Rickrolling

"Never Gonna Give You Up" appeared on Astley's 1987 debut album Whenever You Need Somebody.[1] The song, his solo debut single, was a number-one hit on several international charts, including the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks, and the UK Singles Chart. The accompanying music video, Astley's first, features him performing the song while dancing.[2] It since had become a popular song on the Internet, particularly after it was featured in the 2005 "Charlie Has Cancer" episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

The use of the song for rickrolling dates to 2006, originating from the 4chan imageboard from an early meme known as "duckrolling". Sometime in 2006, the site moderator, Christopher "m00t" Poole implemented a word filter replacing the word "egg" with "duck" as a gag. On one thread, where "eggroll" had become "duckroll", an anonymous user posted an edited image of a duck with wheels, calling it a "duckroll". The image caught on across 4chan; the image would be the target of a hyperlink with an otherwise interesting title, with a user clicking through having been said to be "duckrolled".[3]

In March 2007, the first trailer for the highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV was released onto Rockstar Games website. Viewership was so high that it crashed Rockstar's site. Several users helped to post mirrors of the video on different sites, but one user on 4chan had linked to the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video claiming to be the trailer, tricking numerous readers into the bait-and-switch. This practice quickly replaced duckrolling for other alluring links, all generally pointing to Astley's video, and thus creating the practice of "rickrolling".[3] The bait-and-switch to the "Never Gonna Give You Up" greatly expanded on 4chan on April Fools' Day in 2007, and led to the trick expanding to other sites like Fark and Digg later that year, quickly gaining the name "rickrolling" based on the prior "duckrolling".[3]

An initial use of "rickrolling" was confirmed by the editors of Know Your Meme, where rural Michigan resident Erik Helwig had called into a local radio sports-talk show in 2006 and instead of conversing with the DJs, simply played "Never Gonna Give You Up", leaving the DJs speechless. While this occurred before the 4chan use, Know Your Meme editor-in-chief Don Caldwell said there was no direct confirmation if it had inspired the 4chan use of the video.[4]

A Rick Astley impersonator during one of the March 2008 rickrolls at a collegiate basketball game

Rickrolling started to appear in more mainstream sources during 2008, with a SurveyUSA April 2008 poll estimating that at least 18 million American adults had been rickrolled.[5]

One of the first public events involved the Church of Scientology which had been aggressively trying to censor videos critical of the church. The Internet group Anonymous as part of their Project Chanology to challenge this censoring, protested at the Church's various headquarters across the globe by chanting the song, among other activities.[6] A number of collegiate basketball games in March 2008 had people dressing up as Astley from the video and lip-syncing to the music as a prank before the start of the game.[7] YouTube's 2008 April Fools joke made featured video hyperlinks on the site's home page end up on the music video.[8][9] In April 2008, the baseball team New York Mets had asked fans on the Internet for what they should use for one of their late-game rally songs in April 2008, with "Never Gonna Give You Up" receiving a massive number of votes driven by websites like 4chan.[10][9] At the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards, an online campaign led to Astley being named the "Best Act Ever" despite not being on the original shortlist of nominees, effectively rickrolling the awards.[11]

Astley performing the song during the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

By November 2008, the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video on Youtube had more than 20 million views and was considered a viral video, though Astley had initially appeared indifferent to the newfound fame.[11] Astley had left the performing industry in 1993 and only recently had started up again around 2000 though remained a recluse. When asked around March 2008, Astley said that of rickrolling, "It's weird" since he had not performed much lately, but that he found the interest funny.[12] However, at the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Astley made a surprise appearance on a float for Cartoon Network to lip-sync the song to the crowd and television audiences, making that performance the largest rickroll to date.[13] According to Astley, Cartoon Network had urged him to perform for the parade along with a large performance payment, and though he had been wary of trying to promote himself on the popularity of the meme, decided to go for it.[14]

In September 2009, Wired magazine published a guide to modern hoaxes which listed rickrolling as one of the better known beginner-level hoaxes, alongside the fake e-mail chain letter.[15] The term has been extended to simple hidden use of the song's lyrics.[16] Cover versions of "Never Gonna Give You Up" have also been used as part of rickrolling; in April 2018, the creators of TV's Westworld released a video that purported to be a spoiler guide for the entire second season in advance, but instead featured lead actress Evan Rachel Wood singing the song while accompanied by a pianist.[17]

The original video[18] on YouTube from 2007 used for rickrolling was removed for terms-of-use violations in February 2010[19] but the takedown was revoked within a day.[20] It was taken down again on 18 July 2014.[21] It has since been unblocked again and has gained over 81 million views as of February 2020.[18] The RickAstleyVEVO channel uploaded another version[22] on 24 October 2009 which has had over 699 million views as of May 2020.[23]

Its meme status led to the song's usage in the post-credits scene for Walt Disney Animation Studios's 2018 film Ralph Breaks the Internet, the sequel to 2012's Wreck-It Ralph. The song also appears in the film Bumblebee, and was featured at the end of its initial teaser trailer.[24]

On 5 January 2018, Paul Fenwick announced that he had started several Rick Astley hotlines, which when called, would play "Never Gonna Give You Up" along with several other artist's adaptations of it. Paul Fenwick advertised it as "You are encouraged to use them for paperwork, loyalty schemes, and general joy."[25]

On 25 August 2019, a major rickroll happened at Petco Park in San Diego, long after rickrolling had ceased to be a meme of note. The Boston Red Sox were playing a Major League Baseball game in San Diego against the San Diego Padres, where the Red Sox had not played in six years. During a mid-inning break, the Padres' scoreboard began to rather surprisingly play "Sweet Caroline", which has become a tradition at Red Sox home games – but the Red Sox were the opposition in San Diego. As the Neil Diamond song was about to hit the chorus, however, the video-board suddenly switched to "Never Gonna Give You Up", much to the amusement of the crowd.[26]

On 13 October 2019, the Sunday night NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angeles Chargers at Dignity Health Sports Park featured a case of rickrolling when the PA announcers, after a Chargers touchdown brought the score to 24-10 Pittsburgh, decided to troll the partisan crowd by playing the beginning of the Styx song "Renegade" (which had been played at the Steelers home Heinz Field since 2001) only to transition into "Never Gonna Give You Up". The stunt caught fans and players from both teams by surprise (even being acknowledged by the Steelers official social media accounts), and some Chargers players were not happy about the Steelers anthem being played in their own home stadium. The Steelers won the game 24–17.[27][28]