Astley never stops appreciating 'Never Gonna Give You Up'
NEW YORK (AP) — Rick Astley exiled himself from music for a good part of the last three decades, but he never really left pop's consciousness.
For one, hits like "Never Gonna Give You Up" and "It Would Take A Strong Strong Man," derided by critics as cheesy at the time, have endured.
[...] there's the whole rick-rolling phenomenon — when a promised link on a web site turns out instead to be an Astley video.
[...] his daughter helped him realize that it was cool — and that it helped boost his profile during his fallow years by keeping his boyish face in ours.
The album debuted at the top of the charts in his native United Kingdom, and when he performed his first U.S. shows in New York and Los Angeles over the summer, they sold out.
The still boyish-looking Astley recently sat down with The Associated Press to talk about life after his '80s pop success, rick-rolling and what music means to him now.
Astley: I'm not really in that camp, to be honest, because I had a long break from it, so it's not like I have been singing those tunes for 30 years.
When we play live and stuff, there is a part of me thinking, 'Great, we are going to finish "Never Gonna Give You Up," and I know every single person in this room or in this field knows that tune.'