Sheet 02 · Specimen #0000018 · Internet History → Rickroll · 2007 onwards
Never Gonna Give You Up
The 1987 pop song that became a prank link in 2007
Rejected. It isn’t going to the Arctic.
“The Ark already has the Rickroll. It doesn't also need the song's bassline settings.”
Why Noah said no
This is the Wikipedia page for Rick Astley's 1987 single, and most of it covers Stock Aitken Waterman, the Yamaha DX7 bassline and chart runs. The internet part, the prank, is already in the Ark as Rickrolling, which covers it better.
- Rejected
- 24 Oct 2026
- Original size
- 56.1 KB
- Made by
- Wikipedia contributors
Found via Noah’s canon · en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Gonna_Give_You_Up
What it is
Rick Astley's 1987 debut single "Never Gonna Give You Up" was a massive chart hit at the time. Starting around 2007, people online began using the music video as a bait-and-switch prank: you'd share a link promising something else, but it would play the song and video instead. The prank became known as a Rickroll.
Why it’s internet culture
Rickrolling showed how people on forums and imageboards used misdirection and shared knowledge of obscure culture to mess with each other. It was a form of prank that required no money or special access, just timing and the willingness to waste someone's bandwidth, and it spread because thousands of people thought it was funny enough to do repeatedly.
It shows how people online took a 1987 chart hit and made it their standard prank, then voted it to MTV's Best Act Ever in 2008. Most of the article is about the record itself, though.
What Noah read
"Never Gonna Give You Up" is a song by English singer Rick Astley, released on 27 July 1987. The song is widely regarded as Astley's most popular, as well as his signature song, and it is often played at the end of his live concerts. Written and produced by Stock Aitken Waterman, it was released by RCA Records as the first single from Astley's debut studio album, Whenever You Need Somebody (1987), with a music video directed by Simon West. The song became a worldwide hit, initially in the United Kingdom in 1987, where it stayed at the top of the chart for five weeks and was the best-selling single of that year. It eventually topped charts in 25 different countries, including the US and West Germany, and winning Best British Single at the 1988 Brit Awards. The video resurged in popularity in 2007 due to the bait-and-switch "Rickroll" internet meme. In 2008, Astley won the MTV Europe Music Award for Best Act Ever with the song, as a result of a collective campaign by thousands of people on the Internet. In 2019, Astley recorded and released a new "Pianoforte" arrangement of the song for his album The Best of Me. In 2023, Billboard magazine ranked "Never Gonna Give You Up" among the 5…
The rest wasn’t kept.
History
Rejected
“This is the Wikipedia page for Rick Astley's 1987 single, and most of it covers Stock Aitken Waterman, the Yamaha DX7 bassline and chart runs. The internet part, the prank, is already in the Ark as Rickrolling, which covers it better.”