Even in the ultra-competitive field of standout Glastonbury debut sets, Rick Astley’s first ever show on the Pyramid Stage was something else. After the epic march of the Star Wars theme got the show underway, the puckishly boyish 57-year-old bounded on stage with an impish charisma that complemented the seasoned soul of his voice.
The crowd-pleasers came thick-and-fast: the ‘80s classics Together Forever and Whenever You Need Somebody, fan favourites from his chart-topping 2016 album 50, and typically classy covers of Harry Styles’ As It Was and AC/DC’s Highway To Hell (with Rick doubling up on drums). By the time he brought the house down with - what else? - Never Gonna Give You Up - the modest Saturday lunchtime slot had become an unofficial second legend slot and the talk of the nation.
And he wasn’t done there. Later that day, he was back up on stage with Stockport indie band Blossoms (“They’re actually younger than my daughter!”) to tear through a celebratory, life-affirming set of classic songs by The Smiths. As The Guardian’s five-star review questioned, “What could be a greater RickRoll than the idea that Astley can so convincingly portray these dour anthems of self-loathing just as smoothly as he did Never Gonna Give You Up on the Pyramid hours prior?”
By the time the weekend was over, Rick had effectively conquered Glastonbury. Or in the words of Dermot O’Leary: “Up until today, people thought that Brinks-Mat was the biggest robbery in UK history, but that has just changed as Rick Astley has just stolen Glastonbury!”
Or, in short, it was proof that Rick Astley is back! No, scratch that. It was proof that Rick Astley is still here, still moving forward and always guaranteeing entertainment and joy on record, on stream, on radio and on stage. But now he's pushing to even greater musical heights.
As much will be evident in the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s upcoming ninth album Are We There Yet?. It’s the third record in a row which Astley has written, recorded, played and produced himself at home in suburban southwest London.
“More and more over the last few years,” he says, “I’ve realised: I like doing it all myself. And because for the last 25 years, I’ve always had gear or a little studio, I can’t help but go: that’s nice, but it needs a bit of this underneath it, so I’ll do that now… And then I’ve finished the track.”
It’s also the sound of him reflecting on, and building upon, the experiences – musical, emotional, epidemiological – he’s gone through in the five years since the release of 2018’s Beautiful Life. First, of course, there was the Covid of it all. Astley began writing some of the new songs in 2020, but left them purposefully unfinished until such a time as when he could realistically play them live again.
One composition, a simple, unadorned piano ballad called Blue Sky is “very much a Covid one, although I have tweaked the lyrics a bit recently. The initial feeling was that time in lockdown when we could really hear the birds singing and how we’re normally oblivious to how wonderful that is. It just felt like the birds were ruling! So that’s just me on the piano, a ballad, really naïve, really simple.”
Other new songs speak, more generally, to the invigoration that Astley has rejoiced not only via his unforeseen partnership with Blossoms, but throughout the remarkable resurgence he has enjoyed over the course of the past seven years. Finally, also coming to bear on the new album are the kaleidoscopic stimuli Astley was immersed in for five months last year.
“We went on a tour of America with New Kids On The Block, Salt ‘N’ Pepa and En Vogue,” he begins of an all-star concert series titled Mixtape 2022. “I think New Kids started before I did, when they really were kids. And they’re still massive! We did 56 shows all over America, sold-out arenas, it was full-on pop, and it was mad. I’m not saying that’s influenced the music exactly. But there were more than a few moments where my wife Lene and I got off the bus and just stared at the longest road you’ve ever seen in your life.”
It was something he’d experienced before. Aged 22, in the first flush of his career, Astley hit those long roads himself, promoting his first album, trying to catch up with a success that was spreading like wildfire across the world.
“I have lots of photographs of me back in the day, at that age, wearing a white t-shirt, standing on roads just like that,” he marvels. They’re memories that he revisited as he prepared for the release of a remixed deluxe edition of 1988’s second album, Hold Me In Your Arms. “I can listen now to those songs that I wrote and think: yeah, that’s a kid trying his best,” he reflects. “A young guy, working out what songwriting is.”
Those experiences, distant and recent, of heartland America – nudging up against a lifelong love of US soul stalwarts Bill Withers, Al Green and Marvin Gaye (this is a man who’s made a pilgrimage to Muscle Shoals) – can’t help but have percolated into his new album, too, and in particular its first single, Dippin My Feet
“That song is not Americana, but the tag-line at the start of the chorus is: ‘Dippin my feet in the Mississippi River…’ It’s definitely not country, but I’ve never twanged a guitar as much as I have in the past couple of months. And there’s a bit more emotion with those guitar parts. I just think spending five months in America has retuned my ear a little bit.”
Anticipation for the release of Are We There Yet? was amplified by the release of the follow-up single, Never Gonna Stop. A towering R&B ballad, the track proves that Astley’s sumptuous voice continues to grow in stature. It underlined the excitement among fans for a new chapter in his story as it quickly amassed over 3 million views at YouTube, and still continues to grow.
The dedication to still mastering his craft with his new material is evidence that Astley is very much in his happy place. Over three decades into his blockbuster musical career, the British singer and songwriter is still beloved by audiences, performing internationally with everyone from a-ha to Foo Fighters. Winning over fresh fans – touring with Take That in 2019, he played to audiences of more than 500,000. Taking over new platforms: 3 million TikTok followers don’t lie. Having new hits – his entirely self-written and self-produced album 50 was a UK Number One that sold 400,000 copies. Accidentally “inventing” global cultural phenomena – Rickrolling, anyone? And how’s your “Astley Shuffle”, as immortalised in an already iconic Fortnite emote?
Indeed, arguably Astley is more prominent in popular culture now than he ever was. Witness the outpouring of emotion across social media after the appearance of Never Gonna Give You Up in a 2021 episode of Ted Lasso. Even Astley was initially at a loss for words to describe the impact of his signature song’s use in a heartbreaking funeral scene in Apple TV+’s much loved, multiple-award-winning comedy.
“It’s taken a little while for me to process what I think about the latest episode of Ted Lasso,” he tweeted in a video. “I’m a massive fan of the show, and I was just completely blown away with what they did with that song. I have to say to Hannah Waddingham — Emmy Award-winning Hannah Waddingham — you did an amazing, incredible job. It was so emotional, so moving, so incredible. People have said they even cried [during] the church scene, I don’t want to give too much away, but... just amazing, thank you very much for including that song in your beautiful show… I’m blown away. Just fantastic.”
That accolade came shortly after another landmark moment. In summer 2021, around the 34th anniversary of its release, Never Gonna Give You Up hit one billion views on YouTube. Astley’s debut solo single, a Number One in 25 countries in 1987, joined an elite club of all-time musical classics from the pre-internet age that have reached that landmark.
But Astley has never been one to rest on his laurels. In 2020, for example, his homemade lockdown videos amassed 10.3 million views on YouTube. That year’s festive single Love This Christmas has to date been streamed almost six million times on Spotify. His single Everyone of Us was released in partnership with the BBC and Children in Need, to raise funds and awareness in the first year of the pandemic.
“There were an awful lot of people doing things in the background who were never going to get any credit for it,” he reflects of that first year of lockdowns and medical emergencies. “And obviously, thankfully, the NHS has been recognised a bit. But as far as I’m concerned, people who work in that world need to be paid more and looked after better.”
That straight-talking honesty, drive and commitment are Astley all over. They’re qualities that explain, in part, the enthusiastic engagement of his fanbase – and, in turn, the work ethic and passion he puts back in.
As if that wasn’t enough: Astley also launched Bub Club. Developed with Jacqui and Kevin Hughes, the YouTube channel for preschoolers shows animations filled with original music, together with new enhanced versions of classic nursery rhymes and songs. Astley is also co-writing and co-producing new songs for Bub Club, including the Wiggle Waggle Dance. Finally, The Astley Shuffle has a rival… There’s more to come from Bub Club too, in the shape of new music and a series of books.
Meanwhile, Astley hasn’t forgotten the adults: he is a partner in the London outposts of Danish brewpub and restaurant business Mikkeller. Skål! (That’s Danish for cheers.) (You knew that.)
All that said… Still, for sure, it’s incorrect to say that Ricky Astley never went away. In 1993 he did effectively retire, at the ripe young age of 27. By then he’d had six intense years of musical success and the attendant fame. It takes a big talent to achieve so much in so little time. It takes an even bigger character to walk away from it all at such a tender age. But Astley did exactly that, retreating to the quiet of family life for just as long as he needed it – the best part of a decade, as it turned out.
The artist from the small town of Newton-Le-Willows in Lancashire recalls how he began his touring life after the release of second album, 1988’s Hold Me in Your Arms – but only because he insisted. Such had been the out-of-the-box success of Never Gonna Give You Up, he’d spent almost two years constantly doing radio and TV promotion, chasing his chart-topping success all around the world. There was literally no time for proper gigging. And, as a brand new artist – albeit one with two American Number One singles straight off the bat (Never Gonna Give You Up and Together Forever) – Astley barely had time to draw breath, let alone question anything.
Nonetheless, he wasn’t going to take anything for granted.
“Music saved my life, really,” he says. “My mum and dad had a horrible break up when I was very young. It was quite traumatic, if I’m honest. Singing got me out of the house, it got me into a choir, then it got me into a band and finally got me out into the world. It’s put me in so many amazing places, it’s ridiculous, just because as a kid I found I had a voice.”
He’d been raised by his older siblings on an eclectic mix of prog rock, classic rock, indie rock and Northern Soul. Forming bands in his teens, drumming and later singing, he toured the northern club circuit. An unknown kid with a big voice, he was talent spotted at 19 by legendary 1980s hit makers Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Famously, he worked in their South London studio for a year as a tea boy, watching the songwriters, engineers and producers, learning the ropes and honing his craft before, eventually, getting a shot at recording a single of his own.
And the rest, as they say, was hysteria, for two years at least.
“But when it got to 1989, I literally said: ‘I’m going out and playing live,’” says Astley. “And everyone around me was like: ‘Oh, really, do you have to?’ I said: ‘YES!’” he remembers, laughing. “That was important to me because that was how I’d started out as a kid, playing pubs and clubs and under-age discos around the north of England. That’s how everybody I knew started.”
It was also a case of proving something. As he paraphrases now his argument back then was: “I can sing, you know? I know I’ve got that hair and I shuffle about a bit. But I’m a singer. That’s what I do. The reason somebody signed me was ’cause I’ve got a voice – and I want to use it.”
“And it just seemed ridiculous,” he says now, “for me not to. Also, I’d been in America a lot, and whenever I did the big TV shows there, I’d play live with their house band. I’d turn up, they’d have learned my tune, it’d sound amazing. Then you’d go on the cameras in front of America – or, a lot of people, anyway – and sing your songs, feeling like: ‘Yeah, this is what I should be doing.’”
Still, for all his 100 percent commitment to his music and craft, Astley never takes himself too seriously. What we might call the disruptive online insurrection – or, alternatively, “a prank” – that is Rickrolling “is weird,” he acknowledges. “Obviously I’m super-aware of it, because I can’t not be – every friend I’ve got, wherever they are in the world, they go: ‘Have you seen this?’ So it’s just a bit mad.
“And I don’t know how other artists would react to that happening to their biggest song. Because I’m not kidding, it is absolutely ridiculous! Now everybody knows that song, from the age of four or five, up to, well, close to death. It was a popular enough tune in its day, a Number One right round the world, and I think it stood the test of time. But with Rickrolling,” he marvels, “it’s gone to another level.”
And as the success of his recent record releases has proven, his fanbase are as fired up by his new music as they are by his classics – as anyone lucky enough to have caught him last summer on that blockbuster pop-package tour of the US will know.
More recently, in December 2022, Astley performed three very special big band shows, one at the Liverpool Philharmonic and two at London’s prestigious Royal Albert Hall, where he performed swing and festive classics. These exclusive shows had a fantastic reaction and saw Astley in stunning historic venues synonymous with big band performances.
While Rick Astley taps into the best kind of nostalgia, he’s also also focused on what’s next, what’s up around the bend, what lies over the brow of the hill. Those thoughts inspired the upcoming album’s title. “I was looking at some of those old pictures of me by the side of the road in America. And I just had this thought: Are We There Yet?”
“Now, that phrase has multiple meanings,” he expands. “Are we there yet in my musical ambitions? Am I done with my career? Have we arrived? Or are we still travelling?”
In some ways we know where Astley is heading next: Are We There Yet? Is firmly on course to catapult him back in the Top 10 of the UK album charts for the seventh time in his career. He will follow its release by playing two rapidly sold-out Royal Albert Hall shows in November, before he embarks upon a wider UK tour in 2024 that culminates with a 21,000 capacity homecoming at Manchester’s AO Arena.
Yet consistent unpredictability has been a hallmark of his entire career. Who would’ve guessed that the studio tea boy would quickly become one of the world’s biggest stars? Who could have foreseen his initial retirement at such a young age? And let’s be honest: even when he first returned back in 2000, did anyone predict he’d be just as beloved in 2023 as he was in the 1980s?
So the journey ahead may well find the time for further detours with Blossoms or another pitstop for big band shows. But just as intriguing, Rick Astley’s story so far has been full of fascinating side quests that no-one saw coming. So watch this space - and also that space a little way down the road.
