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Rick Astley's career entered a second act when his music video for "Never Gonna Give You Up," grew into an internet meme, and he continues to embrace the success by recreating the iconic video for a California State Automobile Association Insurance Group advertisement.
The English songwriter, 56, appeared in a near-exact recreation of the original 1987 music video released by the CSAA to YouTube on Monday, save for backing dancers wearing AAA merchandise. In the video, one polo-clad dancer checks off a list on a white board that notably tells viewers all the things insurance will never do to them.
Astley remains similar to his 1987 counterpart across three different backdrops and costumes that resemble the sets from the original music video, which appear together on a four-pronged Zoom meeting one AAA employee watches.
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"Is this still a thing?" Astley asks the other versions of himself, all revealed to be on stage together, after he views the commercial on a phone as the video wraps up with AAA insurance dancers jamming out all around them.
Re-creating the original music video "has been an amazing trip down memory lane," Astley said in a statement. "The song has been so good to me, and I'm thrilled to be working with another iconic brand that has certainly stood the test of time."
"Never Gonna Give You Up," originally released as a single when Astley was 21, turned 35 years old on July 27, and Astley made sure to honor the number in a Twitter post he wrote on its birthday.
"'Never Gonna Give You Up' is 35 years old today!" Astley wrote on Twitter in July. "If it was a person it would be old enough to be President according to US law!
"It's really got a life of it's own at this point & I just appreciate all the love, fun & laughter that surrounds it!" Astley added. "Here's to the next 35! Rick."
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As of Friday, the official "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video has been viewed more than 1.2 billion times on YouTube, boosted into internet fame in the 2000s as "Rickrolling" grew into a phenomenon.
This year, Astley has played the song on tour with New Kids on the Block, Salt-N-Peppa and En Vogue.
"Listen, let's face it, 'Never Gonna Give You Up' has sort of become something else," he told the Associated Press in June. "The video and the song have drifted off into the ether and become something else, and I'm ever so grateful for it."
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In 2016, Astley told PEOPLE that he first learned of "Rickrolling" when someone pranked him with the music video for the first time.
"A friend of mine Rick-Rolled me a couple of times, and I didn't really know what he was doing. I just thought he was being an idiot," he told PEOPLE. "I just kept thinking, 'What is this idiot doing? This is just not amusing. I don't really know what's going on.' So we eventually got on the phone and he explained it to me."
Even with an explanation, it took some time to sink in. "To be honest, I still didn't really get it. It took a few weeks for me to grasp."
Rick Astley burst onto the pop scene in the late ’80s, seemingly out of nowhere. The earnest, feel-good vibes of his debut single, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” clinched the No. 1 spot in 25 countries, including the US and the UK. Soon after, a 21-year-old Astley found stardom on a global stage that endured across eight Top 10 singles and millions of records sold.
Despite finding success with a number of tracks, it is undoubtedly “Never Gonna Give You Up” that has stood the test of time. Two decades after its release, the song “rickrolled” its way back into the public consciousness in the mid-2000s. Today, the internet meme is still going strong, and subsequently so is “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
The track itself has amassed over 500 million streams and 1.2 billion views on YouTube. Clearly, a sizable portion of the world is familiar with this Astley track, but do they know the story behind the song? Let’s look into the meaning behind “Never Gonna Give You Up” below.
Origins
“Never Gonna Give You Up” was written and produced by the hit factory of songwriting, Stock Aitken Waterman. The trio created a number of hits for Bananarama, Kylie Minogue, and Sinitta. Pete Waterman spotted Astley singing in a soul band and brought him into the studio to make tea for the other artists while they worked out what song to give him.
Inspired by the syncopated bassline from Colonel Abrams’ 1985 hit “Trapped,” Waterman claims they wrote the entire thing in just three minutes, but in a 2017 interview with The Guardian, his co-writer Mike Stock said, “He’s lying… It all took a couple of months to get there.”
Behind the Lyrics
The lyrics fell into place after Astley overheard a besotted Waterman on the phone with a girlfriend. Astley apparently joked with the producer, “You’re never gonna give her up.” They worked the story around a bit and made Astley the one who was laying it all bare, but the general meaning behind the idea was still intact.
Right from the opening lines, it’s clear that Astley wants to put his devotion out on the table. He then rattles off a “car salesmen-Esque” pitch in the chorus, relaying a series of promises to the object of his affection. The chorus has become iconic and gone on to inspire a number of memes.
We’re no strangers to love
You know the rules and so do I
A full commitment’s what I’m thinking of
You wouldn’t get this from any other guy
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Rickrolling
Odds are if you’ve been on the internet for a fair few years you’ve come across a rickroll at least once.
The internet phenomenon grew out of a prank on the obscure anime fan pages on the website 4chan. In 2006, the site’s moderator ran a word filter replacing every use of the word “egg” with “duck.” As a result, a thread about “eggroll” became “duckroll.” One contributor took the joke one step further by posting a “bait and switch” hyperlink that promised unrelated content but instead took visitors to a picture of a duck on wheels.
The following year, one user began using Astley’s video for “Never Gonna Give You Up” instead of the duck image and the trick took off like wildfire on the internet. Links were popping up left and right, taking visitors on a surprise journey to Astley hand jiving in a tan trench coat.
In April of 2008, Youtube itself got involved, redirecting an estimated 6 million web surfers who clicked on its featured videos towards Astley’s music video. The song’s feel-good nature translated well into the light-hearted joke. Although the earworm melody does burrow deep into the brain.