What is a music mashup? In its simplest form, it is a combining of two prerecorded music soundtracks. But you can do so much more with them.
I was a little bit surprised (not sure why) to find, on my Facebook timeline thanks to Mr. A, this mashup between Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the Risk Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". My spouse, who is a big Nirvana fan and, not at all a Rick Astley song, absolutely loved this.
This song, as many know, was used years ago in an Internet prank called "rick rolling", where people would lure others into clicking on a link, which, instead of the promised news report or informational post, brought you to this....
..video.
The actual Astley song dates from 1987, way before Al Gore invented the Internet (joke), and it would seem that the practice of rick rolling started around 2007. Why the original pranksters chose this song is a puzzle to me, but this started on an imageboard site called 4chan, and, several months later, started to spread through the Internet as a whole.
Once, the Macy's Thanksgiving parade got rick rolled. By Rick himself. Now THAT's a performance to remember..
You would think Rick Astley has made a fortune off of rick rolling. You would be wrong.
There is actually a serious use now of rick rolling in the war on terror.
This could lead into discussion of Internet memes in general, perhaps a post for another time.
So, dear readers...were you ever rick rolled?
