Pop star Rick Astley has returned to the top of the UK album chart after a gap of 29 years.
The 59-year-old singer-songwriter, best known for his 1987 track “Never Gonna Give You Up”, achieved the top spot in the album charts with his comeback album “50” – his first record in 11 years.
While Astley took an early lead in the first two days of sales, his close competitor Tom Odell overtook him on Monday with his second album “Wrong Crowd” – only to later be surpassed by Astley once again for the top spot on Thursday with 3,700 combined chart sales ahead of his rival.
Describing the achievement, Astley told OfficialCharts.com: “It’s amazing, it’s incredible, it’s been a very very VERY long time since this happened before, I’m ecstatic, I couldn’t be happier!”
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Astley was also full of praise for Odell. “I like Tom Odell, I bought his last album, and I’m gonna buy this one as well, but I’ve held off from buying it this week!” he said. “It’s amazing to be mentioned in the same breath as him, he’s one of the big breakthrough artists of the last few years so it’s amazing to be put in that kind of category.”
The singer also spoke of how he had been congratulated on the achievement by Elton John. “Elton John’s sent a few texts over the last couple of days and just called me now to celebrate and said ‘just make sure you enjoy it,'” he says.
Following closely behind Astley and Odell were Paul McCartney with “Pure McCartney”, ELO with “All Over The World – The Very Best” and Canada’s own Drake with “Views”.
