Encore: Never Gonna Give You Up

Who gets credit for starting a meme? Usually... nobody — they're made too quickly and organically. In the case of one of the most famous bait-and-switch memes of all time, the "Rick Roll," we may be looking at something experts call convergent evolution. Did the Rick Roll originate with a piece of code on the message board 4Chan, or with a prank call to a local sports show in Michigan? And why does the Rick Roll have such staying power? Is it codified in the DNA of the song itself? We explore the meme’s origin, the history of the song, "Never Gonna Give You Up," and its impact on both internet users during COVID-19 and on the performer himself. This episode was originally published on Oct. 08, 2021.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's fall drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy-to-layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.

• 1:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  Amory.

• 1:04Speaker 04

  Ben.

• 1:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Do you remember when memes were just memes?

• 1:10Speaker 04

  When scumbags roamed free and...

• 1:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  When scumbags were just scumbags.

• 1:17Speaker 04

  Scumbags were just scumbags.

• 1:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  And cats sitting at dinner tables were just cats sitting at dinner tables.

• 1:24Speaker 04

  And we didn't know what the woman pointing at a different cat really meant. A simpler time.

• 1:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  A simpler time. And during that time, we made a series about memes, which, you know, in this current period, seems almost quaint because now we're talking about brain rot, we're talking about anti-memes, we're talking about-

• 1:46Speaker 04

  AI slop.

• 1:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  AI slop, woo.

• 1:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  But maybe you will come back with us four years to that simpler time.

• 1:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, we thought for the holidays, we could all use a good old-fashioned brain cleanse. Maybe, maybe a little, a little hip wiggle?

• 2:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, a little hip wiggle. Yeah, yeah. A little collar popping.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  A little collar popping.

• 2:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Kind of situation. Yeah, yeah. And without further ado, here's an episode about that girl pointing at the burning building.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Yep, that's what it is.

• 2:29Speaker 05

  I guess she's not really pointing. She's just looking at the camera.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  That's definitely what this episode is.

• 2:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally.

• 2:35Speaker 04

  We hope you enjoy it a lot.

• 2:37Speaker 05

  You won't be surprised at all.

• 2:40Speaker 05

  Enjoy.

• 2:51Speaker 06

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 3:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Eric should be famous, but he's not, really.

• 3:11Speaker 05

  I'm Eric Helwig. My internet persona is Hot Dad, and I make what I describe as emotional comedy music.

• 3:21Amory Sivertson?

  Not famous, should be famous, maybe. His creative output on YouTube is impressive in its own special way, and Eric is kind of a special guy.

• 3:36Speaker 05

  I have these songs that are, you know, I feel like pretty heartfelt about like really stupid topics, but then I just like extremes ultimately.

• 3:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  But none of this, which is great, is why Eric should maybe be famous. He should maybe be famous because he may have had a role in creating something that is one of the most primordial parts of the viral internet as we know it. And when we say primordial, we mean like, without this thing, the idea of things going viral online would be fundamentally different. And Eric was there at the beginning.

• 4:18Amory Sivertson?

  We think. It's hard to tell. There are other theories of how this slice of the internet came about and who invented it. But Eric has a story, and he has a record of what happened. And the timing is intriguing. That's all he's saying.

• 4:33Speaker 05

  I didn't claim to create it. I just claimed that I have documented evidence of me doing it as a prank, you know, months before it became a thing, which, which to me felt like a, obviously a bizarre coincidence.

• 4:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  A bizarre coincidence or the beginning of something. Fifteen years ago, when Eric was a bored college kid in Michigan.

• 4:55Speaker 05

  So like, I'm living at home with my parents and I, all my friends were like, grades below me by that point. I don't know, we were just like, a bunch of, obviously, kids in late teens and stuff, just hanging out and coming up with funny things to say and do and stuff like that.

• 5:11Amory Sivertson?

  One of those funny things to say or do, for Eric and his friends at least, was to make prank calls.

• 5:17Speaker 05

  I mean, it was kind of the classic, you know, I, I hate the jocks thing. And so, we all just kind of grew up in that mindset. And there was this call-in show called The Postgame Show.

• 5:27Speaker 08

  Six seven three, six one zero three, you wanna show your school spirit? Give a shout-out, whatever it is, you're on The Postgame Show.

• 5:33Speaker 06

  Hi.

• 5:34Speaker 05

  Every Friday night after all the games, people would just call in and just be like, my, my son Trevor did great tonight, you know, thank you Trevor. And then, and then they'd say, thanks, thank you for your call, like, just nobody said anything, they'd call in and, you know, like, a bunch of girls would cheer together, you know, they'd say, go, you know, go USA.

• 5:55Speaker 05

  There's this school, this consolidated school district called the Unionville Seabwing area, and it was called USA. So, that was like, our original prank call, was to call in and say, you know, go Soviet Union. Uh, my brother did a call where he was complaining about a pair of khakis that he bought at Kohl's, it was like, stuff like that.

• 6:15Speaker 08

  You're on The Postgame Show.

• 6:17Speaker 06

  Hello, I'm a fortune teller and I see a giant party sub in your future. Goodbye.

• 6:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Eric wasn't usually the prank call antagonist, though.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  I guess I'm too timid to do those kinds of things and that kind of stuff.

• 6:32Amory Sivertson?

  But one night, Eric and his buddies are at his house, and he's up.

• 6:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  And he has this idea. He's been listening to a song on repeat recently. As a musician himself, he's been kind of obsessed with it.

• 6:45Speaker 05

  I was just super fixated on that song at the time. It's like maximum 80s in a way that like a lot of things are, you know, 80s, but that is just like turgid 80s. Like it couldn't be more 80s than that.

• 7:01Speaker 05

  But I just remember I had Winamp open and immediately, you know, hoisting the phone up to the speaker.

• 7:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  If you don't know Winamp, think of it as Spotify in 2006 or something, playing music from your computer. And Eric had this one song that had been on repeat, queued up to what he thought was the key moment.

• 7:22Speaker 05

  So I mean, it's gonna make you understand. And then, then that's when, that's when it kicks in.

• 7:29Speaker 06

  You're on the First Game Show.

• 7:34Speaker 06

  Yeah. Pushing some jams out.

• 7:43Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Amory Sivertson.

• 7:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and you're listening to Endless Threat.

• 7:48Amory Sivertson?

  Coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station.

• 7:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Eric's story is either the evidence of a mild-mannered hot dad unsung hero, chipped tuning away in relative YouTube emotional comedy music obscurity, or the trickery of a pretender to the throne.

• 8:10Amory Sivertson?

  I mean, Eric is a prank caller turned emotional musical comedian. He might not be above claiming falsely to be the inventor of one of the internet's most famous moves. And there are other origin stories.

• 8:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  But this bait and switch move, where you expect something else and you get the booming voice of Rick Astley, became more than a local Michigan sports radio call-in show prank. It became the Rick Roll. Ubiquitous, hilarious, extremely difficult to avoid if you are, as they say, extremely online. And Eric Helwig may be the first Rick Roller of all time.

• 8:48Amory Sivertson?

  Eric's version was audio only, but of course, it's now much more than that. It's a full-on meme, a classic one, usually video edited together. You think you're watching something else, then bam, Rick rolled with the original music video for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." And it pops up in new places and in new ways all the time. Imagine, for instance, a friend sends you an email, or a text, or a chat with a hyperlink to something, an invite to a birthday party, or some other thing you want to click on. You click on the link, expecting info on said birthday party, and instead, you see Rick Astley jogging his arms and singing about how he's not going to desert you.

• 9:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  It feels almost dumb to even have to define this. Like, the Rick roll crosses continents, cultures, generations. But there are people, maybe somewhere in the universe, who have not been Rick rolled? Total dorks, obviously.

• 9:47Amory Sivertson?

  You don't know if I've been Rick rolled?

• 9:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  You've definitely been Rick rolled.

• 9:51Amory Sivertson?

  No, I haven't.

• 9:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm pretty sure you've been Rick rolled.

• 9:55Amory Sivertson?

  No, I confessed to Frank, one of our producers on this show, last week, that I discovered what the Rick roll was, like, last week.

• 10:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, I guess you're about to get, I guess you're about to be Rick rolled, then. There's only two types of people in this world. People who have been Rick rolled and people who don't know they're about to be Rick rolled.

• 10:19Speaker 09

  Yes.

• 10:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  23-year-old Newport, Rhode Island resident Harrison Renshaw, who we're now talking to, has definitely been Rick rolled, even though the math suggests he was about eight years old when the Rick roll started trending. Did you get Rick rolled? Is that how you learned?

• 10:40Speaker 09

  I'm sure I got Rick rolled and didn't understand what it was at the time. That's definitely your first Rick roll, you don't know that you've been Rick rolled.

• 10:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right.

• 10:49Speaker 09

  It's a confusing, who is this? Why is this man in this abandoned house singing this strange song? It was confusing more than anything, I imagine.

• 11:00Amory Sivertson?

  Harrison is also a bit of a YouTuber, albeit much younger than our supposed Rick roll inventor, Eric.

• 11:07Speaker 09

  I am a child of the internet, growing up with YouTube, basically.

• 11:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Harrison is great at going down the rabbit hole on specific topics. Like how the chorus bookends of Old Town Road by Lil Nas X are perfectly designed to convince you to play the song again and again.

• 11:24Amory Sivertson?

  But one of Harrison's biggest obsessions and one of his biggest videos ever traces the history and origins of the Rick roll. It's called the story of the best meme ever, and it includes what he calls the four key events that made the Rick roll blow up.

• 11:39Speaker 09

  Number one, in 2005, there was an episode of It's Always Sunny called Charlie Has Cancer.

• 11:51Speaker 09

  And in that song, Never Gonna Give You Up plays, and the song grew online because of it.

• 11:59Speaker 09

  Number two, in 2006, a Michigan man named Eric Helwig called onto his local radio station, and it was like a sports talk show.

• 12:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  That one we know already.

• 12:09Speaker 09

  And so, number three, in 2006, the creator of the internet forum 4chan, Christopher Poole, who is also known as Moot, created a word filter that replaced the word egg with the word duck.

• 12:23Amory Sivertson?

  This 4chan word filter thing was a silly joke with, what in retrospect, has been a huge impact. Basically, people were talking about egg rolls, and somebody modified the way language appeared on the site to replace the word egg with the word duck. Just a curious little silly piece of software. After the word filter was made, someone made an image of a duck on wheels.

• 12:47Speaker 09

  And then that image became like a popular gag on the site. People would do the whole hyperlink bait and switch where, oh, you think you're going to click something super interesting, but then you just get the picture of the duck roll.

• 13:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ah ha. So there was a roll before the Rick roll, and that was the duck roll?

• 13:07Speaker 09

  That was the duck roll.

• 13:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 13:09Speaker 09

  And so, the final sort of piecing together, the perfect storm, in March of 2007, with the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV being released, there was so much traffic on the site that it crashed. And someone on 4chan used that same method of the duck roll by saying, oh, here's the link to the trailer, but it was Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up.

• 13:36Speaker 06

  Sold people.

• 13:38Speaker 06

  Perhaps here, things will be different.

• 13:45Amory Sivertson?

  Now, we grant you that at the outset, this is just weird, niche internet joke stuff. But these things tend to bubble up. Grand Theft Auto IV is one of the best-selling games of all time. 23 million copies.

• 13:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  And if that game's popularity gets turned into a bait-and-switch joke online by a bunch of people searching for the game trailer, and Rick Astley is where they land, Rick Astley himself is going to have a little spike in popularity, too.

• 14:14Speaker 09

  2008, that is like the year of the Rick roll. That's when it was, while it's always been a thing since its inception, whether it's had ups and downs and whatnot, but 2008 was prime Rick-rolling.

• 14:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  And when Harrison says "prime Rick-rolling", he means like, the Rick roll was basically present in every single big event of the year.

• 14:36Speaker 09

  Uh, there was some sort of survey that was conducted that said that 18 million Americans had been Rick-rolled.

• 14:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  And when you look back at 2008, this is not surprising. Hacktivist group Anonymous was blasting the song out of loudspeakers in front of the Church of Scientology. People at basketball games during March Madness were dressing up as Rick and singing in the audience. Someone made a fake video of then-presidential candidate Senator John McCain getting Rick-rolled at a 2008 presidential campaign event.

• 15:06Speaker 10

  Senator Obama does not.

• 15:14Amory Sivertson?

  And Rick himself, Rick-rolled the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Companies got in on it, too. YouTube had the entire homepage do a bait-and-switch with every video linking back to the video.

• 15:27Speaker 06

  Nah, what? Hey! Oh, fuck off. Oh, for goodness sake! Stop!

• 15:34Amory Sivertson?

  And then, maybe the ultimate troll of 2008, the MTV European Music Awards had a ridiculous award that year for "Best Act Ever". U2, Green Day, Britney Spears, they were all nominees. But you could also write in a candidate. And of course, the internet delivered.

• 15:54Speaker 06

  2008 EMAs, you've been Rick-rolled! The best act ever is Rick Astley!

• 16:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  So it's easy to get a sense from Harrison about how it happened 13 years ago. But why is it still happening? The video just passed a billion views on YouTube and is within the top several hundred videos of all time. For just a simple music video that was made over 30 years ago. Kids who are just kids are rick-rolling each other all the time. Still, like in middle school Google Docs and university links to online coursework. The rick-roll was one of the top posts on Reddit practically last week. In fact, there's a new version among the top posts almost every week.

• 16:41Amory Sivertson?

  In meme years, this should basically be an antiquity. But it's still very much around. How did this granddaddy of internet memes get such staying power?

• 16:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  It can't just be internet chaos theory, right? There has to be more there. There's something irresistible about the song.

• 17:00Amory Sivertson?

  The video too, with its happy dude dancing his butt off in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse, church, bar thing, staring deeply into your eyes. Can you really deny him?

• 17:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  And in this regard, Harrison is kind of like Eric. Are you a fan?

• 17:18Speaker 09

  Of Rick Astley?

• 17:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, have you become a fan?

• 17:21Speaker 09

  Oh, that's an incredible song. That song is wonderful. I'm a huge fan of the song.

• 17:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Why?

• 17:28Speaker 09

  I mean, I'm a big 80s pop music guy anyway. I think the drama and theatrics of it, it's infectious. You want to sing along to it. It makes you feel kind of silly, but that's the charm of it at the same time.

• 17:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  So where did that charm come from? We'll tell you in a minute.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

• 18:20Speaker 11

  Instead of observing the final artifact, instead of observing the final essay or the final program, observe the entire process of creation.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on rethinking academic and job assessment when AI can do the work.

• 18:47Speaker 12

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• 19:21Amory Sivertson?

  In our journey to understand not just how the rickroll came to be, but also why it came to be, Ben and I are now talking to someone who was there when it came to be. Songwriter Mike Stock is telling us about just how good he was in the beginning as a 20-something working musician in the 1970s.

• 19:40Speaker 13

  I was awful. I mean, people would ask me to play songs which I should have known. I remember making a very bad attempt at something and feeling highly embarrassed.

• 19:50Amory Sivertson?

  So Mike Stock realized relatively quickly that he might not make it as a performing musician, but he was actually a good songwriter. So he started a business with a few of his favorite collaborators, Matt Aiken and Pete Waterman. They became known as Stock-Aiken-Waterman. And since it was the 70s, they dabbled in dance music.

• 20:09Speaker 13

  The genre was boy's town. How would you define boy's town? Well, essentially, gay orientated, gay clubs were using the

• 20:20Speaker 13

  They were normally using cheap, cheaply made records, as long as they were set at around 130 beats per minute, got the handclaps and the cowbells on them, which used to set off the sound to lights in all the clubs, so that made it more exciting. And there was a thing called Northern Soul, which came from north of England, which is the same thing. People, people were starting to dance.

• 20:50Speaker 13

  I mean, one of the songs, the opening lines of one of our number one songs in the UK by Mel and Kim is, it's our occupation, we're a dancing nation. And that's, that's what I thought we were aiming at.

• 21:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Stock Aitken Waterman were getting work in the Boys Town genre, but they weren't getting it on the radio yet, really. The way to popularity and more work with more artists was to have one of your records go big in the dance clubs.

• 21:21Amory Sivertson?

  Which started happening with Stock and his partners in the early 1980s, starting with a band called Dead or Alive.

• 21:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  And then they were off to the races, right? Straight to the top from there on out?

• 21:36Speaker 13

  Well, obviously having your first number one was a great, yeah, that was a big thrill. But the main thing that happened was that the phones stopped ringing.

• 21:47Amory Sivertson?

  There are a lot of ways to explain this, but Mike kind of boils it down to one theory. More underground artists they'd been working with thought they'd gone fully mainstream. And the mainstream thought-

• 21:57Speaker 13

  All they can do is that dastardly, high-energy gay music. Or-

• 22:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Interesting, yeah.

• 22:03Speaker 13

  You know, that's, that's the way it is.

• 22:04Amory Sivertson?

  So, the recently supposedly wildly successful songwriting trio Stock Aitken Waterman got a little concerned.

• 22:12Speaker 13

  There's me, Matt and Pete sitting in our studio saying, well, what we're gonna do next? We're number one. Well, let's invent something. Let's do something now.

• 22:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  What they did is start to work with unknowns. Backup singers and a kid who had just started interning at their working studio, apprenticing, was it a fellowship? Mike had a specific phrase.

• 22:33Speaker 13

  Tea boy. He got my sandwiches. You know, I know he doesn't like that, but we, we were waiting-

• 22:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  A tea boy?

• 22:40Speaker 13

  Yeah, we were waiting for the opportunity to work with him.

• 22:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Great name.

• 22:43Speaker 13

  So Pete, oh, I do not know what that is. Sorry. Two nations separated by a common tongue, that's us, is it?

• 22:51Amory Sivertson?

  The kid was from northern England. He was a kid still, just a teenager. And he looked way younger than he even was, like a minimum of five years younger.

• 23:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mike's songwriting partner Pete had seen the kid perform in a band. Didn't like the band, liked the kid. Invited him down to be a studio assistant. And one day, they said, hey, let's give the T-Boy a chance at doing a song. They were planning on having him just do a cover of Ain't Too Proud to Beg. But then the T-Boy, whose name was Rick, stepped up to the musical plate.

• 23:26Speaker 13

  When I got him on the mic and started to listen to what he was and who he was, I thought, this guy's too good for this. I was absolutely amazed. I mean, the voice that came out of him didn't sort of match his look.

• 23:40Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 23:41Speaker 13

  And it is a strong, powerful voice he's got.

• 23:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  It is a little hard to overstate this incongruence. If you have been Rick-rolled, you know what we're talking about. Whatever you think the owner of this voice looks like.

• 24:00Amory Sivertson?

  He doesn't. He looks like a svelte 14-year-old still wet behind the ears. So the voice, which is already kind of magic, is extra magic.

• 24:09Speaker 13

  So at that point, I'd say to Matt and Pete, look, we should write him a song.

• 24:14Amory Sivertson?

  So they did. Mike Stock wrote the music, Waterman suggested the title. All three of them built the lyrics around the music and they recorded it.

• 24:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  But Rick didn't have a label to put it out. And in the interim, it got briefly sidelined by other projects, including at least one more song you have definitely heard before.

• 24:38Amory Sivertson?

  Things got busy for the songwriting trio. Months went by. Then, one day.

• 24:44Speaker 13

  I tell you how it worked. I came into the studio, as was my sort of routine, at 11 o'clock one morning. And one of the guys in the office, in our promotions office, was playing the song because it'd been given to the office on a cassette or something. And I came upstairs and I thought, bloody hell, that sounds good. I hadn't listened to it for two months. I thought, jeez, that sounds great. And he's playing it loud, this guy in the office. And as I'm coming out up the stairs, Pete Wardsmen's coming down the stairs, and we both stop and look at each other. We both go, blimey, what are we doing with this record? Why haven't we got this thing out? So that was the kicker for us. We suddenly heard it, as it were, out of the blue, without being deeply involved with it.

• 25:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  If you were to identify the key distinctive genetic code of the song, like the thing that makes the song, what is the thing?

• 25:49Speaker 13

  Well, I mean, in a simple sense, the sentiment is understandable. We always made the vocals proud, proud of the track, you know, loud enough to hear every single word. But on a musical level, because the chorus, we're in D, but the chorus goes into G. And if you were to play these chords now on the piano, you'll get the gist of it. You hold the chord G, and then you hold the bass of G, but you move the triad up a tone to A. So you get that tension, and that creates a real, for me, I love it, it's a musical tension, that you have to resolve somehow, in our case, by going to the F-sharp minor

• 26:32Speaker 13

  and then to the B minor. And then we will resolve the second time round, not to the B minor, but to the D major. So it's a structure of chords, which, incidentally, subsequent to us writing it, I have heard on half a dozen hit songs.

• 26:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  It may be true that Never Gonna Give You Up does have a particular formula that makes it work musically, or that the surprising nature of Asli's voice, coupled with his baby face in the mid 1980s, has given the song mysterious properties that have kept it in the ether this long, loved by people like Eric and Harrison, who were born full decades after the song was a hit.

• 27:10Amory Sivertson?

  The music video definitely has something to do with it. Rick's casual shimmying, seemingly made up on the spot. The weird, empty warehouse he's in, the outfits, double-breasted jacket over a small collared sweater, trench coat, black jeans, black turtleneck, a full-on Canadian tuxedo.

• 27:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  But the singer himself, even with a number-one hit in the US of A, did not stick around at the top. Here's Rick Roll YouTube historian Harrison again.

• 27:38Speaker 09

  So this is where it gets a little strange. Rick would make, or he would sell millions of records. He had a Grammy nomination. He collabed with Ellen John. And he was, like, rich and famous by 24. But then, around that time, or a little bit after, he got really sick of the industry and didn't want all the fame. Everything was sort of too much for him. He was having this existential crisis. He wanted to raise his family, and so he called it quits.

• 28:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  The never-gonna-give-you-up guy gave it up. He seems to have been the rarest of rarities, a purposeful one-hit wonder.

• 28:21Amory Sivertson?

  Lies. He had more than one hit.

• 28:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, two-hit wonder. Still, he made his mark, and then he kind of tapped out.

• 28:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  And the rest is internet history, or rather, music history, which eventually became internet history, because of a kid doing prank calls in Michigan.

• 28:50Amory Sivertson?

  Or a bunch of shit posters on 4chan.

• 28:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Or an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

• 28:56Amory Sivertson?

  Or all of these things.

• 28:58Speaker 14

  It reminds me of this thing in evolution called convergent evolution.

• 29:01Amory Sivertson?

  This guy gets it. He's part of our meme chorus. Remember our meme chorus?

• 29:10Speaker 14

  My name is Don Caldwell. I'm the editor in chief of Know Your Meme, which is the world's largest internet culture encyclopedia and database.

• 29:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Don has looked really closely at the origin of the Rick Roll meme since its inception, which is how he got the convergent evolution thing in his head.

• 29:27Speaker 14

  They're like these like green tree snakes, for example, across around the world. They don't, they aren't related to each other at all, but they look like the exact same animal. They got the same characteristics, they, they same coloration, same like, you know, morphology. It's just really interesting to me that that that might have happened here with, with the Rick Roll. It might have evolved independently twice. It might have been born two separate times without being connected to each other, which is just wild.

• 29:56Amory Sivertson?

  The song is just that good. It's just, just that special.

• 30:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's right.

• 30:02Speaker 14

  It really is.

• 30:03Amory Sivertson?

  Don says there's something extra special about this granddaddy meme. It connects back to Eric Helwig's prank call in Michigan.

• 30:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  He says the Rick Roll is really the first truly mainstream version of this specific genre of meme.

• 30:18Speaker 14

  A bait and switch, you know, tricking someone into clicking a link or viewing something that they didn't intend to is a characteristic that is just a winner when it comes to memes. And we've seen it time and time again. It's probably one of the most tried and true types of memes that continue to appear every year.

• 30:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's not just the bait and switch, though. It's what you're getting when the switch happens, which Harrison talked a bit about, too.

• 30:44Speaker 09

  I think the thing that makes it so universal and beloved is that it's very, very harmless. It's something that is purely fun. Nobody ever gets hurt.

• 30:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's a prank, but it's not a mean prank, really.

• 30:59Speaker 09

  I completely agree. That's what I'm getting at, is that

• 31:04Speaker 09

  nobody, I don't think, has ever had extreme amounts of malice Rick-rolling somebody. It's always from love.

• 31:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right, or felt it getting Rick-rolled, right? Because it's like, oh, I'm gonna pull a prank on you and, and, and make you kind of want to dance a little bit and be happy.

• 31:23Speaker 09

  Exactly. What a nice, beautiful thing that we can do to one another.

• 31:30Amory Sivertson?

  Really, the question is, how does Rick feel about it? What does it feel like to be, maybe not the butt of a joke, but the punchline?

• 31:39Speaker 15

  It's, I mean, I'll be honest, I find it difficult sometimes because I am the Rick in Rick Rowling, so that is a bit weird, if I'm honest, when I see it in print or see it, whatever. And I think, yeah.

• 31:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, we did. You know, we had to. We had to get Rick. He still looks youthful. A little more craggy here and there, sure. You might say he's grown into that voice, but he's a true gem of a guy.

• 32:06Amory Sivertson?

  Even if he does have some mixed feelings about his resurgence.

• 32:09Speaker 15

  Yeah, it, I can't, it's weird that. And listen, I'm not making it into a bigger thing than it is. I'm just saying, it just, it comes up in conversation a lot in my life, obviously, and therefore it's just a bit weird, you know?

• 32:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  What motivated you to get into music?

• 32:23Speaker 15

  I'm not particularly, well, I am sort of from a musical family in a way. My mom always played the piano. I didn't actually live with my mom. My mom and dad divorced. I'm the youngest of, they had five kids, but one passed away before I was born. And my dad had a great voice, but he never did anything with it. He used to sing around, you know, the house and the streets of the little town I'm from. But I don't think that was my introduction to music at all. My introduction to music, to be honest, if I'm going to be really flat out honest about it, was getting out of the home that I lived in. I was brought up by my dad. And I don't think my dad was a very happy camper, to be honest. And they'd been through a lot, obviously, losing a child is the most devastating thing I think anybody can go through as parents. And I think, you know, I just, I just don't

• 33:07Speaker 15

  think there was a lot of sunshine, really. And I think music caught me really early where I just thought, this is a joyful place to be. And I think from that moment, that was it, really. I just wanted to, I kind of wanted to get out of the small town that I was from. But it wasn't the town. I think it was my home upbringing, if I'm really honest. I just wanted to find some light somewhere else, do you know what I mean?

• 33:30Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. One good thing about Rick's hometown, though, is that, according to Rick, Pete Waterman was dating a woman there. And on one of his visits to go see her, he ended up in a club where Rick Astley's band was playing. And as we said before, he liked what he heard. Not the band, just Rick.

• 33:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, we heard it. We did hear a rumor. Maybe it's not a rumor, but we did talk to Mike. And he-

• 33:53Speaker 15

  Oh, to Mike Stock, you mean?

• 33:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, sir.

• 33:55Speaker 15

  Oh, wow. Fantastic.

• 33:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  And he actually described you, and he, his words, not ours, he described you as being a tea boy in the, uh, in the studio. Um, is that accurate?

• 34:06Speaker 15

  It is accurate, and there's truth to that. And, and I ended up living at his flat, which was pretty, pretty bizarre because I'm kind of living in the boss's flat. But I'm also making tea for Dead or Alive while they're making the album that's got to spin me around on it.

• 34:21Amory Sivertson?

  Rick, of course, would soon get his own hit.

• 34:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Did you like the song immediately?

• 34:26Speaker 15

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it, and I can say that with, with all modesty because I didn't write it. So I'm not saying, hey, it's a great song and, you know. I think it sort of slips people by sometimes because of the whole internet side of that, what's happened with that song. I don't think sometimes people realize how great it actually is as a crafted pop song. Do you know what I mean? It's, it's, um, and I can say that, like I say, because I didn't write it, I didn't produce it. I just sang the goddamn thing.

• 34:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, we have some good news for you, I think, which is that like, a lot of the people that we have talked, and we have talked to a lot of people about the song. And some of them are people who are very much of the internet generation. They're digital natives. They're people who never would have discovered it. Probably, except for the internet. I think they agree with you. They think that the song is special beyond the sort of virality, uh, that it's found online, at least in their eyes and in the way that they're imagining it.

• 35:23Speaker 15

  Well, that's, that's very nice to hear. Very nice to hear. I mean, we, we're lucky enough now that I've sort of moved into this area, I guess, where I'm allowed to play festivals. Don't usually close one. But I get, I get to, but I get to play in the afternoon, you know, and that's, that's, I just think I've got lucky really, and I think it's a lucky turn of events. And my wife and I have, have sat on balconies in hotel rooms and sat on beaches with a glass of rosé and looked at a sunset and said, how did we get here? And, and we never stopped doing that.

• 35:59Amory Sivertson?

  What do you remember about the making of the music video? Because the music video is a big part of the ongoing internet admiration.

• 36:08Speaker 15

  To be honest, without the video, it wouldn't have become what it's become, if you like, in that little small pocket it's got on the internet. Because obviously that's the world that we live in and have lived in now for 20 odd years. Is that everything is, every sort of music that you can think of is kind of visual as well. So, um, the shooting of the video was like, I mean, it's the first video I ever did. I had no idea what was going on. So when we come to do the video, I turned up with a bag of clothes, yes, a raincoat, that was mine. You know, stripy t-shirt, chinos and a blazer, baby, that's me.

• 36:42Speaker 15

  The turtleneck, the double denim, it's all me, baby. No stylist was involved.

• 36:46Amory Sivertson?

  The dance moves, all yours?

• 36:48Speaker 15

  Well, yeah, the dance moves, I've said this before many times, it's actually fear. If you look at me, most of my little sort of moment through that four or five years, if you actually look at me carefully, I'm just terrified. And ironically, all these years later, that sort of still kind of sits right with people. It's just, in that context, you know, the Rick Roll thing, it's like, if I was super suave and this, that and the other and looked, you know, I don't know, you know, like a sex symbol style thing in that video, it just wouldn't work.

• 37:22Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 37:22Speaker 15

  I'm just like this 20-year-old, whatever I was, 21-year-old dude who looks 12 years old. Who came to a video shoot with his own clothes in a bag.

• 37:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  Can you tell us a little bit more how you really feel about the Rick Roll?

• 37:38Speaker 15

  Um, I'm sort of detached from it and I think it's the only way to be about it. Our daughter, when it first started to kick off and things were happening and there was a thing about, MTV, um, wanted me to accept an award for some, whatever, I can't remember what it was.

• 37:54Amory Sivertson?

  Best act ever, is what it was.

• 37:56Speaker 15

  Which is ludicrous and I think what they thought, I think they thought they would be ironic and funny, putting me in that category with U2 and Christina Aguilera and whoever else was in that category. So, you can imagine, I said, "No, thanks, I'm not coming, you can keep your award, it's okay." But the point being... Our daughter, who as I say was a teenager, said, look, you do realize it hasn't really got anything to do with you. And the way she said it just hit me like a ton of bricks, but in a really great way. And that was like, it was like just sort of going, just, just seeing it in a different way and saying, she's absolutely right. It could have been Dave Roll, Brian Roll, you know, Mary Roll, any role you like.

• 38:37Speaker 15

  Somebody just, somebody just chose my video and that song. It could have been anybody's. So I think from that moment, I've always just viewed it and said, you know what, anything positive towards, you know, my little world coming out of it, I'll take.

• 38:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  And that, that makes sense. And I, and I also want to say again, like, I think that one of the things that's interesting to me is you described where you came from. And looking for fundamentally a happy place to be. And I think that what's interesting about the Rick Roll to me is that the internet is a dark and toxic place many days of the week, right?

• 39:15Speaker 15

  Yeah.

• 39:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  But like, the Rick Roll really like shines as a light in a really dark place because it is this thing that has that edge to it that the internet has of like pulling a prank or hacking somebody or tricking somebody, et cetera. But the end of it is, is you singing this great song that everybody loves, you know, and there's Creating that joy that you talked about. Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 15

  Yeah. Well, well, you know what, you've kind of, you've kind of sort of put a good spin on, on, on the thought process of that, I guess, in the sense that when I was a kid, like you say, there was a black cloud in our house that just was. And I've been searching to kind of, you know, I'm going down metaphors now, but you know, just get rid of it and just do so. And I, and I kind of think as cheesy as that video is, and it's kind of like cheesy and naff sometimes the eighties can be and they can look. There is also, if you can just get past that kind of like what's cool, what's not cool, then you just see it for just being fun. Do you know what I mean? And kind of like, and I think that's, I think I've always searched for that.

• 40:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Thank you, Rick. Thank you so much. Your time. It's been, it's been lovely.

• 40:25Speaker 15

  Thank you. Pleasure. Absolute pleasure.

• 40:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  It might be that Rick would bristle a bit at the idea that he, like Eric, our prank caller at the beginning, has, simply put, created emotional comedy music.

• 40:46Amory Sivertson?

  But having his song turned into a meme has brought joy into the world in a way it never would have otherwise, right? And virality itself online at least would probably look different if not for the OG bait and switch of the Rick roll. And as Harrison puts it-

• 41:03Speaker 09

  I mean, I feel like, not to try to get overly pretentious about some of the dumbest jokes that you can find online, but memes are the future.

• 41:16Amory Sivertson?

  Harrison means the future of communication online. And the Rick roll is a great example. It's still morphing. In 2020, while everyone was in lockdown, a whole new generation of people started flipping the script on the meme. They started Rick-rolling themselves for reaction videos. The Rick roll rolls on.

• 41:37Speaker 16

  Rick Isley, man, he's buggying, he said-

• 41:39Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, brother. He smoothed over these dancers.

• 41:42Speaker 06

  That voice is on 10. Oh my gosh.

• 41:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Maybe you were one of these people, searching in a terrible time for something funny on the internet. Or maybe you, like me, already know the Rick roll. It's this part of the internet you tip your hat to when you come across it, as a sign of respect or something. Hello, old friend. Glad you're still around to give me a chuckle, considering, you know, everything.

• 42:08Amory Sivertson?

  But whatever it is, it's great. And Rick's great. And someday, you can Rick-roll your grandkids. Maybe. Maybe they'll Rick-roll you first.

• 42:18Speaker 16

  You know, in this video, we're gonna be reacting to Rick Isley. Forgive me if I say his name wrong. Never gonna give up. Never gonna give you up. That's the name of this video. Never heard this video before. So without further ado, let's get into it.

• 42:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Next up, more Rick.

• 42:40Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, we have some bonus content for you in this series already, because we had a lot of extra conversations with meme people while we were reporting this series, and some of them were just too good not to share with you. Our first bonus episode is popping into your feed in a few days. It's a longer conversation with the Rick in Rick Roll.

• 43:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  After that, we'll hear about a bizarro meme involving a cat eating a salad that brought a lot of people mirth online, but to the human featured in the meme, the moment was much more serious. This could get me killed. You know, this is not just reality TV drama. This is my real life. We'll tell that story and much more in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

• 43:31Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

• 43:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  You should 100% be joining our email list if you want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content, pictures of Amory's keyboard, or my keyboard cat. Do that by going to wbur.org/endlessthread.

• 43:49Amory Sivertson?

  Also, we really, really, really want to know your nomination for the best, most real, or most underrated meme. Call us, 857-244-0338. Or better yet, record a voice memo and email it to [email protected]. We just might dive into the meme you tell us about, and we might use your voicemail in the show.

• 44:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Our meme series would be very Hello Fellow Kids without the help of our meme chorus. Singer is in that chorus. Joan Donovan is research director at the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center.

• 44:25Amory Sivertson?

  Sarah Laola teaches about digital culture and design at Coastal Carolina University.

• 44:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Gianluca Stringgini studies online security, disinformation, and hate speech at Boston University.

• 44:37Amory Sivertson?

  Amanda Brennan has the extremely cool title of internet librarian.

• 44:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  Kenyatta Cheese co-founded the website Know Your Meme, and Don Caldwell is editor in chief.

• 44:47Amory Sivertson?

  Please go find their work and benefit from their meme genius.

• 44:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  Our series and our show is made by producers Nora Sacks and Dean Russell. We are co-hosted by us, Ben Brock Johnson.

• 44:58Amory Sivertson?

  And Anne Marie Stevenson.

• 44:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  This episode was edited by Maureen McMurray.

• 45:02Amory Sivertson?

  Mix and sound design by Matt Reed.

• 45:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  The music box cover of Never Gonna Give You Up is from the YouTube channel R3 Music Box. Original music for this episode that is not "Da na na na na na na" or another song you recognize came from APM Music or was an original composition by Matt Reed.

• 45:23Amory Sivertson?

  Special thanks to and additional production work from Josh Crane, Grace Tatter, Frank Hernandez, Kristin Torres, Sophie Codner, and Rachel Carlson. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities and the dirt pile.

• 45:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, we're, you know, we live on the dirt pile.

• 45:43Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, sure. If you've got an untold history or an unsolved mystery or some other wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. Email [email protected].

• 45:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  See you on the dirt pile.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts. And listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, Executive Director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education.

• 46:31Speaker 17

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context.

• 46:36Speaker 06

  And just to explain why you're excited about it.

• 46:38Speaker 17

  Oh, my gosh, individualized support, right? Personalization and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities, for example, speakers of different languages, there are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in because it is very different depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

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