UK singer Rick Astley has revealed his brutal first take on his old friend and rival, Australian pop princess Kylie Minogue.
The 58-year-old ’80s icon, reveals his decades-old bitterness towards Kylie in his new memoir, Never.
‘In your book, you mentioned that before you met her, you didn’t think so much of her,’ Australian podcast host Sarah Grynberg asked him on Tuesday. ‘Why was that?’
In the exclusive interview on the Life of Greatness podcast, the Never Gonna Give You Up crooner tried to backtrack on some of the ‘snooty’ remarks he made about Kylie in his book.
‘It wasn’t her personally,’ Rick said. ‘It was… It was the fact that the guys who had signed me wanted to work with, effectively, an actress soap star.’
The blue-eyed soul singer resented being put in the same musical basket as a young Kylie Minogue – who was at the time most famous for her role as Charlene Robinson on Neighbours.
On New Year’s Day 1987, a 19-year-old named Rick Astley recorded the song that would change — and finance — the rest of his life: the effervescent, synthesised ’80s classic Never Gonna Give You Up.
Three decades and plenty of subsequent songs later, it remains the hit that defines him.
Both Rick and Kylie were signed to English songwriting and producing trio Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), the British pop factory responsible for more than 100 top 40 hits in the UK alone.
That same year, SAW wrote and recorded a very similar hit with 18-year-old Kylie in just 40 minutes: I Should Be So Lucky.
The catchy melody and playful lyrics made the young Aussie an international pop superstar.
It’s a status the 56-year-old still holds today, as rides the wave of one of the greatest pop comebacks of our time with her 16th studio album, Tension, and its sequel.
‘They had a new artist, an Australian actress called Kylie Minogue,’ Rick writes in his memoir.
‘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”.’
In his podcast interview, Rick admitted he told the producers – ‘You could step up your game’ – when they invited Kylie out from Australia to record.
‘Why are you not maybe trying to aim higher?’ he recalled.
‘There’s nothing personal to Kylie, or anyone who goes from acting to singing, and vice versa or whatever, right?’ he clarified.
‘I’m simply saying I was a bit baffled by it.’
Rick and Kylie met for the first time, on his first promotional visit to Australia at the height of his debut success.
He was booked on one of the variety shows of the time and Kylie rocked up with her mother just to say hello, because it was the polite thing to do.
‘My snootiness lasted about 10 seconds after I met her face to face. She was fantastic. She was so warm and lovely, so completely without airs and graces,’ he writes in his book.
Rick recalled thinking Kylie seemed ‘so normal’, despite being watched on TV by 18 million people twice a day.
‘And she was definitely the star of the show (Neighbours).’
‘In a way, I felt sort of protective towards her, because I knew what she had coming. I Should Be So Lucky was obviously going to be a huge hit.’
‘Kylie seems such a sweetheart, I hope she was ready for it.
‘Still, I thought: “It won’t last long for her – It might even be a one off. She’s bound to go back to acting, it’s not as if she’s going to make a career out of being a singer.”‘
Fast forward three decades and Rick was performing at her 50th birthday in London and the pair remain friends.
While he retired from music, burnt out and bitter, in the early ’90s, Kylie went on to produce hit after hit.
‘She had that desire [for fame in the music business]. She wanted it,’ he said.
