Never Gonna Give You Up

"Never Gonna Give You Up" is a 1987 hit song, written and produced by Stock Aitken Waterman, and performed by the English pop singer Rick Astley. Its genre has been described as dance pop and blue-eyed soul. It's considered Astley's signature song.

History
In 2007, the song became a meme on the 4chan imageboard under the name of "Rickroll" or "Rick Roll" (a portmanteau of Rick Astley and an older 4chan meme "Duckroll"). Like Duckroll, Rickroll was a bait-and-switch trolling meme: one would post a link that purportedly lead to something interesting or sensational but would instead link to the "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video. In 2008, about a year after its conception, the meme became so widespread that it went mainstream, with major news outlets and celebrities arriving late to the party.

From there, the meme continued to be popular to the point of becoming one of the most widely-known parts of internet culture. Although the meme is obviously far past its peak nowadays, this still holds true due to how popular it was in the past making it easy to recognize. It's also seen as nostalgic for long-time memers due to its age.

Rips
As the bait-and-switch nature of the Rickroll meme is somewhat similar to that of high quality rips, it was only natural that SiIvaGunner paid homage to it. However, "Never Gonna Give You Up" never became more than a minor meme on the channel, since SiIva prefers to either create his own memes or use SoundCloud-specific ones, rather than mainstream memes like Rickroll.

"Never Gonna Give You Up" can usually be found in medley rips, but it has also been featured as the main rip joke a few times. During the Unregistered HyperCam 2 Takeover, the meme became a little more prominent and was featured in 6 rips.

Links

 * Wikipedia on Never Gonna Give You Up
 * Wikipedia on Rickrolling
 * KnowYourMeme on Rickroll
 * KnowYourMeme on Duckroll
 * Rick Astley talks about Rickrolling via Rolling Stone
 * Rick Astley talks about SiIvaGunner via LA Times