Did Barry Manilow Rick Roll Himself?

from overthinkingit 12/05/08

Does Barry Manilow even know of the Rickroll? If so, he didn’t let on in this Billboard interview:

Among the most novel efforts on “Eighties” is RickAstley’s 1988 No. 1 “Never Gonna Give You Up.” “It has the catchiestlittle melody, with production from Stock, Aiken and Waterman. How doyou compete with that?” asks Manilow, who called on producer MichaelLloyd (the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack) for assistance. “I think it’sgoing to stand out on the album.”

The article singles out “Never Gonna Give You Up” for its “novelty,”but Manilow is talking about how he’s going to make his own arrangementstand out from original. Is he playing dumb? Is he ignorantly standingby while his puppet masters at the record company exploit him to cashin on the Rickrolling Internet joke?

No one can be certain, but it’s not entirely out of the realm ofpossibility that Manilow chose this song unironically and outside ofthe Rickrolling context. Rickrolling, after all, is far less well knownthan one might at first think. In an informal polling of several of mycoworkers, all in their 20’s and 30’s, less than 1/3 knew what aRickroll was, but most knew of “Never Gonna Give You Up” just as a fun80’s song. In other words, they liked it unironically.

So, really, how well known is the Rickroll? For all the hype, I think it’s merely a minor Intenet meme.

I agree with overthinkingit. On two college tours I mentioned rick rolling to the student guides and neither knew what I was talking about