RICK ’N’ ROLL

Astley revisits career-making song with ‘gratitude’

How does Rick Astley handle one of his songs being part of the biggest internet meme of all time? He rolls with it, obviously.

“Listen, let’s face it, Never Gonna Give You Up has sort of become something else,” he says. “The video and the song have drifted off into the ether and become something else, and I’m ever so grateful for it.”

That song turns 35 this year and is still very much alive, buoyed by a second chapter as a gentle joke wherein someone baits you with an enticing online link, which points instead to the video for this 1987 dance-pop smash. It’s called Rickrolling. Thirty-five years later, the 56-year-old, is singing it this summer on tour with New Kids on the Block, Salt-n-pepa and En Vogue for the 57-date The Mixtape Tour 2022. A remastered version of his 1987 debut album also has been released featuring, of course, Never Gonna Give You Up.

After blowing up in the late 1980s, he left show business frustrated and has only recently reemerged with the strong albums 50 in 2016 and Beautiful Life in 2018.

“Often the second act can be more enjoyable because you’re more in control and you savour every minute,” said Alistair Norbury, president of repertoire and marketing at BMG U.K., which signed Astley.

The passage of time — and the fact that Astley is such a sweet guy — has softened any sharpness. He says he understands how the past can look different with rose-coloured glasses. Rock stars have lately told him they love his voice.

“And I’m like, ‘Really? I thought you would have strung me up in the village square,” he says, laughing. “They probably would have done at the time, but I think over time, I think it just changes your perspective.”

Astley was in his early 20s while recording his debut, Whenever You Need Somebody, with the songwriting and record production trio known as Stock Aitken Waterman, who had crafted songs for Bananarama and Dead or Alive.

“I sold a lot of records. I was having a lot of hits, and then it was getting to a point where it’s like touch and go — how is this going to go now because you have to make another record?”

Burned out and frustrated, he walked away at 27. “I think I just didn’t have it in me. I just didn’t. I didn’t want to do it,” he says.

He admires pop stars such as Madonna and Kylie Minogue for their longevity. “I actually don’t know how they’ve done it.”

Being a pop star messes with your head and Astley says that happened to him, too. “I think my days were numbered anyway, but I think I just managed to get out before they threw me out, you know?” He didn’t perform for 15 years.

Unlike other pop stars, he hadn’t invested his ego in his looks or others’ perceptions. “I was never cool. I wasn’t cool when I had my hit records,” he says. Astley has nothing but compassion for those chewed up by the fame monster. “It must be unbelievably painful.”

Astley re-emerged from self-exile in 2016 with 50, named, with a hat-tip to Adele, for his age at the time, a strong album that veers from gospel to electro-funky.

Norbury recalls hearing the first few demos on the album and being impressed. He asked Astley’s manager who wrote them. The answer was “Rick Astley.” He asked who was the co-writer?” The answer was, “Nobody.” Who produced? “Rick.” Then who played all the instruments? “He played all the instruments.”

Rickrolling started in 2007 — at the infancy of Youtube — and it confused Astley at the beginning. His song and video for Never Gonna Give You Up were being used as part of an internet bait-andswitch, but what did it mean?

“I was overthinking it and worrying about it and wondering what it was. And our daughter said to me — she was about 15 at the time — she just kind of said, ‘You do realize it’s got nothing to do with you?’” She also predicted: “There’ll be something else next week or tomorrow.”

Time Out magazine was always a little puzzled by Rickrolling, asking why anyone wouldn’t want to hear the buoyant megajam, saying it is “three and a half of the most effervescent minutes in the ’80s canon.”

For Astley, it is the song that led him to Copenhagen, where he met his wife, Lene Bausager.

“At the time, I was like green with envy and felt totally insecure and all the rest of it. Now, when I walk out on a stage and sing those songs, I just kind of think, ‘Yeah, how lucky am I? Ain’t that great?’”