Rick Astley will always be grateful for his smash hit single Never Gonna Give You Up – and he has come to terms with the fact it’ll be the track he’ll always be remembered for.
The 59-year-old singer topped the charts all over the world with the 1987 song, which was written and produced by legendary pop trio Stock Aitken Waterman and included on his 15 million copies selling debut LP Whenever You Need Somebody.
Almost 40 years later, Never Gonna Give You Up remains a constant on the radio and online thanks to the Rickrolling internet meme, but Rick is fine with it and thankful to have had a hit that has endured for so long.
In an interview with the new issue of Classic Pop magazine, he said: “I mean, God bless that song. From the first time that Mike Stock sang it to me, I knew it was a banger. I’ve always felt that song’s got stardust on it. I’ve always felt that song’s got fairydust on it. I’ve never been embarrassed by it. But it was also strange, that record being so big [straight] off the bat. I never had the opportunity to go, ‘What’s going on?’ I went from never having been on TV to being on TV every day, travelling all over the world.”
Although he has accepted that Never Gonna Give You Up is the song that will define his career, Rick does wish that some of his other hits got a little bit of love.
He added: “I’m painfully aware that this song, that I did decades ago, is the thing that people are always going to remember me for, and I came to terms with that years ago. I just wish they’d always remember me for four or five other songs. Together Forever was also number one in the United States, but people never bring that one up.”
The Rickrolling phenomenon began in 2007 and peaked in 2008 with the surprise appearance of Rick’s music video pushing Never Gonna Give You Up to over a billion views on YouTube.
Rick was happy to embrace the Rickrolling phenomenon as he could see it was already huge and not going away.
He said: “It was happening anyway, you couldn’t stop it. So I thought, ‘Whatever, I’ll run with this.'”
A few years later, Rick released his first album, titled 50, for over 10 years.
The LP – which was released to mark his 50th birthday, hence the title – topped the Official UK Albums Chart and was the start of Rick’s career resurgence, something that felt like a “fairy tale” to him.
Astley – who wrote every song and played every instrument on the record – said: “I didn’t make it for a record label, or even to be heard, really. I was making it for me. So the fact it was so successful … it was kind of like a fairy tale.”