Rick Astley Interview About Rickrolls

Posted on April 5, 2008

Rickrolling was very big on April Fool's Day. YouTube even rickrolled people who were clicking on its featured videos. For the very few who don't know rickrolling is when someone tricks you into clicking on a link that takes you to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video. Astley told Web Scout that if he was a young kid looking at his old song today he would think it was pretty naff.

For his part, Astley was nothing if not modest about his new cultural role. "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," Astley said. "But for something as, and I don't mean to belittle it, because I still think it's a great pop song, but it's a pop song; do you know what I mean? It doesn't have any kind of weight behind it, as such. But maybe that's the irony of it."

Astley would never put the song down, mind you. It's just that, as he says, "If I was a young kid now looking at that song, I'd have to say I'd think it was pretty naff, really."

(Wikipedia on "naff": British slang for "something which is seen to be particularly 'cheesy' or 'tacky' or in otherwise poor aesthetic taste.") "For me it's a good example of what some of the '80s were about in that pop sort of music way. A bit like you could say Debbie Gibson was absolutely massive, but if you look back at it now ... do you know what I mean?"

Rick Astley seems to be taking it very well. If "Never Gonna Give You Up" was a bad song it probably wouldn't be such a popular choice for something like a rickroll. It's the fact that the song gets your head - it is both catchy and cheesy - that makes it the perfect music video to trick someone into viewing.

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