Rick Astley celebrated his hit song’s anniversary with a secret gig (Picture: Robin Little/Redferns)
It’s been 37 years since Rick Astley promised to never let us down and he held true to that as he surprised fans at Latitude Festival.
The 58-year-old hitmaker appeared for a secret set at the Suffolk music festival, performing on the back of a trailer.
This impromptu performance was for the anniversary of Never Gonna Give You Up’s release which launched Rick into becoming the global superstar we know today.
On July 27, 1987, the ‘s**t song’ — according to the star himself — was released and became the best-selling single of that year with five weeks in the charts.
In honour of that anniversary, Rick was scheduled to perform the penultimate set ahead of Keane and after CMAT’s intended slot.
Clearly, he decided the 6pm set wasn’t enough, so he came back for a second round hours later at the Trailer Park bar.
Never Gonna Give You Up turns 37 years old (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
The song launched him as a superstar (Picture: Michael Putland/Getty Images)
The small venue looked absolutely packed as fans watched the 80s icon perform various hits – we assume Never Gonna Give You Up was included.
Sharing a video of everyone jumping to Rick’s performance on X, gig-goer Tony Clarke wrote: ‘Never thought I’d ever say I see @rickastley perform a secret set on the back of a trailer at @LatitudeFest #epic.’
Another video of the set was posted by Lindsay Bampton who simply said she ‘loved it’ in response to a teasing tweet from Latitude.
Shirley Greener shared: ‘We started yesterday at Latitude watching a local band play at the sunrise arena. We watched some comedy before Rick Astley and then Keane. After, we wandered around the site before going to the trailer park, where the barman told us Rick Astley was playing a secret gig there.’
Rick also shared a little bit of the celebration on X, with a clip of him singing his signature song over the years.
’37 YEARS OLD! Never Gonna Give You Up from 1987 to 2024,’ he captioned the video.
This isn’t how the singer has always felt about Never Gonna Give You Up, having tried to step away from the music industry in the 90s and didn’t sing it for years.
He brutally called it a ‘s**t song’ earlier this year to The Sun, saying people just blindly sing along at festivals.
He took to the mainstage at Latitude too (Picture: Robin Little/Redferns)
He called it a ‘s**t song’ (Picture: Robin Little/Redferns)
In Smashing Interviews, he was ‘brutally honest’ and confessed: ‘If I’d been singing Never Gonna Give You Up and a few others for 30 years, I think I’d have driven myself mad.’
Rick has thanked Rickrolling for relaunching the song and his career, referencing the internet meme which has haunted him since the 2000s.
‘I had 15 years of not singing it,’ he told BBC North West Tonight in October. ‘I can understand some artists would be freaked out about [the success of] it and run a mile, but I’ve learned to quietly embrace it.
‘I have reconnected with it in a kind of way.’
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