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Usually... nobody — they're ma too quickly and anilly. In the se of one of the most famo ba-and-swch mem of all time, the "Rick Roll," we may be lookg at somethg experts ll nvergent evolutn. Did the Rick Roll origate wh a piece of on the msage board 4Chan, or wh a prank ll to a lol sports show Michigan? And why do the Rick Roll have such stayg power? Is dified the DNA of the song self?</p><p class="">We explore the meme’s orig, the history of the song, "Never Gonna Give You Up," and s impact on both ter ers durg COVID-19 and on the performer himself.</p><p class=""><strong>Show not:</strong></p><span><ul> <li>The five, <a href=">mt-read</a>, plete, prehensive history of the Rick Roll</li> <li>Erik Helwig's <a href=">mic</a></li> <li>Harrison Renshaw's vio, "<a href=">The Story of the Bt Meme EVER</a>"</li></ul></span><span><h2>Full Transcript:</h2></span><p class=""><em>This ntent was origally created for d. The transcript has been eded om our origal script for clary. Heads up that some elements (i.e. mic, sound effects, tone) are harr to translate to text. </em></p><p class="">Ben Brock Johnson: Erik should be famo. But he’s not. Really.</p><p class=""><b>Erik Helwig: I'm Erik Helwig. My ter persona is <a href=">Hot Dad</a>, and I make what I scribe as emotnal edy mic.</b></p><p class="">Amory Sivertson: Not famo. Should be famo? Maybe. His creative output on youtube is imprsive s own special way. And Erik is kd of a special guy.</p><p class=""><b>[(sgs) "CHILDREN LOVE THE MEAT TANK. CHILDREN LOVE THE MEAT TANK. OOOO"]</b></p><p class=""><b>Erik: I have the songs that are, you know, I feel like pretty heartfelt about like really stupid topics. And, you know, like like I jt like extrem ultimately. </b></p><p class="">Ben: But none of this–which is great!–is why Erik should maybe be famo. He should maybe be famo bee he may have had a role creatg somethg that is one of the primordial parts of the viral ter as we know . And when we say primordial, we mean like, whout this thg… the ia of thgs gog viral onle would be fundamentally different. And Erik was there at the begng.</p><p class="">Amory: We thk. Look. It’s hard to tell. There are other theori of how this slice of the ter me about and who vented . But Erik has a story, and he has a rerd of what happened, and the timg is trigug. That’s all he’s sayg.</p><p class=""><b>Erik: I didn't claim to create . I jt claim that I have documented evince of me dog as a prank, you know, months before beme a thg, which which to me felt like a obvly a bizarre cince.</b></p><p class="">Ben: A bizarre cince. Or the begng of somethg. 15 years ago. When Erik was a bored llege kid Michigan.</p><p class=""><b>Erik: I'm livg at home wh my parents and I all my iends were like gras below me by that pot. I don't know, we were jt like a bunch of obvly kids late teens and stuff jt hangg out and g up wh funny thgs to say and do and stuff like that.</b></p><p class="">Amory: One of those funny thgs to say or do, for Erik and his iends at least, was to make prank lls.</p><p class=""><b>Erik: I mean, was kd of the classic, you know, I hate the jocks thg. And so we all jt kd of grew up that mdset. And there was this ll- show lled the postgame show.</b></p><p class=""><b>Erik: Every Friday night, after all the gam,</b><b> people would jt ll and jt be like, "my son Trevor did great tonight, you know, thank you, Trevor." And then and then they'd say, "thank you for your ll." Like, jt nobody said anythg. They'd ll and, you know, like a bunch of girls would cheer together, you know, they'd say, go, you know, go USA. </b></p><p class=""><b>Erik: There's this school, this nsolidated school district lled the Unnville Sebrg area, and was lled the USA. So that was like our origal prank ll was to ll and say, you know, “go Soviet Unn.” Uh, my brother did a ll where he was plag about a pair of khakis that he bought at Kohl's. It was stuff like that. </b></p><p class="">Ben: Erik wasn’t ually the prank ll antagonist though.</p><p class=""><b>Erik:</b> <b>I gus I'm too timid to do those kds of thgs and that kd of stuff.</b></p><p class="">Amory: But one night, Erik and his buddi are at his hoe, and he’s up.</p><p class="">Ben: And he has this ia. He’s been listeng to a song on repeat recently. As a mician himself, he’s been kda obssed wh .</p><p class=""><b>Erik: I was jt super fixated on that song at the time. It's like maximum '80s a way that, like a lot of thgs are, you know, '80s. But that is jt like turgid '80s. Like uldn't be more '80s than that. But I jt remember I had </b><a href="><b>Wamp</b></a><b> open up and immediately, you know, hoistg the phone up to the speaker.</b></p><p class="">Ben: If you don’t know Wamp, thk of as Spotify 2006 or somethg: playg mic om your puter. And Erik had this one song that had been on repeat, cued up to what he thought was the key moment.</p><p class=""><b>Erik: So, I mean ’s “gonna make you unrstand!” And then that's when kicks .</b></p><p class="">Amory: I’m Amory Sivertson.</p><p class="">Ben: I’m Ben Brock Johnson. And you’re listeng to Endls Thread.</p><p class="">Amory: Comg to you om WBUR. Boston’s NPR Statn.</p><p class="">Ben: Erik’s story is eher the evince of a d-mannered <a href=">Hot Dad</a> unsung hero chip-tung away relative <a href=">YouTube</a> emotnal edy mic obscury or the trickery of a pretenr to the throne.</p><p class="">Amory: I mean Erik is a prank ller turned emotnal mil edian. He might not be above claimg falsely to be the ventor of one of the ter’s most famo mov. And there are other orig stori.</p><p class="">Ben: But this ba and swch move, where you expect somethg else and you get the boomg voice of Rick Astley, beme more than a lol Michigan sports rad ll show prank. It beme the Rick Roll. Ubiquo, hilar, extremely difficult to avoid if you are, as they say, extremely onle. And Erik Helwig may the first Rick Roller of all time.</p><p class="">Amory: Erik’s versn was d only. But of urse, ’s now much more than that. It’s a full on meme, a classic one, ually vio eded together. You thk you’re watchg somethg else then… <em>bam</em>: Rick Rolled, wh the <a href=">origal mic vio</a> for Rick Astley’s "Never Gonna Give You Up." It pops up new plac and new ways all the time. Image for stance, a iend sends you an email or a text or a chat wh a hyperlk to somethg: an ve to a birthday party, or some other thg you want to click on. You click on the lk expectg on said birthday party, and stead you see Rick Astley joggg his arms and sgg about how he’s not gog to sert you.</p><p class="">Ben: It feels almost dumb to even have to fe this. The Rick Roll cross ntents. Cultur. Generatns. But there are people maybe somewhere the universe who have not been Rick Rolled? Total dorks obvly.</p><p class=""><b>Amory: You don't know if I've been Rick Rolled. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben:</b> <b>Depends a lot on the pollster also. You've fely been Rick Rolled. </b></p><p class=""><b>Amory: No, I haven't. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: I’m pretty sure you’ve been Rick Rolled. </b></p><p class=""><b>Amory: No, I’ve never been Rick Rolled. No, I nfsed to Frank, one of our producers on this show last week that I disvered what the Rick Roll was like last week. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: Well, I gus you're about to get, I gus you’re about to be Rick Rolled then. Give me I gus you're about to be relled that there's only two typ of people this world, people who have been Rick Rolled and people who don't know they're about to be Rick Rolled. </b></p><p class="">Ben: 23-year-old Newport Rho Island rint Harrison Renshaw, who we’re now talkg to, has fely been Rick Rolled. Even though the math suggts he was about 8 years old when the Rick Roll started trendg.</p><p class=""><b>Ben: Did you get Rick Rolled? Is that how you learned. </b></p><p class=""><b>Harrison Renshaw: I'm sure I got Rick Rolled and didn't unrstand what was at the time. That's fely your first Rick Roll. You don't know that you've been Rick Rolled. Right. It's nfg, who is this? Why is this man this abandoned hoe sgg this strange song? It was nfg more than anythg, I image.</b></p><p class="">Amory: Harrison is also a b of a YouTuber, albe much younger than our supposed Rick Roll ventor Erik.</p><p class=""><b>Harrison: Pfff. I am a child of the Inter, growg up wh YouTube basilly.</b></p><p class="">Ben: Harrison is great at gog down the rabb hole on specific topics. Like, how the chos bookends of <a href=">Old Town Road by Lil Nas X</a> are PERFECTLY signed to nvce you to play the song aga.</p><p class="">Amory: But one of Harrison’s BIGGEST obssns, and one of his biggt vios ever trac the history and origs of the Rick Roll. It's lled "<a href=">The Story of the Bt Meme Ever,</a>" and clus what he lls the four key events that ma the Rick Roll blow up.</p><p class=""><b>Harrison: Number one. In 2005, there was an episo of <em>It's Always Sunny</em> lled "<a href=">Charlie Has Cancer</a>," and that, "Never Gonna Give You Up" plays</b><b>... and the song grew onle bee of . Number two, 2006, a Michigan man named Erik Helwig lled on to his lol rad statn and was like a sports talk show. </b></p><p class="">Ben: That one we know already.</p><p class=""><b>Harrison: And so number three, 2006, six, the creator of the Inter fom 4chan, Christopher Poole, who is also known as MOOT, created a word filter that replaced the word egg wh the word duck. </b></p><p class="">Amory: This 4chan word filter thg was a silly joke wh what retrospect has been a HUGE impact. Basilly, people were talkg about egg rolls. And somebody modified the way language appeared on the se to replace the word EGG, wh the word DUCK. Jt a cur ltle silly piece of software. After the WORD filter was ma, someone ma an <a href=">image</a> of a duck on wheels.</p><p class=""><b>Harrison: And then that image beme like a popular gag on the se. People would do the whole hyperlk ba and swch where, oh, you thk you're gog to click somethg super tertg, but then you jt get the picture of the duck roll. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: Ah Ha. So there was a roll before the Rick Roll and that was the duck roll. </b></p><p class=""><b>Harrison: That was the duck roll, the often duplited, somewhat imated duck on wheels. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: Right. </b></p><p class=""><b>Harrison: And so the fal sort of piecg together, the perfect storm: In March of 2007 wh the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto four beg released, there was so much traffic on the se that crashed. Someone on 4chan ed that same method of the duck roll by sayg, "oh, here's the lk to the trailer." But was Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."</b></p><p class="">Amory: Now, we grant you that at the outset, this is jt weird niche ter joke stuff. But the thgs tend to bubble up. Grand Theft Auto Four is one of the bt sellg gam of all time — 23 ln pi.</p><p class="">Ben: And if that game’s populary gets turned to a ba and swch joke onle by a bunch of people searchg for the game trailer, and Rick Astley is where they land, Rick Astley himself is gog to have a ltle spike populary, too.</p><p class=""><b>Harrison: 2008, that is like the year of the Rick Roll. That's when 's always been a thg sce s ceptn, whether 's had ups and downs and whatnot. But 2008 was prime Rick Rollg. </b></p><p class="">Ben: And when Harrison says “prime Rick Rollg.” He means like, the Rick Roll was basilly prent every sgle big event of the year.</p><p class=""><b>Harrison: There was some sort of survey that was nducted that said that 18 ln Amerins had been Rick Rolled.</b></p><p class="">Ben: And when you look back at 2008, this is not surprisg. Hacktivist group Anonymo was <a href=">blastg the song</a> out of loudspeakers ont of the Church of Scientology. People at basketball gam durg March Madns were drsg up as Astley and sgg the dience. Someone ma a fake vio of then-printial ndidate Senator John McCa gettg Rick Rolled at a 2008 printial mpaign event.</p><p class="">Amory: And Rick himself popped up the <a href=">Macy’s Thanksgivg Para</a>. Compani got on too. YouTube the pany had the entire <a href=">homepage</a> do a ba and swch wh every vio lkg back to the vio.</p><p class="">Amory: And then, maybe the ultimate troll of 2008. The MTV European Mic Awards had a ridiculo award that year for <a href=">Bt Act Ever</a>. U2, Green Day, Brney Spears were nome, but you uld also wre a ndidate. And of urse, the ter livered.</p><p class="">Ben: So ’s easy to get a sense om Harrison about how happened 13 years ago. But why is still happeng? The vio jt passed a billn views on YouTube and is wh the top several hundred vios of all time. For jt a simple mic vio that was ma over thirty years ago. Kids who are jt kids are Rickrollg each other all the time. Still! Like, middle school google docs, and universy lks to onle ursework. A Rick Roll was one of the top posts  on <a href=">Redd</a> practilly last week. In fact, there’s a new versn among the top posts almost every week.</p><p class="">Amory: In meme years this should basilly be an antiquy. But ’s still very much around. How did this grandaddy of ter mem get such stayg power?</p><p class="">Ben:  It n’t jt be Inter chaos theory, right? There has to be more there. There’s somethg irristible about the song.</p><p class="">Amory: The vio too, wh ’s happy du dancg his butt off what appears to be an abandoned Starg eply to your ey. Can you really ny him?</p><p class="">Ben: And this regard, Harrison is kd of like Erik.</p><p class=""><b>Ben: Are you a fan? </b></p><p class=""><b>Harrison: Of Rick Astley? </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: Yeah, have you bee a fan? </b></p><p class=""><b>Harrison: That’s an credible song. That song is wonrful. I'm a huge fan of the song. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: Why? </b></p><p class=""><b>Harrison: I mean, I'm a big 80s pop mic guy anyway. I thk the drama and theatrics of . It's fect. You want to sg along to . It mak you feel kd of silly. But that's the charm of at the same time. </b></p><p class="">Ben: So where did that charm e om? We’ll tell you a mute.</p><p class=""><b>[BREAK] </b></p><p class="">Amory: In our journey to unrstand not jt <em>how</em> the Rick Roll me to be, but also <em>why</em> me to be, Ben and I are now talkg to someone who was there <em>when</em> me to be. Songwrer Mike Stock is tellg about jt how good he was the begng. As a 20-somethg workg mician the 1970s.</p><p class=""><b>Mike Stock: I was awful. I mean people would ask me to play songs which I should have known. I remember makg a very bad attempt at somethg. And feelg highly embarrassed. </b></p><p class="">Amory: So Mike Stock realized relatively quickly that he might not make as a performg mician. But he was actually a good songwrer. So he started a bs wh a few of his favore llaborators: Matt Aken and Pete Waterman. They beme known as <a href=">Stock Aken Waterman</a>. And sce was the '70s, they dabbled dance mic.</p><p class=""><b>Mike: The genre was Boys Town.</b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: How would you fe Boys Town?</b></p><p class=""><b>Mike: Well, sentially, gay orientated gay clubs were g the they were normally g cheap, cheaply ma rerds as long as they were set at around 130 beats per mute, got the handclaps and the wbells on them, which ed to set off the sound to lights all the clubs. So that ma more excg. And there was a thg lled Northern Soul, which me om North of England, which the same thg... people were startg to dance. I mean, one of the songs, the openg l of one of our <a href=">number one songs</a> the U.K. by Mel and Kim is, "It's our occupatn. We're a dancg natn." </b></p><p class="">Ben: Stock Aken Waterman were gettg work the Boys Town genre. But they weren’t gettg on the rad yet, really. The way to populary, and more work wh more artists was to have one of your rerds go big the dance clubs.</p><p class="">Amory: Which started happeng wh Stock and his partners the early 1980s. Startg wh a band lled <a href=">Dead or Alive</a>.</p><p class="">Ben: And then they were off to the rac, right? Straight to the top om there on out?</p><p class=""><b>Mike: Well, obvly, havg your first number one was a great – yeah, that was a big thrill. But the ma thg that happened, was that the phone stopped rgg.</b><b><i> </i></b></p><p class="">Amory: There are a lot of ways to expla this, but Mike kd of boils down to one theory. More unrground artists they’d been workg wh thought they’d gone fully mastream. And the mastream thought...</p><p class=""><b>Mike: All they n do is that dastardly high energy gay mic. You know, that's that's the way is.</b><b><i> </i></b></p><p class="">Amory: So the recently-supposedly-wildly-succsful songwrg tr Stock Aken Waterman got a ltle ncerned.</p><p class=""><b>Mike: There's me, Matt and Pete stg our stud sayg, well, what we're gog to do next, we're No. One. Well, let's vent somethg. Let's do somethg now. </b></p><p class="">Ben: What they did is start to work wh unknowns. Backup sgers. And a kid who had started... terng at their workg stud? Apprenticg? Was a fellowship? Mike had a specific phrase…</p><p class=""><b>Mike: Tea boy. He got the sandwich, you know, I know he don't like that, but we were wag. Yeah, we were wag for the opportuny to work wh him. So – Oh, do you not know what that is? Sorry. </b><b>Two natns separated by a mon tongue. That's , isn't ?</b></p><p class="">Amory: The kid was om northern England. He was a kid still jt a teenager. And he looked way younger than he even was. Like, a mimum of five years younger.</p><p class="">Ben: Mike’s songwrg partner Pete had seen the kid perform a band. Didn’t like the band, liked the kid, ved him down to be a stud assistant. And one day they said, “Hey, let’s give the Tea Boy a chance at dog a song.” They were planng on havg him jt do a ver of "A’t Too Proud to Beg." But then the tea boy, whose name was Rick, stepped up to the mil plate.</p><p class=""><b>Mike: 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 I was absolutely amazed. I mean, the voice that me out of him didn't sort of match his look. And and is a strong, powerful voice he's got.</b></p><p class="">Ben: It is a ltle hard to overstate this ngence. If you have been Rick Rolled, you know what we’re talkg about. Whatever you <em>thk</em> the owner of this voice <em>looks</em> like?</p><p class="">Amory: He don’t. He looks like a svelte 14-year old still wet behd the ears. So the voice, which is already kda magic, is extra magic.</p><p class=""><b>Mike: At that pot I say to Matt and Pete, look, "we should wre him a song."</b></p><p class="">Amory: So they did. Mike Stock wrote the mic, Waterman suggted the tle, and all three of them built the lyrics around the mic. They rerd .</p><p class="">Ben: But Rick didn’t have a label to put out. And the terim, got briefly siled by other projects. Includg at least one more song you have fely heard before…</p><p class="">Amory: Thgs got by for the songwrg tr. Months went by, then one day…</p><p class=""><b>Mike: I tell you how worked, we we I me to the stud as was my sort of route, eleven o'clock one morng, and one of the guys the office and our promotns office was playg the song bee been given to the officer on a ssette or somethg. And I me upstairs and I thought, "Bloody hell, that sounds good. Crikey!" I thk I listened to for two months. I thought, gee, I sound great as an he's playg loud, this guy the office. And as I'm g out up the stairs, Pete Waterman is g down the stairs and we both stop and look at each other. We both go, "Blimey, what are we dog wh this rerd? Why haven't we got this thg out?" So that was the kicker for . We sudnly heard , as were, out of the blue whout beg eply volved wh . </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: If you were to intify the key distctive geic of the song, like the thg that mak the song. What is the thg? </b></p><p class=""><b>Mike: Well, I mean, a simple sense, the sentiment is unrstandable. We always ma the vols proud, proud of the track, you know, loud enough to hear every sgle word. But on a mil level bee the chos were ed. But the chos go to G. And if you were to play this go down the piano, you'll get the gist of . You hold the chord G and then you hold the base of G, but you move the try up a tone to A. So you get that tensn and that creat a real mil tensn that you have to rolve somehow, our se by gog to the F sharp mor and then to the B mor and then we will rolve a send time round, not to the B mor, but to the D major. So 's a 's a stcture of chords which cintally, subsequent to wrg , I've heard on half a dozen h songs<i>. </i></b></p><p class="">Ben: It may be te that "Never Gonna Give You Up" do have a particular formula that mak work milly. Or that the surprisg nature of Astley’s voice, upled wh his baby face the mid-1980s, has given the song myster properti that have kept the ether this long. Loved by people like Erik and Harrison, who were born full s after the song was a h.</p><p class="">Amory: The mic vio fely has somethg to do wh . Rick’s sual shimmy-g seemgly ma up on the spot, the weird empty warehoe he’s , the outfs – double breasted jacket over a small llared sweater, trench at, black jeans, black turtleneck, a full on Canadian tuxedo.</p><p class="">Ben: But the sger himself even wh a number one h the US of A did not stick around at the top. Here’s Rick Roll YouTube historian Harrison aga.</p><p class=""><b>Harrison: So this is where gets a ltle strange. Rick would make or he would sell lns of rerds, he had a Grammy nomatn, he llaborated wh Elton John and he was like rich and famo by twenty four. But then around that time, or a ltle b after, he got really sick of the dtry and didn't want all the fame, everythg was sort of too much for him. He was havg this existential crisis. He wanted to raise his fay and so he lled qus.</b></p><p class="">Ben: The "Never Gonna Give You Up" up. He seems to have been the rart of rari: a purposeful one-h-wonr.</p><p class="">Amory: Li! He had more than one h.</p><p class="">Ben: OK, two-h wonr? Still, he ma his mark, and then he kd of tapped out.</p><p class="">Ben: And the rt is ter history. Or rather, mic history. Which eventually beme ter history. Bee of a kid dog prank lls Michigan.</p><p class="">Amory: Or a bunch of s***-posters on 4chan.</p><p class="">Ben: Or an episo of <em>It’s Always Sunny Philalphia. </em></p><p class="">Amory: Or all of the thgs?</p><p class=""><b>Don Caldwell: It remds me of this thg evolutn lled nvergent evolutn. </b></p><p class="">Amory: This guy gets . He’s part of our meme chos. Remember our meme chos?</p><p class=""><b>Don: My name is Don Caldwell, I'm the edor chief of </b><a href="><b>Know Your Meme</b></a><b>, which is the world's largt Inter culture encyclopedia and database. </b></p><p class="">Ben: Don has looked really closely at the orig of the Rick Roll meme sce s ceptn. Which is how he got the nvergent evolutn thg his head.</p><p class=""><b>Don: They’re like the like green tree snak, for example, around the world. They aren't related to each other at all, but they look like the exact same animal. They got the same characteristics, the same loratn, same morphology. And 's jt really tertg to me that that that might have happened here wh wh the Rick Roll: It might have evolved penntly twice. It might have been born two separate tim whout beg nnected to each other, which is jt wild.  </b></p><p class=""><b>Amory: The song is jt that good. It's jt that special.</b></p><p class=""><b>Don: It really is.</b></p><p class="">Amory: Don says there’s somethg extra special about this grandaddy meme. It nnects back to Erik Helwig’s prank ll Michigan.<b> </b></p><p class="">Ben: He says the Rick Roll is really the first tly mastream versn of this specific genre of meme.</p><p class=""><b>Don: A ba and swch, you know, trickg someone to clickg a lk or viewg somethg that they didn't tend to, is a characteristic that is jt a wner when to mem, and we've seen time and time aga. It's probably one of the most tried and te typ of mem that ntue to appear every year.  </b></p><p class="">Ben: It’s not jt the ba and swch though. It’s what you’re gettg when the swch happens, which Harrison talked a b about too.</p><p class=""><b>Harrison: I thk the thg that mak so universal and beloved is that 's very, very harmls. It's somethg that is purely fun. Nobody ever gets hurt. It’s –</b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: It's a prank, but 's not a mean prank, really. </b></p><p class=""><b>Harrison: I pletely agree, that's what I'm gettg at, is that, nobody, I don't thk, has ever had extreme amounts of malice Rick Rollg, somebody. 's always om love. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: Right, or felt gettg Rick rolled right? Bee 's like, "oh, I'm gog to pull a prank on you and make you kd of want to dance a ltle b and be happy."</b></p><p class=""><b>Harrison: Exactly. What a nice, betiful thg that we n do to one another.</b></p><p class="">Amory: Really the qutn is, how do Rick feel about ? What do feel like to be maybe not the butt of the joke. But the punchle?</p><p class=""><b>Rick Astley: I mean, I'll be hont, I fd difficult sometim bee I am the Rick Rick Rollg, so that is a b weird if I'm hont when I see prt or see , whatever you thk. Yeah.</b></p><p class="">Ben: Y we did. You know we had to. We had to get Rick. He still looks youthful. A ltle more craggy here and there, sure. You might say he’s grown to that voice. But he’s a te gem of a guy.</p><p class="">Amory: Even if he do have some mixed feelgs about his rurgence.</p><p class=""><b>Rick: Yeah. It's weird that I listen. I'm not makg to a bigger thg than is. I'm jt sayg up nversatn a lot my life, obvly, and therefore 's jt a b weird. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben:</b> <b>What motivated you to get to mic? </b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: I'm not particularly, well, I am sort of om a mil fay a way. My mom always played the piano. I didn't actually live wh my mom. My mum and dad divorced. I'm the youngt of – they had five kids, but one passed away before I was born. And my dad had a great voice, but he never did anythg wh . He ed to sg around the hoe and the streets of the ltle town I'm om. But I don't thk that was my troductn to mic at all. My troductn to mic, to be hont, if I'm gog to be really hont about . I was gettg out of the home that I lived . I was brought up by my dad and I don't thk my dad was a very happy mper, to be hont. And they'd been through a lot. Obvly, losg a child is the most vastatg thg. I thk anybody n go through his parents. And I thk, you know, I jt I jt don't thk there was a lot of sunshe, really. And I thk mic ught me really early where I jt thought this is a joyful place to be. And I thk om that moment that was , really. I jt wanted to I kd of wanted to get out of the small town that I was om, but wasn't the town. I thk was my home upbrgg. If I'm really hont, I jt wanted to fd some light somewhere else. </b></p><p class="">Amory: One good thg about Rick’s hometown, though, is that – acrdg to Rick – Pete Waterman was datg a woman there. And on one of his viss to see her, he end up a club where Rick Astley’s band was playg. And as we said before, he liked what he heard. Not the band, jt Rick.</p><p class=""><b>Ben:</b> <b>No, we heard . We did hear a mor. Maybe 's not a mor, but we did talk to Mike and he – </b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: Oh, to Mike Stock, you mean.</b></p><p class=""><b>Ben:</b> <b>Y, sir. </b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: Oh, wow. Fantastic.</b></p><p class=""><b>Ben:</b> <b>And he actually scribed you and he his words, not ours. He scribed you as beg a tea boy the the stud. Is that is that accurate? </b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: It is accurate and there's tth to that. And I end up livg his flat, which is pretty, pretty bizarre bee I'm kd of livg the boss's flat. But I'm also makg tea for Dead or Alive while I'm makg the album that's got spng around on. </b></p><p class="">Amory: Rick of urse would soon get his own h.</p><p class=""><b>Ben:</b> <b>Did you like the song immediately?</b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: Yeah, yeah, yeah, bee I n say that wh wh all mosty, bee I didn't wre . So I'm not sayg, "Hey, 's a great song." I thk sort of slips people by sometim bee of the whole ter si of what's happeng wh that song. I don't thk sometim people realize how great actually is as a crafted pop song. I mean, 's and I n say that, like I said, bee I didn't wre, I didn't produce . I jt sang the God damn thg. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben:</b> <b>Well, we have some good news for you, I thk, 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. Yeah. And some of them are people who are very much of the Inter generatn, they're digal nativ. There are people who never would have disvered , probably except for the Inter. I thk they agree wh you. They thk that this song is special beyond the sort of viraly that 's found onle, at least their ey, the way that they're imagg . </b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: Well, that's very nice to hear. Very nice to hear. I mean, we're lucky enough now that I've sort of moved to this area, I gus, where I'm allowed to play ftivals. I don't ually close one, but I get to play the afternoon, you know, and that's that's I jt thk I got lucky, really. And I thk 's a lucky turn of events. And my wife and I have sat on balni, hotel rooms and sat on beach. Wh a glass of rosé and looked at a sunset and said, "how did we get here?" And we never stopped dog that. </b></p><p class=""><b>Amory: What do you remember about the makg of the mic vio, bee the mic vio is a big part of the ongog Inter admiratn?</b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: To be hont, whout the vio, wouldn't have bee what 's bee, if you like, that ltle small pocket 's got on the Inter, bee obvly that's the world that we live and have lived for 20 odd years. Everythg is every sort of mic that you n thk of is kd of visual as well. So the shootg of the vio was like I mean, is the first vio I ever did. I had no ia what was gog on. So when we e to do the vio, I turned up wh a bag of cloth. Y, a raat that was me, you know, like a striped shirt, chos and a blazer. Baby, that's me. The double nim, 's all me, baby. No stylist was volved. </b></p><p class=""><b>Amory: The dance mov as well? </b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: Yeah, the dance mov that I've said this before. Many tim 's actually fear if you look at me most of most of my ltle sort of moments through that four or five years, if you actually look at me refully, I'm jt terrified. </b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: And ironilly, all the years later, that sort of still kd of ss right wh people. It's jt that ntext, you know, the whole thg. It's like if I was super sort of suave and this, that and the other unlooked, you know, I don't know, like a sex symbol style thg that vio, jt wouldn't work. I jt you know, 's like I'm jt like this 20-year-old, whatever, I was 21-year-old du who looks 12 years old, who me to a vio shoot wh his own cloth a bag. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben:</b> <b>Can you tell a ltle b more? How you really feel about the role. </b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: I'm sort of tached om , and I thk 's the only way to be about . Our dghter, when first started to kick off and thgs were happeng and there was a thg about MTV wanted me to accept an award for some whatever was – </b></p><p class=""><b>Amory:</b> <b>Bt act ever. </b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: Which is ludicro. And I thk what they thought I thought they I thk they thought they were beg ironic and funny, puttg me that tegory wh U2 and Christa Aguilera and whoever else was that tegory. So you n image I said, "no thanks, I'm not g. You n keep your award. It's OK." But the pot beg our dghter, who, as I say, was a teenager, said, look, you do realize hasn't really got anythg to do wh you. And the way she said jt h me like a ton of bricks, but a really great way. And that was like was like jt gog jt jt seeg a different way and sayg she's absolutely right. It uld have been Dave roll, Brian roll, you know, Mary roll, any roll you like. Somebody jt chose my vio and that song, uld have been anybody's. So I thk om that moment, I've always jt viewed and said, you know what? Anythg posive towards, you know, my ltle world g out of , I’ll take. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben:</b> <b>And that mak sense. And I also want to say aga, like, I thk that one of the thgs that's tertg to me is you scribed where you me om and lookg for fundamentally a happy place to be. And I thk that what's tertg about the Rick Roll to me is that the Inter is a dark and toxic place many days of the week. But the Rick Roll really like sh as a light a really dark place bee is this thg that has that edge to that the Inter has, of like pullg a prank or hackg somebody or trickg somebody, et cetera. But the end of is, is you sgg this great song that everybody lov, you know.  </b></p><p class=""><b>Amory: It’s creatg that joy that you talked about. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: Yeah. </b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: Well, well, you know what? You've kd of you've kd of sort of put a good sp on on the thought procs that I gus the sense that when I was a kid, like you say, there was a black cloud our hoe, there jt was. And I've been searchg to kd of, you know, I'm gog down metaphors now, but, you know, jt get rid of and jt do so. And I kd of thk as chey as that vio is, and 's kd of like chey and sometim the 80s n be, and also if you n jt get past that kd of like what's ol, what's not ol, then you jt see for jt beg fun. You mean and kd of like and I thk that's I thk I've always searched for that. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: Thank you, Rick.</b></p><p class=""><b>Amory: Thank you so much. </b></p><p class=""><b>Ben: Really appreciate your time. It's been 's been lovely. Thank you. </b></p><p class=""><b>Rick: Pleasure. Absolute pleasure. </b></p><p class="">Ben: It might be that Rick would bristle a b at the ia that he, like Erik, our prank ller at the begng, has simply put, created emotnal edy mic.</p><p class="">Amory: But havg his song turned to a meme has brought joy to the world a way never would have otherwise right? And viraly self onle at least would probably look different if not for the OG ba and swch of the Rick Roll. And as Harrison puts …</p><p class=""><b>Harrison: I mean, I feel like, not to try to get overly pretent about some of the dumbt jok that you n fd onle, but mem are the future. </b></p><p class="">Amory: Harrison means the future of munitn onle. And the Rick Roll is a great example. It’s still morphg. In 2020, while everyone was lockdown, a whole <em>new </em>generatn of people started flippg the script on the meme. They started Rick Rollg themselv. For reactn vios. The Rick Roll... rolls on.</p><p class="">Ben: Maybe you were one of the people. Searchg a terrible time for somethg funny on the ter. Or maybe you, like me, already know the Rick Roll as this part of the ter you tip your hat to when you e across as a sign of rpect or somethg. "Hello old iend. Glad you’re still around to give me a chuckle nsirg... you know... everythg."</p><p class="">Amory: But whatever is, ’s great. And Rick’s great. And someday you n Rick Roll your grandkids. Maybe. Maybe they’ll Rick Roll you first.</p><p class=""><b>YOUTUBER: You know this vio we gonna be reactg to Rick Astley? Five me if I say his name wrong. "Never Gonna Give Up." "Never Gonna Give YOU Up." That’s the name of this vio. So whout further ado, let’s get to .</b></p><p class="">Ben: Next Rick!</p><p class="">Amory: Y. We have some BONUS ntent for you the seri already, bee we had a lot of extra nversatns wh meme people while reportg this seri, and some of them were too good to NOT share wh you. Our first bon episo is poppg to your feed a few days. A longer nversatn wh the Rick Rick Roll.</p><p class="">Ben: After that, we’ll hear about a bizzaro meme volvg a t eatg a salad that brought a lot of people mirth onle. But to the human featured the meme, the moment was much more ser.</p><p class=""><b>Gut: This uld get me killed. This is not jt realy TV drama. This is my real life.</b></p><p class="">Ben: We’ll tell that story and much more the g weeks so stay tuned.</p><p class=""><b>[CREDITS]</b></p><p class="">Amory: ENDLESS THREAD is a productn of WBUR Boston.</p><p class="">Ben: You should 100 percent be jog our email list if you want early tickets to events, swag, bon ntent, pictur of Amory’s keyboard or Ben’s keyboard t. Do that by gog to </p><p class="">Amory: ALSO. We really really really really want to know your nomatn for the bt, most real, or most unrrated meme. CALL ! 857-244-0338. Or better yet, rerd a voice memo and email to <a href=""></a>. We might jt dive to the meme you tell about, and we might e your voicemail the show!</p><p class="">Our meme seri would be very “hello fellow kids” whout the help of our meme chos. Sgers that chos?</p><p class="">Joan Donovan is Rearch Director at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenste Center. Sarah Lala teach about digal culture and sign at Coastal Carola Universy. Gianlu Strghi studi onle secury disrmatn and hate speech at Boston Universy. Amanda Brennan has the extremely ol tle of Inter Librarian. Kenyatta Chee -found the se Know Your Meme, and Don Caldwell is Edor Chief.</p><p class="">PLEASE go and fd their work and benef om their meme geni.</p><p class="">Our seri and our show is ma by producers Nora Saks and Dean Rsell.</p><p class="">We are -hosted by : Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson.</p><p class="">This episo was eded by Mreen McMurray.</p><p class="">Mixg and Sound Dign by Matt Reed.</p><p class="">The Mic Box ver of "Never Gonna Give You Up" is om the YouTube Channel R3 MicBox.</p><p class="">Origal mic for this episo that is NOT DENENENENUHNUHNUH was posed by Matt Reed.</p><p class="">Special thanks to, and addnal productn work om Josh Crane, Frank Hernanz, Krist Torr, Sofie Kodner, and Rachel Carlson.</p></sectn></article><sectn class="article-sectn--story-group article-sectn--centered"></sectn><sectn class="sectn--bo sectn--bp"><div class="uw bp--rponsive"><div class="bp-ner"><p class="bp-label">Advertisement</p><div class="bp-ntent bp-ntent--centered"><div></div><div id="adslot-185855"></div></div></div></div></sectn><div></div><div class="global-d-ponents onmand--is-playg"><div class="global-player"><d preload="to"></d><div class="global-player-bar"><div class="global-player-bar-left"><button class="global-player-bar-ntrol"><i class="in-play in-play--global-player-bar in-play--psed"><span class="in-play-shape"><span class="in-label" data-note="for-screen-rears">Rume</span></span></i></button><div class="global-player-label global-player-label--live"><div class="global-player-channel"><span>Listen Live</span></div><div class="global-player-tle"><a class="global-player-label-lk" href="/">Loadg...</a></div></div></div><div class="global-player-bar-right"><div class="global-player-x"><svg class="in in-close" viewBox="0 0 24 24" aria-labelledby="tle"><tle id="tle">Close

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