Rick Astley reveals what he really thinks of Never Gonna Give You Up
We've all fallen back in love with the 1980s hit through Rickrolling, but Rick Astley himself doesn't seem so sure.
Rick Astley doesn't seem to like his most famous song very much. In a new interview, he described Never Gonna Give You Up — his signature track and 1980s chart success story — as a "s*** song".
The 58-year-old singer told The Sun that the joy of live music lies in its ability to elevate poor material into something special. Perhaps surprisingly, he included his own 1987 hit in that phenomenon.
He said: "Festivals – and Glastonbury particularly – have an almost magical ability to elevate s*** songs. It’s basically what happened with Never Gonna Give You Up. Suddenly you just find yourself singing along.”
Never Gonna Give You Up was a monster hit for Astley in the 80s, spending five weeks at the top of the UK Singles Chart. But it got a new lease of life in the 2000s thanks to the internet prank known as Rickrolling.
It became common practice in the early days of social media and online forums to deceive people by claiming to offer a useful link, only to actually direct them to the video for Never Gonna Give You Up.
Astley has been more than willing to lean in to this online phenomenon, interrupting the Cartoon Network float at the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with a performance of the song.
Astley is currently on tour with material from his 2023 album Are We There Yet?, having returned to music after his retirement in the 1990s. He has become increasingly prolific in the last decade, releasing three of his nine albums since 2016.
Watch: The infamous music video for Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up
The star confessed he's had some strange moments of fame, saying: "My most ridiculous moment of celebrity came when I was very high up a mountain in the Italian Alps and two nuns asked me to sign their bibles."
He bristles, though, at the idea of being called a "national treasure" saying that he thinks "it’s the end of my career" whenever he is given that label.
Read more:
