Rick Astley’s seminal hit “Never Gonna Give You Up” has a longstanding meme history. The song made “rickrolling,” the art of luring someone in with a link or video and then suddenly cutting to the song, an online pastime that helped popularize the bait-and-switch meme format. Now, you can continue the tradition by pranking your friends in stunning clarity with a 4K , 60-frames-per-second remaster of the song uploaded to the YouTube channel Revideo.
Part of the allure of “Never Gonna Give You Up” is that it feels like a relic of the past, from its 1980s musical sensibilities to the dated, somewhat fuzzy nature of its original music video, which has over 870 million views on YouTube.
Revideo’s remaster, however, is incredibly crisp, to the extent that it’s mildly unsettling.
According to the video’s description, Revideo uploaded it on January 31, but it began to go viral in mid-February. As CNET reported, the video sparked a flurry of reactions online as it spread, and for good reason — it’s uncanny to see Astley in such incredible detail and makes the video seem less like a relic and more like Astley could be the TikTok boy next door.
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