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Rick Astley has explained why he didn’t take to Kylie Minogue in the 1980s.
The Never Gonna Give You Up hitmaker, 58, was asked in a recent interview about why he wrote in his memoir Never that he didn’t much like the sound of the Spinning Around icon, 56, before they met.
In the 1980s, both Rick and Kylie were signed to songwriting and producing trio Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), who were responsible for more than 100 top 40 hits in the UK alone.
Chatting to Australian presenter Sarah Grynberg on her podcast A Life of Greatness, Rick explained that he didn’t like the fact his record company was looking to a soapstar for success.
Kylie was a national treasure as Neighbours icon Charlene Robinson in Australia before she released a single, and she would go on to garner a huge obsessive UK fanbase that hasn’t wavered over the years.
Meanwhile Rick found success with his biggest record to date, Never Gonna Give You Up, in 1987 – the same year as Kylie’s breakout hit I Should Be So Lucky was written and released, also by SAW.
‘In your book, you mentioned that before you met her, you didn’t think so much of her,’ Australian podcast host Sarah pointed out, before asking him: ‘Why was that?’
‘It wasn’t her personally,’ Rick responded. ‘It was… It was the fact that the guys who had signed me wanted to work with, effectively, an actress soap star.’
‘I was like, hang on a moment you’re knocking it out the park at the moment, you could step up your game,’ he added.
‘This is nothing personal to Kylie or anyone who goes from acting to singing and vice versa.
‘I’m simply saying I was a bit baffled by it. If I was one of those three guys making those records I’d be looking for the biggest artist with the best voice I’d ever heard and make a record with them
‘Kylie can sing obviously, she’s had an amazing career and has turned into this national treasure.
‘Looking back it’s easy to see now, but it’s like if they said in this country, “Oh you know the man who plays the plumber in Coronation Street, we’re going to make a record with him.”‘
In his memoir, according to the Daily Mail, Nick writes: ‘They had a new artist, an Australian actress called Kylie Minogue.’
As per the outlet, he continues: ‘The soap opera she was in, Neighbours, was huge in Britain at the time, and she’d already released a single in, a cover of The Locomotion.’
‘My friend Mike Duffy had produced it very much in the style of SAW. He told me she was great, but I’ve got to be honest, when I first heard about her, I thought it was Mandy Smith all over again.
‘SAW making a record with someone because they were famous, without any thought as to whether they were a singer: “God, as if people don’t think they’re naff enough already now they’re making a record with a soap star”.’
While talking about SAW, Rick reflected that anyone who worked with them at that time pretty much ‘knew they were going to have a hit record’.
Elsewhere in the episode, Rick talked about his path to success.
Before Rick made it, he said he would run around making tea for the likes of Bananaram. However, when fame did come, it hit him in a flash.
‘My fame was very much overnight,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t gradual in anyway shape or form, it went from total obscurity to being all over the papers and on television every other night.’
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