Rick Astley "Together Forever"

Imagine retiring at the ripe age of 27. That's exactly what Rick Astley did in 1994. The eternally baby-faced Astley was just 19 years old when his first hit, "Never Gonna Give You Up", topped the charts in 1987. Over the next five years, he charted eight Top 10 hits in the UK with five in the United States, and he needed a break. Astley stepped out of the public eye, raised his daughter and lived a relatively "normal" life for the first time. He later released a couple of albums in the 2000s and then there was the whole Rick-rolling thing, but it was a chance encounter with Dave Grohl that re-introduced him to the world in 2017. The two met briefly at a music festival in Japan before Grohl brought Astley on stage and launched into a version of "Never Gonna Give You Up" in the style of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". The crowd went nuts and now the 52 year-old Astley is hitting the road again for his first world tour since the 1990s. He's playing Chicago's House of Blues on April 26th.

Celine Dion - "To Love You More" (redux)

(this is the first repeat song...and it's for a bittersweet reason...)

A couple years before this song was released to Adult Contemporary radio stations, it aired exclusively in Japan and on Adult Contemporary-powerhouse WLIT-FM in Chicago.  It was 1996 and Celine's career was sizzling,  WLIT seized this opportunity to play a rare commodity that no other Adult Contemporary radio station had.  It was the pre-MP3 era and the only way you could hear this song was to tape the song off the radio.  I lucked out one afternoon and remember hearing afternoon host Megan Reed's voice come on after the song.  Megan was one of the crown jewels at WLIT during the station's era of dominance in Chicago.  No voice was more synonymous with WLIT than Meg's as she regularly sat atop the ratings.  My high school used to play the radio quietly over its intercom system so it was common to hear the station if I was walking the hallways during class.  Hearing Meg's voice meant it was just about time for school to be over and for me to go home (her shift usually started at 2pm).  

In 2005, Megan joined the station where I was working.  I trained her and helped get her acclimated to the station.  We quickly formed a friendship and bond that extended well beyond just being co-workers.  Megan had an extraordinary knack for saying something so incredibly witty and funny right out of the blue.  We joked that about this and she seemed to thrive on the challenge to "wow" me when I least expected it.

Megan took a vested interest in my personal life often talking to me about relationships.  "Relationships are actually not hard," she told me one afternoon.  "Relationships are not hard when you're with the right person."  Those words stuck with me.

After enduring months of serious back pain in 2014, Megan's doctors discovered that the back pain was actually cancer.  With that prognosis, she left us in September of that year to begin a tough battle against brain and breast cancer.  We kept in touch via email and text message.  Then in April of 2015, Meg returned to the radio station finally healthy enough to join us for a lunch in her honor.  We all shared stories and gave her suggestions for TV shows to watch on Netflix because she spent a lot of time in bed recovering from her many treatments.  Her health took a turn for the worse at the end of 2015 and the news that we had all been dreading for months was delivered on February 14, 2016.  Megan was no longer in pain and joined God at the great big radio station in the sky.

In a business filled with egos, narcissism, and nut jobs, Megan was a breath of fresh air.  With a personality that sparkled both on and off the air, Megan was a treasure.  She was my friend, one of my biggest fans, and a person whose absence has left a giant void.  We were all lucky to spend our middays with Megan and she will be missed dearly...