Rick Astley has no regrets about retiring at the age of 27 after achieving worldwide fame in the 1980s with his hit song ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’.
“I feel like if I hadn’t, I myself would have imploded,” the British-born singer tells Vidak For Congress, admitting his heart was “out of it” and it was time to move on. to go.
“The problem with pop music is,” he muses, “if you’re in the real pop world like I am, it’s every minute and every hour of every day or nothing.
“And there’s no in-between because everyone else does everything, so you have to do everything.”
The 56-year-old adds that there were always new faces coming through the door willing to do things he wasn’t.
“It was me when I started, but it wasn’t me in the end, so I just thought, I don’t like it enough.”
In 1987, Astley released the single “Never Gonna Give You Up” from his debut album. The song reached number 1 in 25 countries. Other hits followed, such as “Together Forever” and the album’s eponymous song, “Whenever You Need Somebody,” but by 1994 Astley had had enough. He spent the next few years raising his daughter, Emilie, with his wife Lene Bausager.
Around 2007, Astley became the subject of a viral internet meme known as rickrolling. Users click on a seemingly unrelated link only to be taken to Astley’s ubiquitous song, “Never Gonna Give You Up”, and are officially “Rickrolled” in doing so.
Astley is zen about the whole viral phenomenon showing no signs of abating.
“Obviously some people are sick and tired of the whole Rickrolling thing and everything related to it or me, but I think I just need to keep my distance from it a bit,” he explains. “Our daughter actually pointed that out to me. For fifteen years she said, ‘Look, remember it really has nothing to do with you.’”
He continues: “And I was kind of like, ‘What do you mean?’, and I didn’t understand what she was talking about and all she was trying to tell me was that it’s just a thing on the internet. Next week it’s something else, and okay, it’s been hanging around and it’s found its place on the internet, but she was absolutely right, once it’s on the internet, it’s not yours anymore.”
Astley is currently on tour supporting the Backstreet Boys, along with Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue.
“The amazing thing is, Backstreet Boys go through first, so by the time I actually get up there, the crowd is in full swing, so it’s a lot of fun,” he says. “It was just a really fun thing to do for the summer.”
“I said to the” [Backstreet Boys]one of the main reasons for saying yes to it was that I just wanted to get out there and have fun after COVID and just didn’t want to feel the pressure of what everyone else has been through…After what the world has been through in recent years, I think the priority is just having a good time,” he says.
The Backstreet Boys DNA tour will take place July 16 at the Northwell Health at New York’s Jones Beach Theater and July 17 at the Xfinity Theater in Hartford, Conn.