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Not a rickroll, we swear: Pop star Astley to make Danish beer

English singer Rick Astley is best known for his 1987 hit song ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ but maybe someday he’ll be remembered for his beer.

Published: 3 January 2017 08:43 CET

Not a rickroll, we swear: Pop star Astley to make Danish beer

Astley performing in Copenhagen in 2009. Photo: Michael Alø-Nielsen/Flickr

The 50-year-old pop star is teaming up with the Danish brewers at Mikkeller to make his own signature beer.

Astley told Daily Mail's Weekend magazine that he’s working on a fruity pilsner lager with the Copenhagen-based brewery, which has in just a few short years become one of the hottest names in the international craft beer market.

“I enjoy a beer with friends and I'm hoping to sell my own brand soon,” he told Weekend.

“I've been working with the Mikkeller brewery in Copenhagen, which was founded ten years ago by a teacher who made his own beer at home,” he added, referring to Mikkeller founder Mikkel Borg Bjergsø.

Astley said that the brewery has been sending him various beers to sample as they work on their collaboration.

“Some are quite fruity – one was a pear beer they make for a restaurant, but we've gone for a pilsner type lager,” he said.

From the sound of it, the beer could be at your nearest hipster bar sooner than you’d think as Astley told Weekend that “all I need now is a name for it.”

The Astley connection may not be as completely random as it sounds. He’s married to a Dane and the couple’s daughter is currently studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, which for the past decade or so has been best known for the pranksters’ art of ‘rickrolling’, was the number one song in 25 countries. He’s gone on to sell around 40 million records worldwide.

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New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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