A Bubblegum Pop Hit Reached No. 1 38 Years Ago Today — Then It Became One of the Internet’s Biggest Jokes

On March 12, 1988, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" hit No. 1 in the United States, where it would stay for two weeks. Decades later, it would inspire one of most iconic internet memes of all time: the RickRoll.

Origin of the RickRoll

On May 15, 2007, a YouTube user by the name of cotter548 uploaded the "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video with the title "RickRoll'd." They then began posting the link in boards on 4chan, claiming it was a link to something else. When a user clicked the link, instead of seeing what they thought they would see, they were instead greeted with the video for Astley's No. 1 hit, with the caption, "You just got RickRoll'd."

RickRolling was actually inspired by a similar — albeit less popular — meme. "4Chan used to have a meme called 'duckrolling' in which someone would get another unsuspecting user to click a link and it was nothing more than a picture of a duck with wheels," cotter548 explained in a Reddit AMA. "In the first day, 20K people were rickrolled, and by the end of the week, we were close to 250K people. My video was the hottest thing on YouTube, hitting No. 1 most viewed for the week, No. 1 most discussed for the week, etc."

If you were on the internet at all in the late 2000s, you have almost certainly fallen victim to the RickRoll. Even Astley himself admitted to being RickRoll'd in an interview with Vice. The meme became so ubiquitous it even has its own Wikipedia page with nearly 100 references.

The legendary meme revitalized Astley's career — and he still rides its success to this day. In 2023, he played the Glastonbury Festival and performed "Never Gonna Give You Up" as his grand finale, with the crowd enthusiastically singing the entire first verse and chorus.