There have probably been pop stars less likely than Rick Astley, the ninety-eight-pound crooner with the Charles Atlas voice, but offhand, it's hard to think of any. Though he still looked like the office boy he once was, there was no denying the power he radiated when applying his big baritone voice to the sinfully catchy melodies of dance numbers like "Never Gonna Give You Up" and "Together...

It's hard to take Rick Astley's musical emancipation seriously. Free, his third album and the first one recorded outside what his promotional bio calls "the Stock Aitken Waterman production compound" (i.e., the team that gave him back-to-back Number One disco hits in 1987), features a new Rick who has literally and figuratively let his pompadour down. Leaving Stock Aitken's stock rhythms behind in...