Rick Astley’s velvety vocals have been banished from YouTube. Well, sort of. The “original” copy of Astley’s cheesy 1987 pop hit “Never Gonna Give You Up” — perhaps better known as the Rickroll video — has been pulled down from YouTube. It’s unclear why the video was removed from the service some seven years and 70 million views after it was first uploaded.
The ‘original’ Rickroll video has disappeared from YouTube
If you’ve never heard of this video, you must be new in these parts. In a time before Twitter and Facebook dominated the internet, people used to get their kicks by fooling you into watching Astley’s slick dance moves and listening to his dreamy voice. All hyperlinks were fair game.
"Never gonna say goodbye."
It seems very unlikely that Rick Astley himself is to blame for letting us down. Labels and songwriters — not performers — are typically behind requests to remove videos from YouTube on copyright claims. According to Billboard, YouTube has not yet commented on the takedown.
Whatever happened to the original upload, this doesn’t mean that you can stop worrying about getting Rickroll’d. Another (seemingly identical) copy of the video, uploaded onto YouTube by Vevo in 2009, lives on. It has accumulated nearly 85 million views.
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