This one is maybe a better representation of his talent. Or any of his other original songs. He's released a lot of them the last 7 or so years. He also has a bunch of tour dates in England, some of them are already sold out.
I listened to an interview with him once. He used to be annoyed by it, but after having it explained to him (by his daughter, IIRC) he decided it was ok because it wasn’t really about him; his song just happened to be the bit of 80s pop culture that got used in a prank that became very popular. I think the fact that the song isn’t bad is part of what makes the prank fun rather than malicious.
I have never interpreted this as making fun of Rick Astley, just a stupid joke to trick people into watching something. I totally agree, he is very talented.
The meme has been a huge benefit to him as well, his popularity skyrocketed with a generation that wasn’t around when he was first popular and led to tons of listens and sales of his music, heck they even had him play at the Macy’s day parade!
As I recall, I read an interview with him, and he didn’t quite understand the meme, but he was thrilled it had blown up his popularity again and introduced so many new people to his music.
I guess we have different interpretations. It’s always seemed like it was “tricked you into listening to that awful song!” to me. But maybe I’m the outlier?
Even if that was the original intention, it turned out to be a great benefit to him personally, so if that’s what it was supposed to be, then I guess the jokes on them 😀
In the UK on the BBC One new year coverage he was the main act. That likely would not have happened this late in his career without the meme.
It was also the song he played immediately following the London fireworks coverage at about 00:10. Probably going for some record number of people rick rolled at once.
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