When the demo reached RCA Records, an executive was reportedly skeptical. The voice on the recording was deep and assured and full in a way that suggested a mature, experienced performer. The slight red-haired kid from Newton-le-Willows was not the figure the voice conjured. Astley reportedly sang in person at the reception of the RCA offices to settle the question. He sang. The question was settled.
The song was released on July 27, 1987, on RCA Records. It entered the UK Singles Chart and climbed. Within weeks it was at number one. It stayed there for five weeks. In the year-end accounting, it was the best-selling single of 1987 in the United Kingdom — the biggest song of the year, in the fourth-largest music market in the world, from a twenty-one-year-old debut artist who had spent the previous two years making tea in a South London studio.
It reached number one in approximately two dozen countries — Australia, Canada, West Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, and others. It crossed the Atlantic and reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 in early 1988, by which point Astley was already a global phenomenon. Its follow-up, “Together Forever,” also reached number one in the United States — only the third time in the history of the Stock Aitken Waterman operation that a single had topped the American chart, and Astley accounted for two of the three.
The song won Best British Single at the 1988 Brit Awards. It was played in discos from London to Tokyo. It was the kind of debut that the music industry occasionally produces — not a promising start, but a fully formed arrival, a first single that immediately establishes scale.