“I didn't love the world of pop music, to be honest” Rick Astley says, “because what I dreamed it was and what I wanted it to be, it kind of wasn't.” Well, here’s to never giving up: 36 years after his first, biggest, and completely career-defining hit, 28 years after walking away from the industry, seven years after dipping a toe back in and getting a surprise number one album, Rick Astley is having one hell of a moment. He’s got a fresh perspective on pop stardom, a surprising side project or two, a killer set at one of the world’s biggest rock festivals, a closet full of gorgeous suits, and a new album Are We There Yet, out today. “It’s a lot more comfortable now,” he says, “and therefore I don’t want to stop it.” We’ve known each other for so long, us and him, but 2023 is finally Rick Astley’s year.
Astley is 57 now, still baby-faced, and hair very much still on point. He’s calling from his home in London, where his 31-year-old daughter is visiting him and her mother from Copenhagen: “She went to study there 12 years ago and just never came back,” he says. “She’s got some work in London at the moment, so she’s hanging out with us for a bit.” A few steps away from where Astley is standing is the studio he built in his garage, where he recorded his comeback album, 50, seven years ago. “I did it without a record label, just to see what I could do. I played all the instruments, wrote it, produced it, all of that. And then we took it to my old label just to see if they had any interest. And in the UK it went a bit nuts. We had a number one album, which to be honest, couldn't have been further from my expectations.”
Astley performs at the Prince’s Trust Rock Concert, US, 1988.
Astley’s expectations were different in 1987. On New Year’s Day of that year, Astley recorded “Never Gonna Give You Up” with British production team Stock Aitken Waterman, then riding a high from having produced Bananarama’s “Venus” and Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round.” But “Never Gonna Give You Up” is the track that solidified the Stock Aitken Waterman sound: the bouncing bass line, the sparkliest synths in town. It remains the team’s biggest success to date, hitting number one pretty much everywhere. It was huge for SAW, and it was hard on Astley. “Going to America and having a number one hit is a bit like, what the hell is going on? It's enough even to go to New York and L.A., but to go there and before you know anything about the country, they've seen you, they've heard you, they've got a grasp of what and who you are? That’s a lot to take on board as a 21 year old,” he admits. “I went in my shell a little bit.”
All the same, Astley and SAW had a huge couple of years together: “Together Forever,” and “It Would Take A Strong Strong Man,” of course, but don’t sleep on 1989’s “She Wants To Dance With Me.” Rick left SAW after their second album together, and managed one U.S. hit without them: 1991’s “Cry For Help.” Stardom still didn’t feel right. “I sold a lot of records, and it was the eighties, so I made some money that was life changing, but I just asked myself the question one day, do I really really want this?”
The answer was no. “I quit when I was 27,” he says. “Listen, I don’t think the record company was pleading with me to stay, but I thought: just walk out now while nobody’s looking. It was time to stop.” He adds: “I didn’t sing for about 15 years.”
That changed once his daughter was off to the Danish capital and he got a low-impact offer from a promoter: “‘Just go out and sing again. I'll set it up so that once you've done these gigs, you can shake hands and walk away if you don't want to do it.’” And the pressure to sing “Never Gonna Give You Up” was off: “He said, ‘you can sing anything you want. You don't even have to sing your old songs.’ So I went out and sang all my dad's favorite Frank Sinatra songs in tiny little places with a tiny little six-piece band.” Something inside clicked. “It said: well, listen, you can have fun with it. It's not like someone's making you do it. If you get an offer of a gig you want to do, maybe just say yes for a change.”
This year, Astley said yes to a couple of genuinely surprising things, including a prime daytime set at the Glastonbury Festival. Check it out: he looks great, he sounds great, he’s self-deprecating but he clearly came to slay. The guy has come out of his shell a bit.
Later that day, at that same festival, something even more surprising than a Rick Astley comeback: Rick Astley as the lead singer of a Smiths cover band. “As a 16 year old in Manchester, I fell in love with the Smiths. I loved their records, and it meant a lot that they were down the road from me.” A couple of years ago, he got together with British band Blossoms to play a few of their songs, as a goof. “They have a rehearsal room where they're from near Manchester, and I’d call in on them sometimes and we go for beers and jam on these songs.” He laughs. “These guys are younger than my daughter, but we get on like a house on fire. They weren't alive when those records were cut. How amazing is that, that a band can be so in love with something that made before they arrived on the planet?
What’s really amazing, after a couple solid decades of Morrissey popping off the worst possible takes about immigration and Brexit and more, is hearing those classic songs being sung by someone likable. Astley is more diplomatic: “It's a well turned phrase, but you have to separate the art from the artist. A lot of the great painters were not the nicest people in the world. Sometimes you just have to say what they produced was amazing, but I just don't want to know anything about their politics or their feelings about humanity because that's something else.” Still, going forward, I will gladly take my Smiths without the Morrissey, thank you.
A few weeks ago, Astley played the BBC Radio 2 in the Park Festival alongside another Stock Aitken Waterman discovery from 1987, Kylie Minogue. “I went and saw her backstage,” he says. “I'm looking at this woman who I've known a little bit, and I just have huge respect for her. Pop music is cruel. It’s like sport: There comes a time when someone taps you on the shoulder and says, You are done. You can't run that fast anymore. And maybe I'm in her corner because we came from Stock Aitken Waterman and her first thing was massive straight off the bat as well. But seeing her do what she's just done with ‘Padam Padam,’ it tickles me. It makes me laugh, to be honest, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I mean like: you go get ‘em.” They caught up backstage, and he paid tribute during his own set. “I had on a pretty fantastic suit that day, I will say. But I thought: right, I'm wearing a Kylie t-shirt under it.” Here he is that day, in that suit, in that shirt, singing Foo Fighters’ “Everlong,” because Rick Astley will do whatever the hell he wants these days.
Are We There Yet finds Astley with his still-surprisingly deep voice a little raspier, more lived-in, and much more relaxed. “I think there's a few things in this record that have got a bit of America in them.” It’s informed by the months he spent out on the road as part of New Kids on the Block’s 2022 Mixtape Tour with En Vogue and Salt n Pepa. “Spending all that time in America last year attuned my ears, if I'm brutally honest. I think it made me just think about a lot of records from my youth, people like Bill Withers and Al Green. Going to places like Nashville, Detroit, New Orleans, places I grew up with this mythical sort of feeling about, that are steeped in that soul music history.”
If he got in touch with his soul music roots on that New Kids Tour, he also learned a thing or two about making peace with your pop music past. “They’re all in,” he says of the group. “And the audience is all in, it’s like an American football game. It’s full on, they just throw themselves into that audience in a way that makes you think, well, they’re never coming back,” he laughs. “I used to look at their security and just say, 'good luck with that, guys.’”
Astley is playing a couple of dates at the Royal Albert Hall in London around the release of Are We There Yet, then off on a European tour next year. And then, who knows. “It doesn't matter with me. I can go and sing Smiths, I did two nights at Christmas at the Albert Hall singing swing songs last year. And I don't think people who came to those nights think, well, that's what Rick does. They still think “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and maybe some of the new ones, are what Rick does.” But he’s grateful his UK audiences have stayed with him. “I’m at a point now where, if I make a new record, I can actually play the new songs and everybody doesn’t go to the bathroom.”
Whatever he’s playing, as the above clips reveal, Astley will be looking sharp. “I feel better in a really nice suit, I can tell you that,” he says. “It feels like a suit of armor. I think my old songs feel a bit like that, to be honest.” He can relax a bit now, knowing he looks good, he sounds good, and that his audience will be psyched to hear “Never Gonna Give You Up” no matter what. “Now, listen: if I was super fit and had a Brad Pitt body, I'd probably just wear a t-shirt, but I'm not,” he smiles. “So I like to get some shoulder pads going.”
Stream a SAW playlist from Dave Holmes, below.
