In the latest mission of his quest to milk the nostalgia of any group that has disposable income, Barry Manilow is releasing an all-covers album of songs from the 1980s next month. Manilow will take on “Careless Whisper,” “Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now),” “Islands In The Stream” (with Reba McEntire), and… “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Yes, that’s right: We’ve evolved as a society in such a way that even Barry Freakin’ Manilow has to pander to those people on the Internet who still think the phenomenon of “Rickrolling”–in which you make yourself laugh by surprising whoever you’re engaged in instant-messenger chatter with a link to a clip of Rick Astley singing his 1987 hit–is funny. You’d think that the man who sang on many a McDonald’s ad would deserve a break today, but I guess this is the time we live in. Anyway, it’s time to figure out how Manilow will fare against other people who have tried to hop on the Rickrolling bandwagon! I’ve placed five other covers of Astley’s signature track after the jump.
Proving once again that TV about the Internet is probably not the best programming direction for executives interested in keeping their jobs, Lily Allen’s MySpace-themed chat show–which featured Cuba Gooding Jr., a segment based around YouTube-sourced clips animals having sex, and Tay Zonday… More »
We all love internet memes. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t devote so much of our waking lives to cataloging lolcats or figuring out whether we’re currently saying “wau” or “waht.” But when one-note Web jokes escape from being trapped behind a laptop screen and into the pop cultural bloodstream, I start cringing. Case in point: atrocious crooner Tay Zonday, another sad case of an “Internet celebrity” who’s at best accepted that polite derision from America might be his only chance at stardom. Which was fine when he was being mocked/celebrated by cultural boils like Opie and Anthony and Jimmy Kimmel, far away from anywhere I’d be forced to pay attention. But now he’s decided to start intersecting with my day job, kicking off his music career by perfoming his first show in Minneapolis with internet faves Girl Talk and Dan Deacon: