Rick Astley - Hold Me In Your Arms

Happy forty-sixth birthday today (February 6th) to Rick Astley.

After his best-selling 1987 debut album Whenever You Need Somebody (click here for my review of that one), the English pop singer stuck with producers Stock, Aiken and Waterman for his second disk, the 1988 release Hold Me in Your Arms. The record reached number 8 in his native UK, number 19 on the US Billboard Hot 200, and number 3 in both Canada and Germany. It has reached Platinum sales in both the UK and Canada.

Rick Astley - Whenever You Need Somebody

Born just shy of a year after I was, Rick Astley’s recording career took off after working with the famed English production team of Stock, Aiken and Waterman. Their formulaic approach of combining mainstream synth-pop with attractive singers brought them much success, and Rick’s 1987 debut album Whenever You Need Somebody was an example of that. The record went multi-platinum in the UK (where it went to number 1), the US (where it went to number 10) and Canada (where it went to number 2). It also produced five hit singles.