By the end of 1987, the song was the UK’s best-selling single of the year. The year-end chart position means it outsold every other single released in the United Kingdom in that twelve-month period — a competitive field that included singles from Madonna, Michael Jackson, and a range of other commercially dominant acts. This was not a narrowly won competition: it was a significant margin of victory in commercial terms, a record that outperformed everything else in the market that year.
The international reach of the single was equally significant. Reaching number one in approximately two dozen countries in a period before the digital distribution infrastructure that would later allow simultaneous global release represents an extraordinary promotional effort — each chart climb in each country required specific local promotion, radio plugging, television appearances, press interviews. Astley was doing this in his early twenties, in a language he didn’t speak in most of the countries he was visiting, on a promotional schedule that would have been demanding for any artist and was particularly intense for someone who had been a tea boy at PWL twelve months before the record was released.
The Grammy nomination for Best New Artist at the 1989 ceremony is a measure of American recognition: only five artists were nominated in that category, and to be among them after less than two years of commercial activity in the US market was a specific recognition of the scale of what “Never Gonna Give You Up” and “Together Forever” had achieved. Tracy Chapman won, with “Fast Car” as her primary claim on the category. The loss was not a failure — it was a close contest between artists who had each made significant first impressions on the American market, and Chapman’s album was one of the most critically and commercially significant debuts of the decade.