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Rick Astley rolls into a billion YouTube views

Getty Images Rick Astley in 1989Getty Images

Rick Astley hit Never Gonna Give You Up has passed one billion views on YouTube.

The song, released 34 years ago this week, found new popularity with the rise of Rickrolling, an internet prank where people are tricked into clicking on a hyperlink that leads to the video.

At the time of writing, the YouTube video has 1,001,264,871 views.

Astley called passing the billion mark "mind blowing". In a video posted to Twitter, he said he was "very lucky".

When released, the song reached number one in the UK - but Rickrolling helped it find a new audience, clocking up an extra 2.3 million views on this year's April Fool's Day alone.

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In 2020, as videoconferencing became an increasing part of lockdown life, technology news website CNET reported a developer had invented a way to Rickroll Zoom meetings.