12 March 1988
If anyone was “robbed” by the Pet Shop Boys of the 1987 UK Christmas number one, it wasn’t The Pogues. The ante-post favourite was actually Rick Astley’s version of ‘When I Fall In Love’, and it duly looked like romping home in the sales race. However, on the Christmas run-in Nat King Cole’s original was re-released, which drew enough floating punters away from the inferior Rick Astley version to allow the Pet Shop Boys to come through on the rails and nab the prize. I pause to note that Nat King Cole’s 1987 re-release in the UK was by EMI, the parent company of the Pet Shop Boys’ label Parlophone. No one cried any tears for Rick; it was seen as one in the eye for Stock, Aitken and Waterman, a rage against the SAW machine’s hubris and cynicism.
‘Together Forever’, Rick Astley’s first release after the Christmas number one episode, illustrates why that animosity towards SAW was fully, fully deserved. It’s a desperately cynical affair: the fourth single off his debut album, effectively a re-write of ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ but with blander lyrics, crappier synths and a cheap, irritating chorus hook. Astley was SAW’s biggest star at that point, yet this was the low standard of product they had him hawking to the kids, safe in the knowledge that it would be a hit regardless. Tellingly, ‘Together Forever’, while a number one in Ireland and the US, stalled at number two in the UK behind ‘I Should Be So Lucky’; Rick Astley would toil with Stock, Aitken and Waterman for another album but from now on their focus was Project Kylie.
