Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ tops 1 billion YouTube views

On Wednesday, the music video for Rick Astley’s debut song, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” surpassed 1 billion views on YouTube.

The milestone can lend some credit to the famous internet prank known as “rickrolling,” a classic bait-and-switch prank in which social media users post a disguised hyperlink that leads to Astley’s video. The prank became an internet sensation in 2007.

“I am kind of a big deal,” Astley wrote in a comment on the YouTube video, adding, “Amazing, crazy, wonderful!”

As of Thursday afternoon, the official YouTube video of “Never Gonna Give You Up” had been viewed 1,001,430,481 times.

Astley was originally annoyed by the idea of rickrolling, The Associated Press reported in 2016. But his daughter convinced him that it was a cool concept that kept his song in the spotlight decades after it was a hit.

Other music videos that have hit a billion views on YouTube include Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and 2016 sensation “Baby Shark Dance” by Pinkfong.