Never Gonna Give You Up

Vorlage:Infobox Single Vorlage:For "Never Gonna Give You Up" is a dance-pop song originally performed by Rick Astley. It is from Astley's multi-million selling debut album Whenever You Need Somebody, which was written and produced by Stock Aitken Waterman. It was a worldwide number one hit, initially in the singer's native United Kingdom in 1987, where it stayed at number one for five weeks and was the best selling single that year.

It became number one throughout Europe and hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States on March 12 1988. It reached number one in Australia in December 1987.

Music video

In the song's music video, Astley sings and dances to the song in various outfits and venues, sometimes accompanied by backup dancers. A bartender has a notable presence in the video, as his behavior gradually shifts from casually noticing Astley's singing to being fully engrossed in the song with energetic acrobatic moves.

Charts

Chart (1987/1988)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	1
U.S. Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary	1
U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play	1
German Singles Chart	2
Norwegian Singles Chart	1
Official UK Singles Chart	1
Spain Singles Chart	1
Switzerland Singles Chart	2
New Zealand Singles Chart	1

Appearances in other media

Brian Griffin performs "Never Gonna Give You Up" in the Family Guy episode "Meet the Quagmires" in a scene based on the high school dance from Back to the Future. Parodying the phone call to Chuck Berry in the original, a character calls Rick Astley: "Hey Rick, it's your cousin Marvin, Marvin Astley. You know that mediocre, generic sound you've been looking for? Well listen to this!"

"Never Gonna Give You Up" is frequently played over the microphone in online games such as Counter-Strike. Its pervasiveness as a microphone spam is likely connected to the 4chan meme.

"Rickroll" Internet phenomenon

The song's campy music video became the basis for an Internet phenomenon known as "rickrolling". It originated at 4chan and took its name from an earlier phenomenon known as "duckrolling", in which someone would post a blind link to a page allegedly relevant to a discussion that upon viewing would prove to be a non sequitur - specifically, an image of a duck on wheels. The 'Roll' part of this meme comes from the term 'Barrel Roll' used in another 4chan meme "Do a Barrel Roll." A sentence uttered by a character in the Nintendo 64 game Star Fox 64. Similarly, in a rickroll a poster provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes any one who clicks it to the Rick Astley video. This phenomenon spread from 4chan to other sites, eventually becoming widespread enough to attract some coverage in the mainstream media.^[1]^[2] As a result of the phenomenon, the two most-viewed copies of the music video on YouTube have received over 9,000,000 hits as of January 31, 2008.[1][2] In addition, there is a website that links to the video, but makes it impossible to exit without having to close several dozen caution boxes showing the lyrics.