You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece,

tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishikesh Herway.

Rick Astley is a singer and songwriter from England, whose debut single, Never Gonna

Give You Up, became an international smash hit.

The song came out in July 1987 and won the Brit Award for British Single of the Year.

It hit number one in 25 countries and Rick Astley was nominated for a Grammy for Best New

Artist.

And then 20 years after the song came out, it became a new kind of phenomenon when the

meme Rick Rolling was born.

Last year, the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up passed a billion streams on YouTube.

The song was written and produced by the production team Stock Aitken Waterman, who were hitmakers

for artists like Kylie Minogue, Dead or Alive and others.

So this episode I spoke to Rick Astley here in Los Angeles and songwriter and producer Mike

Stock in a studio in London.

And here, the two of them tell the story of how Never Gonna Give You Up was made.

My name is Rick Astley.

I'm from a town called Newton, La Willows, which is a very working class, very salt of the

earth kind of area.

People don't suffer fools gladly there.

British and tiny little town.

I got in a band with a couple of friends.

...