnight sen­sa­tion, bring­ing in the singer him­self as well as his orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion team: Mike Stock, Matt Aitken, and Pete Water­man, the trio who cre­at­ed the sound of British eight­ies pop. It was while play­ing with a band in his small north­ern home­town that Ast­ley caught Stock Aitken Water­man’s ear, and soon there­after he found him­self work­ing as a “tea boy” in their Lon­don stu­dio. At that time he lived at Water­man’s home, and after over­hear­ing the lat­ter scream­ing at his girl­friend through his giant eight­ies phone, he made a fate­ful remark: “You’re nev­er gonna give her up, are you?”

From there, “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” seems prac­ti­cal­ly to have writ­ten itself, though its pro­duc­ers admit to hav­ing ill sensed its poten­tial dur­ing record­ing. Shelved for a time, the song was final­ly includ­ed on a mag­a­zine mix tape, at which point it went the eight­ies equiv­a­lent of viral: air­play on the inde­pen­dent Cap­i­tal Lon­don soon crossed over to a vari­ety of main­stream radio for­mats. “They had­n’t got a clue that he was a white guy,” says Water­man, nor, as Ast­ley him­self adds, that he “looked about eleven years old.” All was soon revealed by the music video — then still a nov­el form — hasti­ly and some­what ama­teur­ish­ly pro­duced in the wake of the sin­gle’s chart-top­ping suc­cess.

These not-unap­peal­ing incon­gruities inspired one of my fel­low Mil­len­ni­als, a young enlist­ed man named Sean Cot­ter, to relaunch Ast­ley’s hit into the zeit­geist in 2007. “I imme­di­ate­ly knew I want­ed to make this thing into a meme,” he says, and so he invent­ed “rick­rolling,” the prank of send­ing an unre­lat­ed-look­ing link that actu­al­ly leads to the “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” video. Despite orig­i­nat­ing in a spir­it of mock­ery, it enabled the come­back Ast­ley had been ten­ta­tive­ly attempt­ing in the pre­ced­ing years. Today, at a dis­tance from the eight­ies and the two-thou­sands alike, we can final­ly hear “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” for what it is: an inspired work of pop songcraft that reflects the dis­tinc­tive appeal of both its era and its per­former — or as Ast­ley puts it, “a bloody hit, man.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

The Ulti­mate 80s Med­ley: A Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Per­for­mance of A‑Ha, Tears for Fears, Depeche Mode, Peter Gabriel, Van Halen & More

Is the Viral “Red Dress” Music Video a Soci­o­log­i­cal Exper­i­ment? Per­for­mance Art? Or Some­thing Else?

Rick Ast­ley Sings an Unex­pect­ed­ly Enchant­i­ng Cov­er of the Foo Fight­ers’ “Ever­long”

Stu­dent Rick­rolls Teacher By Sneak­ing Rick Ast­ley Lyrics into Quan­tum Physics Paper

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

In the annals of mod­ern pop­u­lar music, one does not find a sur­feit of flautists. Tim Weis­berg, in part­ner­ship with singer-song­writer Dan Fogel­berg, did score a mod­est his or two in the sev­en­ties. More incon­gru­ous­ly, Jethro Tul­l’s Ian Ander­son set his band apart with his deci­sion to take up the flute not long before their ear­li­est per­for­mances. But today, out­side the realm of orches­tral music, there is sure­ly no high­er-pro­file flautist than Liz­zo. Though best known as a pop singer, she con­tin­ues to put to use the flute skills she honed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, with­out which she would­n’t have been able to han­dle a pre­cious piece of Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

Last month, writes the Library of Con­gress’ April Slay­ton, one of that insti­tu­tion’s librar­i­ans Car­la Hay­den “saw that the one and only Liz­zo was com­ing to D.C. for a con­cert.” Giv­en that “the Library has the world’s largest flute col­lec­tion,” Hay­den took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to point out that fact to the pop star on Twit­ter. “One of about 1,700 flutes in the col­lec­tion, she teased, is the crys­tal flute made for Pres­i­dent James Madi­son by Claude Lau­rent — a price­less instru­ment that Dol­ley Madi­son res­cued from the White House in April 1814 as the British entered Wash­ing­ton, DC dur­ing the War of 1812.. Might she want to drop by and play a few bars?”

Indeed she did, with results you can see in the video above: at the Library itself, Liz­zo tries out one of the col­lec­tion’s many flutes; then she plays the crys­tal flute itself on onstage at Capi­tol One Are­na, hav­ing been hand­ed it by the instru­men­t’s own secu­ri­ty detail. “It’s like play­ing out of a wine glass,” she tells her thrilled audi­ence. One won­ders if the com­par­i­son would ever have occurred to its first own­er: “It’s not clear if Madi­son did much with the flute oth­er than admire it,” Slay­ton writes, “but it became a fam­i­ly heir­loom and an arti­fact of the era.” Now it has become a unit­ing sym­bol of Amer­i­can cul­ture past and present: how­ev­er for­ward-look­ing the Found­ing Fathers were, we can safe­ly say they nev­er imag­ine twerk­ing.

The Library of Con­gress has post­ed pic­tures of Liz­zo’s vis­it on Flickr. See them here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

But­ter­fly Lands on Flutist’s Face Dur­ing Flute Com­pe­ti­tion: The Show Must Go On

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

Hear a 9,000 Year Old Flute — the World’s Old­est Playable Instru­ment — Get Played Again

The Flute of Shame: Dis­cov­er the Instrument/Device Used to Pub­licly Humil­i­ate Bad Musi­cians Dur­ing the Medieval Peri­od

The Library of Con­gress Makes 25 Mil­lion Records From Its Cat­a­log Free to Down­load

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Near­ly every Civ­il Rights icon becomes more of a sym­bol than a com­plex human being over time, a con­se­quence of iconog­ra­phy in gen­er­al. This has cer­tain­ly been the case with opera singer Mar­i­an Ander­son. “If Amer­i­cans know one fact about the leg­endary African-Amer­i­can con­tral­to Mar­i­an Ander­son,” Kira Thur­man writes at The New York­er, “it’s that she sang in defi­ance on the steps of the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al, in 1939.”

We prob­a­bly also know that Ander­son took to the steps of the mon­u­ment again in 1963 to sing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” before Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.‘s “I Have a Dream Speech” at the March on Wash­ing­ton. In her offi­cial por­trait at the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery, she stands regal­ly before the Lin­coln Memo­ri­al’s columns in her fur coat, gaz­ing res­olute­ly into the mid­dle dis­tance, her hair gray with age and wis­dom. It’s the defin­ing image of an artist whose defi­ance has come to over­shad­ow her art.

The image is an undoubt­ed­ly pow­er­ful one, a key moment in the seem­ing­ly unend­ing strug­gle for jus­tice in the Unit­ed States, as well as “one of the most impor­tant musi­cal events of the 20th cen­tu­ry,” Anas­ta­sia Tsioul­cas writes at NPR. Ander­son “had nev­er faced such an enor­mous crowd” — 75,000 peo­ple of all races and back­grounds. “She was ter­ri­fied,” and lat­er wrote, “I could not run away from this sit­u­a­tion. If I had any­thing to offer, I would have to do so now.” She may have con­fessed to stage fright that day, but some char­ac­ter­i­za­tions do not do jus­tice to her pro­fes­sion­al­ism. Ander­son did not fear crowds or big­otry.

When she sang at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al, Ander­son was 42 years old and very much an inter­na­tion­al star. Four years ear­li­er, she had returned from Europe “as one of the most revered peo­ple on the plan­et” and per­formed at the White House for Eleanor Roo­sevelt. It was Roo­sevelt who arranged the 1939 Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al con­cert — after resign­ing from the Daugh­ters of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion when the all-white group refused to rent the 4,000-seat Con­sti­tu­tion Hall to Howard Uni­ver­si­ty for their annu­al con­cert event for Ander­son.

Roo­sevelt had and would con­tin­ue to inter­vene in many such instances of racism, using her pow­er for demo­c­ra­t­ic good. Ander­son, while not an activist, was not new to musi­cal protest. In 1935, her appli­ca­tion to sing at the Salzburg Fes­ti­val in Aus­tria had been sim­i­lar­ly reject­ed, on the heels of a Nazi riot over Black bari­tone Aubrey Pankey’s per­for­mance in the city ear­li­er that year. “What Ander­son did next illus­trates a pat­tern of behav­ior that she would deploy as a weapon through­out her career,” Thur­man writes. “She showed up any­way.”

Ander­son held a small con­cert for a few devot­ed lis­ten­ers at Mozar­teum con­cert hall, then a few days lat­er in a hotel ball­room for “hun­dreds of elite musi­cians, who applaud­ed her act of defi­ance,” and shared in it them­selves. After this con­cert, famed con­duc­tor Arturo Toscani­ni met her back­stage and said, “What I heard today one is priv­i­leged to hear only once in a hun­dred years.” Ander­son, “became an inter­na­tion­al super­star overnight.” She built a rep­u­ta­tion through bold acts of defi­ance, but her great­est con­tri­bu­tions were always to music.

The “dig­ni­fied, sto­ic, mid­dle-aged Black woman” who appeared at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al was young once, writes Thur­man, and as much a sen­sa­tion in Europe as Josephine Bak­er. She’s been char­ac­ter­ized as “mod­est” and self-effac­ing, but she was also ambi­tious, an incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed child prodi­gy who knew she would find too many doors closed in the U.S. Like many Black artists of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, she became a con­fi­dent, cel­e­brat­ed ex-pat: “Walk­ing down Salzburg’s hilly cob­ble­stone streets dur­ing her first day in the Alpine city, in the sum­mer of 1925, Ander­son was trailed by a cadre of jour­nal­ists every­where she went.”

Ten years lat­er, Ander­son would find things very much changed in Europe, and find her­self feel­ing as alien­at­ed in for­mer­ly wel­com­ing Aus­tria as she had in her home coun­try. (She was mourned by her Aus­tri­an fans. One crit­ic wrote of her last per­for­mance, “[her] music makes those peo­ple hap­py who have not yet giv­en up their belief that all men are equal.”) By 1939, Ander­son was a vet­er­an not only of opera and music hall stages around the world, but of fac­ing up to racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion.

“A qui­et, hum­ble per­son,” writes NPR’s Susan Stam­berg, “Ander­son often used ‘we’ when speak­ing about her­self,” refer­ring to the “many peo­ple whom we will nev­er know,” she once said, but who make our lives pos­si­ble. In the first song she sang at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al, “My Coun­try, ‘Tis of Thee,” she changed the words of the third line from “of thee I sing” to “to thee we sing,” a move that “can be heard as an embrace, imply­ing com­mu­ni­ty and group respon­si­bil­i­ty.” It could also imply Ander­son­’s con­scious­ness of her­self and her com­mu­ni­ty as mar­gin­al­ized out­siders in the coun­try of their birth, or her sense of her­self as address­ing an inte­grat­ed nation in that chilly, Novem­ber out­door crowd.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music Puts Online 70,000 Objects Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of the Per­form­ing Arts: Down­load Play­bills, Posters & More

Hear the High­est Note Sung in the 137-Year His­to­ry of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera

Hear Singers from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera Record Their Voic­es on Tra­di­tion­al Wax Cylin­ders

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness