Taking the Rick - 2008-03-19
Taking the Rick March 19, 2008,
It was more than twenty years ago that Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up first topped the charts. "Never gonna say goodbye," he crooned in his surprisingly basso voice - and who knew how right he was.
Today we're in a different century, a different millennium, a very different era than the one that first offered up twerpy, earnest, high-waistbanded Astley. But his song, and its video in particular, have found new life in the time of YouTube. Never Gonna Give You Up is at the centre of one of the internet's hottest memes - and if you haven't already fallen victim, it's only a matter of time.
It's called the "rick-roll". You're innocently browsing an apparently useful website and see a link to something else that might be of interest, but when you click through to that destination you instead find yourself confronted with Astley's boyish smile, his manly croon, his awkward 1987 dance-moves.