It’s rare for a song’s meaning to change so utterly so long after its release – usually it takes an artist’s death to shift the public’s relationship to a record. But Rick Astley is still thankfully alive, and has reacted to his song’s glorious second life with a jovial – if bemused – good humour. Rickrolling – the practise of hiding links to the “Never Gonna Give You Up” video under apparently innocuous clickthroughs – has transformed his most famous song, turned it into an icon of surprise and the only genuine comedy record on this list. But more than that – rickrolling marked pop’s absorption into internet culture. For music, it’s the equivalent of TIME’s 2006 “Person Of The Year: You” award – except behind that shiny mirror is the benevolent face of a young man with a big voice who’s no stranger to lovin’.
Assuming you trusted that “more” link long enough to reach it, let me offer this explanation. The promise of the social Internet is a democratic promise – not only can anyone create content, but anyone can remix, curate or alter content too. The rickrolling phenomenon applied this principle to the fabric of the web itself – suddenly links, the architecture of interne use, became zones of subversion. Suddenly you didn’t have to be able to remix, you could create an experience simply by the sly deployment of Astley.
The use of the song – the terrible suddenness of Rick – made us ask hard questions about trust, content, the complacency of our expectations. If your illegal download of a leaked and stolen new album turns out to be full of Astley, do you really have the right to be outraged? And when the web group anonymous used “Never Gonna Give You Up” to troll Scientology members rickrolling took on a political dimension. It became a distributed version of punk, and more entryist than New Pop could ever dream of being.
I haven’t talked about the original song or its context in this review because they’ve been thoroughly erased. Whatever the merits of Astley’s recording, its resurrection as a popular everysong is what should concern us now. After all, at the birth of rock’n’roll what made “Rock Around The Clock” so important wasn’t the music but the riots – kids ripping up seats and partying in the aisles, using the music the way they wanted to. The reclamation of “Never Gonna Give You Up” is a moment of equal cultural weight. “Never Gonna Give You Up” is the Campbell’s Soup Can of the web 2.0 era, made remarkable through repetition. Hail hail Rick’n’Roll! 10
UPDATE:
Obviously, as soon as I realised that this record was next up and that today was April 1st, the above review wrote itself (the clickthrough video will remain as a tribute – you really don’t need to see Rick again.). Do I mean it? Some of it, certainly – maybe not the “Rick Around The Clock” stuff but rickrolling has transformed the song; internet pranks and lulz culture are interesting; I did enjoy writing the phrase “the terrible suddenness of Rick”.
As Tracer says in the comments (#30), there’s a problematic side to Rickrolling when done lazily, a boring and normative fear of naffness. But set against this is the song’s marvellous elasticity as a tool for pranking: the shrieks of entitled horror from Animal Collective fans when a leak of that band’s album turned out to be 11 Rickrolls, the smugness of a presenter on Christ TV announcing they’d rumbled an attempted roll and people shouldn’t bother sending any more in, minutes before reading out a viewer’s prayer about how God would never run around and desert you. The original gotcha! purpose of the Rickroll is long exhausted but there’s occasional life in it yet.
Also I needed to write something about rickrolls to get out from under them and hear the song again. Is it a ten? No, sorry, and I can’t in all honesty give it more than Mel and Kim either. But it’s a good, doughty piece of pop. Astley’s rich, mannered singing doesn’t quite fit with the pumping background, which gives it a slight incongruity to start with and lets his voice stand out even more. Also, for all his natural talent there’s a galumphing earnestness about his delivery which keeps it likeable – you never for a second think he’s spinning his girl a line; this is one of the nice guys. As a record, it’s had immortality thrust upon it, but for all their bone-deep cynicism, the perpetrators of its second fame couldn’t have picked a warmer song.
Score: 7
[Logged in users can award their own score]
Tom, I am not au fait with Rickrolling. Can I ask why this particular song was ‘chosen’? Is it viewed as somehow ironically rubbish but the archetypal non-arty, non-pompous trojan horse for those trying to download the latest radiohead album, or is Astley’s pleasant, everyman persona the original driver? Does this song have other internet-related uses, say would someone play it at a flash mob?
Well said — and one of the few videos I don’t need to click through to see for the first time!
I don’t think I knew the song before Rickrolling, except in that vague, dentist’s-waiting-room way that you get to know blandly inoffensive music by osmosis, but it’s become part of the contours of modern life in ways that nobody in 1987 could have imagined.
That said, I hope Marcello, etc. come through with the at-the-time meaning. History doesn’t really get erased; there’s always a palimpsest.
Yes, its a particularly worthy choice for everysong, though, isn’t it? Just memorable enough to lodge in your brain, without having any particularly good or striking moments. I’m a great SAW enthusiast, but I must say that Rick Astley always seemed to get their most routine work.
And it was always rather endearing how ill at ease he seemed to be with the role of a popstar. He looked like he really should have been working in Top Man, not appearing on Top of the Pops.
This was absolutely hated in the third form of my boys school, of course. It wasn’t “proper” music, unlike U2’s The Joshua Tree, the great rock event of our time. I couldn’t really find enough in Rick Astley to either defend or condemn.
an appropriate review from Tom given the date – I suspect it’s use as the ubiquitous youtube prank is because it’s blandness makes it a guaranteed disappointment compared to whatever you thought you were going to see.
Number 2 watch: Two consecutive old/young team-ups; 2 weeks of Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield, ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?’, and then one hideous week of The Fat Boys & The Beach Boys, ‘Wipeout’ – was that the first rap number 2? Its hard to think of any worse candidate…
Routine it might be, but also it pretty much is SAW at their most optimum, their most ruthlessly efficient and effective. An easy 10, and Rickrolling has just made people less ashamed to admit it.
(And, um, I might secretly prefer it to “What Have I Done To Deserve This?”)
Ahahahahaha @ publishing this today.
I fucking hate “rickrolling” – people engaging in 4chan-style humour basically deserve to be executed. And it’s a shit song anyway, which was the point, right? So a ZERO from me. (No, I’ve never been rickrolled.)
Despite my regular contributions here I’m still someone who likes to think they keep the Web at arm’s length so I’m not going to comment on the rickrolling thing.
As a record this seemed to take even SAW by surprise – a quick throwaway favour to the office teaboy which turned into a rocket.That famous div-dancing video wasn’t made until the song had been in the charts for a fortnight; the Chart Show had to make do with a still of the cover shot until then.
The big talking point of the time was the “Oh he isn’t black ” shock of Astley’s appearance although the comparisons with Luther Vandross were ludicrous. His career soon faltered because his voice is boring and inflexible as illustrated by the dreadful cover of “When I Fall In Love” which just about scraped the bronze in the Christmas battle of 1987.
Hands up! I’ve been RickRolled many times. In the context of the 21st Century, I’ll agree it’s worthy of its Popular status. A 10, but by accident rather than design. There must have been a bunch of web-savvy scamps debating which song could possibly be the best choice. I could name maybe 5 or 6 candidates from the 80’s, maybe more. Trouble with that is, that I’m imposing my will on a scenario that has played out, like trying to write an alternative ending to The Italian Job. It is because IT IS.
So the teaboy from Cheshire with the sculpted ginger quiff and the moonface and the whitest of white soul voices, becomes the poster boy for 21st Century subversion and uncertainty. Or an annoying practical joke.
pretty sure popular’s inception (al Martino, sep 2003) pre-dates rickrolling. just saying.
“The reclamation of “Never Gonna Give You Up” is a moment of equal cultural weight.” rofl
@2 Jonathan – if you haven’t clicked through to the video, you’re missing out.
How perfect that the stars aligned to make it possible to post this entry today!
Excellent stuff, Tom, you’ve been planning the timing of this post for weeks haven’t you? I’ll comment on this, uh, tomorrow!
Just clicked through to the video – oh, I was talking to a colleague about this literally seconds ago. Magnifico!
So is the real review and mark out of 10 coming next? Popular will eat itself.
From what I recall of Pete Waterman’s autobiography Rick Astley’s teaboy status has been slightly overstated. According to Pete, it was always intended that he made a record, but they had such a queue of records to make before him, that they employed him around the studio while he was waiting. I also think that the no-video-till-it-charts was a routine SAW tactic, to ensure that they didn’t waste cash on stuff that wasn’t going to sell (Carol Hitckcock’s Get Ready, for instance). Mind you, this might be Pete, after the event, trying to paint himself as the strategic mastermind on a tiny budget, taking on the majors at their own game. Much as he claims to have made the first UK house record, created Two Tone, invented Manchester United’s brand, saved British Rail…
OK, so I now know that this record shamelessly stole from/stripmined Colonel Abrams’s Trapped. But at the time I pretty much loved this sheeny-shiny tinsel piece without reservation as my blissful ‘exams are over’/’papers are written’/’undergrad thesis turned in’ blow out song at the end of 1987. I didn’t watch much tv at the time, so I knew NGGYU purely as music, and – cliche I know – I remember being very surprised to discover quite late in the piece that Astley was a white guy (a lot of people danced to Holiday in clubs for months in 1983 thinking that madonna was black!). I remember at the time thinking that Astley’s voice sounded a lot deeper than it now seems to me to be. It was that deeper male voice combined with all the hyper-trebly synths and drums that really made the record pop. I *distinctly* remember thinking he sounded like Barry White or Isaac Hayes (and I *vaguely* remember other people saying/writing the same thing). In retrospect that seems pretty absurd… but there you have it. It was as if there was a frequency gap in the marketplace that NGGYU just filled, in part with some time-/market-specific, psycho-acoustic chicanery. (Comparison case: Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy. Didn’t that song when it hit seem to be breathing a different air to everything around it? To be literally on a different frequency? But as time has passed, it’s become hard to remember why it popped so.) When I bought the album some time later, SAW seemed to confirm this idea by boasting in the liner notes that they’d finished mixing NGGYU on Jan 1, 1987 but ‘did not feel that the market was right for it until the middle of the year’. This was obnoxious, but also felt like it might be true. Note that this piece of SAW self-mythologizing fights against the – ‘we did a favor for the tea-boy, which blew up unexpectedly’ idea that MikeMCSG mentions above, that I agree was around in some of the press at the time.
Anyhow, I can’t say that NGGYU has retained its endorphin rush for me the way the big 10s really should. So, rick-rolling not withstanding, I can’t place NGGYU on the same shelf as, say, Jailhouse Rock, Help! Whole Lotta Love, I’m not in love, Wuthering Heights, Dancing Queen, Don’t Dream It’s Over. Objectively I think this is an 8 (esp. given the theft from Colonel Abrams), but for personal reasons it’s a:
9
@Billy Smart, 3. It really is a shame that none of the Joshua Tree singles made it to #1 in the UK. Your Third Form class was definitely on to something!
Now that we have passed noon, may I say what a wonderful April Fool this is! Nearly took me in, it did, rolling-eyed outrage and all. But then the penny dropped and I had an idea of what sort of thing I’d find if I clicked the video link. Not the exact thing, but it is a classic of the genre.
I hope the page will stand as it is, but I also hope Tom will tell us what mark he would really have given it.
i rather liked the guardian’s labour poster campaign bit too
#16 You’ve answered your own question there – Pete Waterman is the arch-revisionist. By the way there was a video (not very exciting except for her baldness) for Carol Hitchcock’s single ; I remember it on the Chart Show.
I was going to put up a new entry but the comments have been too good! I will extend this one. The mark may or may not be amended.
Erithian – complete luck, no planning!
I was thinking about this song yesterday, after reading the entry in Classic Tracks in Sound on Sound that I’m not actually sure I know how to link here. It’s got a lot of great history, and has the following quote from Rick on rickrolling:
“If this had happened around some kind of rock song, with a lyric that really meant something — a Bruce Springsteen ‘God Bless America’ or an anti-something kind of song — I could kind of understand that,”
Which struck me as missing the point (and not just of Bruce Springsteen) – one of the reasons that it’s a perfect choice is that in 2010, the SAW-wars long over, there is no semantic content to the song beyond “Hi! You’ve been Rickrolled!”
That said, I think the song is an absolute shark at what it does, and would happily give it a 9.
The–really good–classic tracks article:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb09/articles/classictracks_0209.htm
#21 I’m impressed Mike. I thought I was the only person to remember Carol Hitchcock.
Hopefully Dimblebyrolling will become the hot new internet fad.
Why this song? I think it has something to do with the indelibleness and disposability of the song, added to which Astley’s insouciant and hermetic affect in the video. There’s a shot of him wearing sunglasses in the opening bits, which might be key — sunglasses are the accessory that says, I’m closed off to you. In any case the essence of rickrolling is, we’re going to dance now and don’t care if you’ve been rickrolled or not, that’s the engine of it.
In the video, Astley’s precarious status as white/nonwhite is none too subtly referenced by the black bartender who gives his seal of approval (and somehow must).
As for the Barry White comparisons, for a while David Letterman in the US used to make fun of this video, back when it was new, telling Paul Schaffer (his band leader) that he was fascinated/frightened by “the tiny little man with the enormous voice” he had seen singing on TV….
Why this song for ‘rick-rolling’? One important consideration I believe is just that it gets off to a very fast start: like Dancing Queen it takes less than a second before the big melody line hits at essentially full volume. Obviously there’s something vaguely embarrassing about the song and its vid. which is essential to its effect too. But *many* #1 songs that are big earworms are pretty awful and embarrassing. Relatively *few*, however, are such efficient delivery systems for potential embarrassment. With NGGYU you, as it were, broadcast your new preference to the whole office even before initial buffering is finished: you recognize your predicament at the same time as your office-mates figure things out.
Oh, also: visually speaking, Astley reminds me a lot of the teenage shoplifter “Warren” from the movie Empire Records. (Which is not to imply any similarity between Astley and the only British character in the movie, Rex Manning.)
Yeah, the fact that Rick Astley turned out to be white was surely the original rickroll. “Whaaaaa?”
I’m surprised Tom likes the rickroll so much, since it seems to derive its force from a shared assumption that this sort of music – synth-driven, “superficial”, polished – is rubbish. Sure, the song’s been “reclaimed” by the Internet massive but to what end? And there’s a whiff of gay panic about it too, at least to this commenter. What if your roommate caught you, mid-rickroll?? “Ha ha, I swear… I was set up…”
Yes, yes a perfect 10, but for me it is on the merits of the song. A U.S. #1 as well. Here in the States its as ubiquitous as any monster hit of the 80’s-and that was before the whole Rickroll. Yet, the Rickroll made us all give it a second listen. Some snickered. You either loved or hated Astley in his heyday. We all remember Nick Lowe’s lyric about “ghastly Astley.” For the rest of us who hid the song on our Ipods or Mix CD-R’s and Cassette tapes it was sweet redemption. But this song! It’s picture perfect pop.
In the States you probably didn’t get to hear the Wonder Stuff’s “Astley in a Noose” either…
# 25 Thanks glueboy. Did you know she appeared (briefly, as a street punk) in Prisoner Cell Block H too ? There’s a bit of trivia for you !
Well, it was fun while it lasted. POST UPDATED.
I never got the “roll” aspect – as in ‘eye-roll’ I guess?
Really don’t mind this song now (5 and a half! It’ll always seem a bit too naff) but not sure how much that has to do with the web meme causing it to be thought about more (it could just as easily have increased hatred for it). SAW clearly had genuine knowledge of and admiration for both classic Soul and cutting-edge club music (NGGYU being a sweet Philly homage thru a House filter) but their approach to commercialising both seemed increasingly problematic.
I’ve always been surprised at how almost naive Waterman comes across at times (A: too optimistic about the Popstars/Pop Idol format wrt getting more control than the TV producers…as revealed in a video interview with Paul Morley on the Guardian website, worth a view: B; has ideas about Soul that can seem quite narrow and has never seemed anywhere near as interested in Jazz/Jazz-Funk, apart from the three singles SAW released under their own name! Was it on Soul Britannia where he compared Omar to an older singer, with Omar reacting with dismay and even anger at a comparison he felt was totally offbase…can’t remember who it was with sadly!) where I would expect him to be more cynical, and I’m not sure whether the “we can make anyone a star, even the teaboy…especially with a voice that unexpectedly strong” approach leans more towards the former or latter. Or was it more of an optimistic “even the teaboy can be a star…’slong as they can sing good” ? PW carrying this philosophy into Pop Idol.
Both Astley and SAW make the record work at a basic level but there’s no real spark to this and so the talk centred mostly around Astley’s whiteness (like many the first time I had a ‘oh he doesn’t look how I expected!’ reaction, esp. with the likes of Alexander O’Neal enjoying their peak popularity at the time – ‘Criticise’ was a favourite and who wouldn’t take that over this??) and dubious ‘yuppie sailor’ garb.
Despite the monstrous success of this, and Mel n’ Kim aside, SAW seemed to move away from directly co-opting the US House sound after this, perhaps sensing that a wave of British bedroom producers were going to handle it better (and occasionally even as profitably) than they did. The better subsequent productions had a stronger European/Italo-disco feel but it didn’t seem to make any odds as far as the charts were concerned.
My memory is that this record was a pop culture signifier long before rickrolling, and often used as an example for whatever point one was making. For example, it’s cited in a Nick Lowe song All Men Are Liars, and in this excerpt from the Timelords Manual:
“Stock, Aitken and Waterman, however, are kings of writing chorus
lyrics that go straight to the emotional heart of the 7″ single buying
girls in this country. Their most successful records will kick into
the chorus with a line which encapsulates the entire emotional meaning
of the song. This will obviously be used as the title. As soon as
Rick Astley hit the first line of the chorus on his debut single it
was all over – the Number One position was guaranteed.”
Well, The Manual was written with Rick still a star and this song fresh in the mind. I do think NGGYU never really went away in the UK but I’d guess in the US where rickrolling began it had the right combination of forgotten-but-obvious.
I think Swanstep at #28 is dead on for why the song ‘worked’ by the way.
And I, I’m afraid, can’t see it ranking higher either as song per se or as signifier of its time than House of the Rising Sun. Maybe it’s a generation thing. Had the latter got the 10 I firmly believe it deserved then I probably wouldn’t begrudge the score.
@Erithian Lucky old “the States”, then.
Mannion@35: “Rolling” is slang for Mugging Lite, I think: hence “rolling a drunk” would mean toppling him over and removing his wallet and/or his trousers — the implication is that it’s a harmless prank given the target, who sorta kinda deserves it. (Or will anyway wake in the morning and be more ruefully amused than angry or hurt…)
the received derivation of ‘rickroll’ is the usual internet meme story. originally there was a crazy image of a duck on wheels that ppl would link to as an in joke – this was called the ‘duckroll’. (why a duck on wheels? cos the image tickled a bunch of people. could have been a massively obese cat – if that hadn’t been out of vogue at the time.) then someone ‘shopped Rick Astley’s head on to the duck – probably there were loads of variations, but the survival of puts-you-in-fits was that the one with RA’s head which persisted and dubbed a rickroll. then eventually just linking to NGGYU on youtube instead of the image took on the same tag.
oh those twee 4chan fuckers
It seems to me Waterman undermined Rick’s career before it got off the ground. If the “teaboy” comment was meant to underline how good production and songwriting can make anyone* a star, then there would be intense sneering from the Italia-Conti/Sylvia Young faction of pre-programmed and primed (not-quite-ready-yet) popstars. That’s not necessarily the case with Rick, but that’s how Pete Waterman was selling it. Yes, Rick had the voice, and how the Mick Hucknalls of this world would have crawled over broken glass for one like it. But to Rick’s peers, it seems like the fast-track to stardom…dues remain unpaid.
In that light, it’s hard to take him seriously as an artist in his own right. And, I suspect others sensed his lack of durability also. One other consideration is the SAW roster seemed to represent this everyboy/everygirl image that feeds into the collective consciousness of the existence of the “fame machine”**. There are exceptions of course, eg. a certain girl trio and some soapy antipodeans.
*”anyone” with a decent voice of course. but the seeds of an idea are being sewn in the mind of a pop svengali in the making (step forward Mr Cowell).
**and Boy! Look at the size of that machine today!
I don’t know about this idea that Astley’s voice is better than Hucknall’s! In other news the Extended Cutback mix of ‘Money’s Too Tight To Mention’ came on my iPod the other day and I listened to the entire thing so there…
Sorry Steve, to these ears, Hucknall grates every time! But more on that when the time comes…
@ 24
I clicked on the link, it was the first I found in the thread — I was SOOO disappointed not to be rickrolled……
Oddly enough I don’t associate Never gonna… with S/A/W or Rickrolling but with something more personal. Quite simply it was the first contempary pop record that I remember my Mum expressing a real liking for. My Mum was raised on Doris Day then The Beatles and came of age listening to Carole Kings Tapestry. She considered eighties pop to be generally worthless but she made an exception for Rick who is let’s face it the sort of singer Mums were certain to like.
She’s come back to pop now and thinks Lady Gaga is fab.
Bah my mum liked Meat Loaf! And Moggy’s mum likes Slayer!!
Yikes, that ‘classic tracks’ article linked in #24 above (thanks Raw Patrick), really does make SAW (out of their own mouths) seem like the devil incarnate. They describe in detail all of the reverse engineering of timbres and beats in other people’s records, explain how they have no real writing process, don’t bother with middle eights on any level (always just leaving some B-team engineer to apply some effects to either a chorus or verse pattern), always use the same vocal mike regardless. And so on.
It really has to be read to be believed. One starts to hate oneself to the extent that any of their records ever appealed – and Venus and NGGYU certainly got me.
I’m not much into football but I’ve been told that this record is the ultimate half-time record. Is this true? Can someone explain to me what makes a good half-time record?
I liked this but it was nowhere near as good as ‘Take Me To Your Heart’. It wasn’t even as good as Mandy Smith’s(stop laughing) ‘I Just Can’t Wait’.