1 smash Never Gonna Give You Up.
Never Gonna Give You Up just doesnt want to go away.
No one was as surprised by the phenomenon as Astley himself.
Credit: Shirlaine Forrest/Getty Images
A friend Rickrolled me a couple of times, he recalls.
In the end, I emailed him back, saying, What the hell are you doing?
I didnt have a clue.
Yeah, it was pretty weird!
Rickrolling doesnt seem to have hurt Astleys career.
In fact, its only helped.
Now, after 23 years away, hes returning with anew album,50.
And the world seems happy hes resurfaced: The collection debuted at No.
1 in the U.K. this summer and will be released in the U.S. on Oct. 7.
My feeling has been, I can actually look back and say, Well, thats what I did.
I didnt buy an open-top car and get a second wife.
The record is a personal one for Astley.
A drummer since childhood, he wrote all the tracks and played every instrument himself.
And lyrically, hes opening up about his private life like never before.
On the anthemic Keep Singing, Astley reflects on his unhappy upbringing in the English village of Newton-le-Willows.
My parents divorced when I was very young, he says.
They also had a son who died of meningitis before I was born.
So theres some pretty dark clouds floating around.
Music was an escape for Astley, who sang in the church choir and took parts in school plays.
Anything, he says, that got me in a situation where I wasnt thinking about any of that.
Those early experiences performing led to getting discovered.
(Astley married Bausager, his current manager, in 2013.)
The experience was transformative.
I remember thinking, This is a doddle!
We do covers because I like doing it.
It reminds me of being a kid, says Astley.
