Foo Fighters fans who attended Sunday’s concert at Tokyo’s Summer Sonic Festival were probably expecting to hear hits like “Learn To Fly.”
Instead, they learned they were getting “Rickrolled.”
As a special treat, Dave Grohl invited late 1980s heartthrob Rick Astley to come onstage and sing his 1987 No.1 hit, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” with the band.
Millennials associate the song with Rickrolling, that beloved internet prank where you send a link to a website that is actually a video ofAstley singing the iconic ditty.
The Foo Fighters weren’t as sneaky.
They grunged out the fluffy dance-pop hit by adding the intro and guitar line to Nirvana’s “Smell Like Teen Spirit.”
“This is f**kin’ crazy ― I just met him two minutes ago,” Dave Grohl said to the audience. Then Astley screamed, “Come on you motherf**kers!”
Listen for yourself in the video taken by a fan:
Astley and Grohl immortalized the moment in a selfie backstage.
This is the first time Astley has performed the song grunge-style, but many music fans have created their own Nirvana-Astley mashups like the one below.
Some people prefer their Astley tunes straight, so here’s the original.
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