First, you see the words. “This picture of you is so funny!”, or “OMG I can’t believe this actually happened!”, or “Have you heard this song? You’d love it!”, or something similarly intriguing. Your interest is piqued, your internal defence system temporarily subdued. You click on the innocent-looking link. Then, before you can do anything, you hear it; that salvo of synthetic drums, the rush of synths. You see it; that flash of flame-red hair, the swaying dance moves. And with a sinking sense of inevitability, it dawns on you: you’ve just been rickrolled.
Sound familiar? It’s been a rite of passage for any internet user from about 2007 onwards to be unwittingly directed towards the song Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley, and as a meme, the so-called rickroll shows no sign of being consigned to annals of digital folklore — just three weeks ago, headlines were generated by a Texan drone operator who, using 300 of the devices, created a huge QR code in the sky above Dallas. What happened to anyone who scanned the display with their smartphone? Take a wild guess.
It’s the latest line in the most unexpected of stories, one that has followed the 1987 track as its place in popular culture morphed time and time again — from its first appearance as a chart-topping hit, through to its re-emergence as nothing more than a maddening joke, and now, its status as a career-reviving, post-ironic classic that has appeared in multiple lists charting the best songs of the Eighties.
On May 6, Astley will celebrate the 35th anniversary his debut album, Whenever You Need Somebody, by releasing a deluxe reissue on which Never Gonna Give You Up appears not once, but four times (the original, a stripped-back piano version, a dance remix, and a lyric-less instrumental). It’s quite the career turnaround of a man who decided to retire from music in 1993, at the age of 27, to focus on raising a family. But how big of a part did the rickroll play in resurrecting Astley’s fame, how did it all begin, and is its undying appeal the reason we’re now starting to realise that the most memed song of all time… is actually really quite good?
The record-buying public of the Eighties certainly liked it. Never Gonna Give You Up was the 21-year-old Astley’s debut solo single, and it was an absolute smash. Penned by chart-whisperers Stock, Aitken and Waterman, it was the UK’s best-selling single of 1987, hitting number one both in that country and in 24 others.
It sparked a golden run for Astley, with that first album shifting more than 15 million copies worldwide, and a string of hits such as Whenever You Need Somebody, When I Fall In Love and Together Forever. A world tour arrived, taking in 15 countries, but after becoming disillusioned by the coverage he received in the press (he was unfairly painted as a “puppet” for SAW, even though he was writing some of his own music at the time) and suffering declining sales, he decided to leave the life of music behind in the early Nineties.
From then until a few years into the Noughties, Astley kept a low profile. The track that started it all, Never Gonna Give You Up, had already shown signs that maybe it was destined for an unpredictable future — in 1989, it was one of the songs the US military played at extreme volume when they were trying to psychologically coax the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, holed up in an embassy, into surrendering; after 10 days, Noriega did, in fact, give himself up — but in the most part, the track seemed set in its place, lodged within the collective memory of the Eighties, and nowhere else beyond that.
That was until the notorious online message board 4chan got involved. The precise origins of the meme are convoluted to say the least, but a simplified version of events goes as such: forum tricksters developed a word filter that changed “egg” for “duck”, someone wrote “eggroll”, which turned into “duckroll”, then someone else posted a picture of a duck on wheels, AKA a rolling duck, AKA a duckroll. Got it?
The duckroll was used to dupe users, who would click on a link and inadvertently be shown the picture. Japes were had. Then, in 2007, the first trailer for the highly anticipated video game Grand Theft Auto IV was released and, among the maelstrom of excitement, one 4chan member took inspiration from the duckroll and diverted gamers trying to view the trailer to the video for Never Gonna Give You Up instead. The bait-and-switch was christened as a rickroll, and a meme was born.
The trick became a sensation online — YouTube adopted it as its official April Fools prank in 2008, with any users who clicked on one of the site’s featured videos taken to the rickroll clip — and as is always the case with something viral, Astley himself had little say in the matter.
At first, though, he seemed pretty nonplussed by it all. “I think it’s just one of those odd things where something gets picked up and people run with it, but that’s what’s brilliant about the internet.” Astley told the LA Times’ Web Scout blog in 2008, in what appears to be his first published reaction to the phenomenon, adding: “Listen, I just think it’s bizarre and funny. My main consideration is that my daughter doesn’t get embarrassed about it.”
Things kept gathering steam. In November 2008, the public vote for Best Act Ever at the MTV Europe Music Awards was hijacked by memesters, who voted for Astley in the tens of millions, trumping the likes of Britney Spears and U2. “It just felt it was a bit of a daft award,” Astley told the BBC in the aftermath. "I really appreciate all the guys that did vote for me but I also feel for all the artists who got rickrolled a bit last night because there were obviously some people there that perhaps deserved it more than me.”
Later that month, however, Astley got in on the act himself, and rickrolled the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, appearing as a surprise guest and lip-syncing along to Never Gonna Give You Up. It was, he later claimed in a 2019 interview, the only time he’s ever rickrolled anyone.
Which begs the question: has Astley ever been rickrolled himself? “A few times,” is the official response, most famously when one Reddit user tried to dupe Astley during a question-and-answer session on the website, leading him to click on what seemed to be an old picture of Astley with a fan. It worked. “u/theMalleableDuck,” Astley wrote, addressing the fan’s account name, “I salute you!”
That easy-going approach, never getting too peeved by the endless memeing, has surely helped Astley in capitalising on the joke’s ubiquity. “At the end of the day,” Astley told All Access Music in 2019, “it’s, like, an old song from 19-whatever and if people have a bit of fun with it, I’m okay with it. And it certainly hasn’t done me any harm.”
Astley wasn’t exactly in the pop music wilderness before the rickroll — he released two albums on major labels between 2001 and 2005, and had been out on tour, too — but there’s no doubt that things have taken an upturn in the post-meme landscape. It’s not rare to see him towards the top of festival line-ups these days, and in 2016, he scored his first UK number one album, 50, since his debut 29 years prior.
And through all the jokes (as well as its endless, fairly mind-boggling list of proponents, from Greta Thunberg to Anonymous) it feels as if the popular perception of Never Gonna Give You Up as a piece of music has shifted. Foo Fighters, one of the world’s biggest rock bands, have been known to perform mash-ups of the song with Smells Like Teen Spirit at their gigs, often with Astley lending his vocals. “Even their crazy out-there version kind of works. So I think that’s the mark of a good song,” said Astley. “If you can play it in totally different ways and it still kind of stands up then that’s got to be a good sign.”
It’s perhaps best summed up by a scene in an episode of season two of Ted Lasso, the popular Apple TV+ comedy, that aired last year. At a funeral, a character is trying to give a eulogy but, seemingly lost for words, just starts reciting the lyrics to Never Gonna Give You Up. Some viewers found it funny, others were perplexed, and some reported on social media that they were moved to tears.
And maybe that’s the essence of Never Gonna You Up — a song that’s inextricably linked to the meme, and has defied all logic, but which at its heart, means quite a lot to quite a few people.
Whatever the case, you won’t believe what Rick Astley has just been filmed doing!
