Rickrolling: The MemeFather Speaks

Rickrolling, the trick of getting people to click on links to a kooky music video (and our coworker Katie’s favorite stunt EVER), has been all over the news lately, but until now nobody spoke publicly with singer Rick Astley about the bizarre revival of his now iconic ’80s music video (which is exactly 20 years old, as nearly 5,000 members of the Digg community reminded us last week).

But David Sarno of the LA Times has tracked Astley down, and extracted a thoroughly entertaining interview about his pleasant-natured befuddlement with the song’s second coming.

Astley’s take:

“I don’t mean to belittle it, because I still think it’s a great pop song, but it’s a pop song; do you know what I mean? It doesn’t have any kind of weight behind it, as such. But maybe that’s the irony of it.”

So does humanizing the Rickroll take the fun out of it or sell lots and lots of concert tickets? That remains to be seen.