If you’ve seen this video before, the title of this article alone may leave you groaning. But if it triggers nothing, allow yourself to take a stroll down low brow meme memory lane. Sunday Morning Love You was released way back in 2013 (ancient by YouTube standards), but it has become a classic in its right.

The performer Bhim Niroula sings through the days of the week, “Sunday morning love you, Monday morning love you... I want to love you every day.” His voice is unpleasant and his accent thick. The video cuts back and forth from Niroula in front of a green screen showing random images like pyramids and city sky lines to scenes in which he lip synches on a well-manicured lawn. Accompanying these performance shots are clips of a young woman walking through the same manicured lawns, staring longingly at a flower, at times appearing generically flirtatious. There is no clear narrative or deeper meaning to the video, but its absurdity is appropriate for the song it visualises. What is funny here is that Niroula and the model cast for the video never appear on camera together. Rumour has it that Niroula hired the model for the video shoot, and that the outcome of the shoot (namely this video) was unknown to her at the time. So after a barrage of images of Niroula dancing and staring uncomfortably at the camera, the video ends, leaving the audience confused and thinking as to what exactly they just watched. Was it comedy? Or is the artist earnest in his attempt to make a music video?

The popular narrative behind Niroula is that he is a working professional in the United Kingdom, who at mid-life, decided to take on the hobby of being a pop star. This added a peculiar charm to the video because it gave the viewer the sense that an average guy was sinking an unusual amount of time and disposable income into creating a product that was seemingly impossible to enjoy. It’s hard to pinpoint why this video is terrible, and that ambiguity is largely the reason behind its success. Soon after its release, the video went viral, receiving millions of views before cementing its rightful place in the world of banal online garbage with a write-up on Buzzfeed. It became a video that was used to irritate and entertain friends simultaneously. But now, like so much other meaningless media, it has been forgotten, and while the audience has moved on, Niroula has not stopped creating.

Inspired by his own success, Niroula released several follow up videos like Give Me Tablet and Dancing through the Night, which follow the same formula of simple lyrics, bad dancing and green screens. It is as though he became self-aware of the parody he had become, but chose to embrace it, and in doing so, lost that earnest quality that partially redeemed his bizarre work. Despite this, Niroula remains entertaining because he offers the antithesis of what one would expect from a pop star. He is familiar in a way that pop stars will never be. Far from being young, talented, and attractive Niroula is reminiscent of a beloved uncle who after a few drinks has taken over the microphone at your house party. On one hand, you’re happy that he’s having a great time, but on the other, you wish he would just sit down.

It leads one to question whether the humour in Sunday Morning Love You was intentional or simply unfortunate. If it is a piece of comedy, then the work is extremely dry and very clever. If not, it demonstrates the cruel and alienated humour of the average meme consumer. They are not watching to enjoy the content in and of itself, but are watching it to have a laugh at the expense of the artist and to ridicule a person they will likely never meet.

What is rarely questioned, but is important to consider, is why this man does what he does. What was his motivation? A video of a follow up live performance in New York, and half a dozen other music videos suggest that the man is serious about his work. If he is taking his work seriously, then it forces one to question whether his audience is watching his videos with the same level of earnestness with which he made them. If so, it could indicate that there is a niche market of listeners with bad taste. Alternatively, viewers might consume the content because of its poor quality, in which case it becomes impossible to separate the ironic from the sincere. Still, it seems logically unsound that Niroula’s work could be both popular and generally disliked for people do not generally gravitate toward things they detest.

Whether his success comes from a nuanced sense of irony or a degenerating culture is ultimately a useless inquiry. In the end, all one can really do is count the staggering views and pass it off as a product of its time.