Rick Astley appeared on ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ to perform his latest track Forever And More during Sunday’s (October 29) results show.
Having returned to the upper echelons of the UK charts with his ninth album, ‘Are We There Yet?’, the pop icon took to the stage to deliver his new song.
The track is one of 13 to feature on the album which was recorded by Rick largely alone in his studio-cum-garage at home in Surrey, England.
“Perfection isn’t what I’m after. I’m after a feeling,” he tells RETROPOP’s November issue. “I can sit back and go, ‘I can probably get that better, but I don’t know if I’m going to better the emotion’, so I just leave it.
“When I’m in my garage, in my studio, there’s only me so it’s not like I can turn around and say to somebody, ‘Can you help me with this bit?’ What I’m capable of is what goes on the records. I’ve done that on the last two records that I’ve made, because I just really love doing it. And, aside from a few things here and there, I find it very hard to hand it over to somebody else.”
He adds: “I’m very immersed in it and I can be in there for hours and hours. I’ll be in there at seven o’clock in the morning because I’ve woken up and something’s bugging me from the day before, or I’ve woken up with a new idea. I run downstairs, slam the coffee machine on – because the studio is right behind the kitchen – dive in there and before I know it it’s 2.30pm.”
In a review of the album, RETROPOP praised ‘Are We There Yet?’ as a body of work that “sees Astley steer his own ship and take his career down an avenue that’s most fulfilling to him”, resulting in a collection that is “some of his finest work since the 1980s”.
