Mashups and Rick-rolling are two phenomena long assumed to have been on their last legs. But it turned out that it took a collision between the two to really kill each other off. And not a moment too late, because the YouTube video of "Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up"—the long-awaited, unwilling collaboration between Nirvana and Rick Astley—was worth whatever life extension efforts were required to make both fads last exactly this long.

True mashup fans will claim this combo platter of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Never Gonna Give You Up" is too unimaginative, too easy, too crudely accomplished. And by sophisticated genre standards, they're probably right, which does nothing to take away from the pure joy this clip righteously induces. Or horror; as my appalled media-critic friend David Kronke put it, "That's one of the wrongest things I've ever seen, and I watch Holocaust documentaries."

But if loving this is wrong, then I don't wanna be rrrrrRick-rolled ever again  except for this one last lovable time. Germany's DJ Morgoth is credited with the audio portion of the mashup, but what makes it click is the separately accomplished video, which makes Astley into the world's peppiest and preppiest punk cheerleader, even without an "A" encased in a circle subversively embossed onto his white raincoat. The real moment of video sublimity, I think, comes during Kurt Cobain's guitar solo, at which point we see intercut footage of Astley doing that insane hand jive, with the fingers loosely closed into something resembling but not quite a fist, along with his infamous rolling-of-the-ocean greased-hip swivel. Somehow, it feels more anarchic than anarchy.

And, whether it was intended as such or not, I'm not sure it's an inaccurate commentary on what has become of Cobain's punk-shall-overcome dream. So RIP, mashups and Rick-rolling. Even in this spectacular mutual flameout, you have served us well.