Rick Astley

Astley was born on 6 February 1966 in Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire, the fourth child of his family. His parents divorced when he was five and Astley was brought up by his father Horace Astley.^[11] Astley remained in very close contact with his mother Cynthia Astley, who lived a few streets away from his father. After finding out that his father was the one who kicked his mother out of the house, Astley distanced himself from his father.^[12] When he was 10 years old, Astley began singing in a local church choir, which began his love of music.^[13]

During his schooldays, Astley formed and played the drums in a number of local bands, where he met guitarist David Morris.^[3][14] After leaving school at sixteen, Astley was employed during the day as a driver in his father's market-gardening business and played drums on the Northern club circuit at night in bands such as Give Way – specialising in covering Beatles and Shadows songs – and FBI, which won several local talent competitions.^[13]

Rickroll
In 2007,^[73] Astley became the subject of a viral Internet meme known as rickrolling. The meme is a type of bait and switch using a disguised hyperlink that leads to the Never Gonna Give you Up music video. When victims click on a seemingly unrelated link, the site with the music video loads instead of what was expected, and in doing so they are said to have been "Rickrolled". The meme has also extended to using the song's lyrics in unexpected places. The meme gained mainstream attention in 2008 through several publicized events, particularly when YouTube used it on its 2008 April Fools' Day event.^[74] Rickrolling saw a massive resurgence online in the early 2020s. In online classes on Zoom during the worldwide COVID-19 lockdown, students often rickrolled their classmates and teachers.^[75] A 4K remaster of the "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video went viral in early 2021.^[76][77]

Initially, Astley, who had only recently returned to performing after a 10-year hiatus, was hesitant about using his newfound popularity from the meme to further his career, but accepted the fame when he Rickrolled the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with a surprise performance of the song. Since then, Astley has seen his performance career revitalised by the meme's popularity. In an interview, Astley stated that one of his favourite Rickroll videos is "BarackRoll", a rickroll featuring clips from rallies by Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign, edited to make it look as though he is singing "Never Gonna Give You Up".^{[78][79][80][81]}

Astley himself has been rickrolled a few times; in fact, the first time he was rickrolled actually pre-dated the viral phenomenon. In an interview with Larry King, Astley stated that the first time he fell for the prank was through an email his friend sent him during the early 2000s.^[82] On a Reddit post in June 2020, a user claimed to have met Astley backstage when they were 12 years old, but the user posted a link to the song instead of a picture verifying the encounter. Astley later confirmed he had been tricked into clicking the link.^[83][84] The post became the most upvoted post of 2020 on Reddit.^[85]