Gangnam Style

"Gangnam Style" is the 18th K-pop singleby the South Korean musician Psy. The song was released in July 2012 as the lead singleof his sixth studio album Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1, and debuted at number one on South Korea's Gaon Chart. On December 21, 2012, "Gangnam Style" became the first YouTubevideo to reach a billion views. As of 4 July 2013, the music video has been viewed over 1.7 billion times on YouTube, and it is the site's most watched video after surpassingJustin Bieber's single "Baby." The phrase "Gangnam Style" is a Korean neologism that refers to a lifestyle associated with the Gangnam District of Seoul. The song and its accompanying music video went viralin August 2012 and have influenced popular culture worldwide since then. "Gangnam Style" received mixed to positive reviews, with praise going to its catchy beat and Psy's amusing dance moves (which themselves have become a phenomenon) in the music video and during live performances in various locations around the world. In September 2012,

 "Gangnam Style" was recognized by Guinness World Records as the most "liked" video on YouTube. It subsequently won Best Video at the MTV Europe Music Awards held later that year. It became a source of parodies and reaction videos by many different individuals, groups and organizations while also inspiring dance mobs in Paris, Rome, and Milan, with tens of thousands of participants each. On New Year's Eve 2012, more than one million people witnessed a live "Gangnam Style" performance in Times Square, New York City, featuring Psy and rapper MC Hammer;[7] as well as in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. By the end of 2012, the song had topped the music charts of more than 30 countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Although its reception in Japan remained lukewarm, "Gangnam Style" topped China's Baidu 500 download list and was labelled by state media as having a "divine melody." As the song continued to rapidly gain popularity and ubiquity, its signature dance moves were attempted by many notable political leaders such as the British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. President Barack Obama, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who hailed it as a "force for world peace".[12] Its influence on political activism was exemplified by the short film Gangnam for Freedom, produced by the British sculptorAnish Kapoor to advocate the freedom of expression with the support of various human rights organisations such as Index on Censorship and Amnesty International.According to the United Nations' news division, Psy has become an "international sensation" through his song "Gangnam Style".[14] On May 7, 2013, at a bilateral meeting with South Korea's President Park Geun-hye at the White House, U.S. President Barack Obama cited the success of "Gangnam Style" as an example of how people around the world are being "swept up" by the Korean Wave of culture.   "Gangnam Style" (Korean: 강남스타일, IPA: [kaŋnam sɯtʰail]) is the 18th K-pop singleby the South Korean musician Psy. The song was released in July 2012 as the lead singleof his sixth studio album Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1, and debuted at number one on South Korea's Gaon Chart. On December 21, 2012, "Gangnam Style" became the first YouTubevideo to reach a billion views.[5] As of 4 July 2013, the music video has been viewed over 1.7 billion times on YouTube, and it is the site's most watched video after surpassingJustin Bieber's single "Baby."[6] The phrase "Gangnam Style" is a Korean neologism that refers to a lifestyle associated with the Gangnam District of Seoul. The song and its accompanying music video went viralin August 2012 and have influenced popular culture worldwide since then. "Gangnam Style" received mixed to positive reviews, with praise going to its catchy beat and Psy's amusing dance moves (which themselves have become a phenomenon) in the music video and during live performances in various locations around the world. In September 2012, "Gangnam Style" was recognized by Guinness World Records as the most "liked" video on YouTube. It subsequently won Best Video at the MTV Europe Music Awards held later that year. It became a source of parodies and reaction videos by many different individuals, groups and organizations while also inspiring dance mobs in Paris, Rome, and Milan, with tens of thousands of participants each. On New Year's Eve 2012, more than one million people witnessed a live "Gangnam Style" performance in Times Square, New York City, featuring Psy and rapper MC Hammer;[7] as well as in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.[8] By the end of 2012, the song had topped the music charts of more than 30 countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Although its reception in Japan remained lukewarm, "Gangnam Style" topped China's Baidu 500 download list and was labelled by state media as having a "divine melody."[9][10][11] As the song continued to rapidly gain popularity and ubiquity, its signature dance moves were attempted by many notable political leaders such as the British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. President Barack Obama, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who hailed it as a "force for world peace".[12] Its influence on political activism was exemplified by the short film Gangnam for Freedom, produced by the British sculptorAnish Kapoor to advocate the freedom of expression with the support of various human rights organisations such as Index on Censorship and Amnesty International.[13]According to the United Nations' news division, Psy has become an "international sensation" through his song "Gangnam Style".[14] On May 7, 2013, at a bilateral meeting with South Korea's President Park Geun-hye at the White House, U.S. President Barack Obama cited the success of "Gangnam Style" as an example of how people around the world are being "swept up" by the Korean Wave of culture.[15]  "Gangnam Style" is a Korean neologism that refers to a lifestyle associated with theGangnam District[16] of Seoul,[17] where people are trendy, hip and exude a certain supposed "class." The term was listed in Time's weekly vocabulary list as a manner associated with lavish lifestyles in Seoul's Gangnam district.[18] Psy likened the Gangnam District to Beverly Hills, California, and said in an interview that he intended in a twisted sense of humour by claiming himself to be "Gangnam Style" when everything about the song, dance, looks, and the music video is far from being such a high class.[19]   The song talks about "the perfect girlfriend who knows when to be refined and when to get wild."[21] The song's refrain "오빤 강남 스타일 (Oppan Gangnam style)" has been translated as "Big brother is Gangnam style", with Psy referring to himself.[22][23] During an interview with The New York Times, Psy revealed that the Korean fans have huge expectations about his dancing, so he felt a lot of pressure. In order to keep up with expectations, he studied hard to find something new and stayed up late for about 30 nights to come up with the "Gangnam Style" dance.[24] Along the way, he had tested various "cheesy" animal-inspired dance moves with his choreographer, including panda and kangaroo moves,[25] before settling for the horse trot, which involves pretending to ride a horse, alternately holding the reins and spinning a lasso, and moving into a legs-shuffling side gallop.[26] During an interview with Reuters, Psy claimed that "Gangnam Style" was originally produced only for local K-pop fans.[27] On July 11, Psy and his music label YG Entertainment started releasing several promotional teasers for "Gangnam Style" to their subscribers on YouTube.[28][29][30] On July 15, 2012, the full music video of "Gangnam Style" was uploaded onto YouTube and was immediately a sensation, receiving about 500,000 views on its first day.[31] However, in Germany, an ongoing dispute between YouTube and theGEMA (the country's performance rights organization) regarding copyright issues has led to thousands of music videos including "Gangnam Style"[32] being blocked in the country.[33]   The song has received mixed to positive ratings from music critics. Music journalist Bill Lamb from About.com praised the song for "spreading smiles and pure fun around the world in record time." He then writes, "take one part LMFAO's synth-based party music, another part Ricky Martin's Latin dance party and the rest a powerfully charismatic South Korean showman and you have the first worldwide K-Pop smash hit,"[41] while Ian Garland of the Daily Mail called "Gangnam Style" a "bizarre music sensation."[44] Jeff Benjamin from Billboard became one of the first music critics to review the song when he published an article and reported that "Gangnam Style" has gone viral on the Internet. In his article, Benjamin introduced the reader to a couple of popular K-pop songs and wrote that "Gangnam Style" in particular, plays all the right moves sonically while "borrowing from LMFAO along the way".[17] The next day, Hallie Sekoff of The Huffington Post quoted from the video's official YouTube video description that the song is characterized by its "strongly addictive beats", and wrote that this is not too far-fetched, considering "how obsessed we've found ourselves."[45] London's mayor Boris Johnson considered the song to be the greatest cultural masterpiece of 2012.[46] Despite its popularity, a few music critics including Robert Copsey from Digital Spy criticized the song for being monotonous. Cospey wrote that "you could slap an LMFAO tag on the cover and few would know the difference"[43] and Paul Lester of The Guardian similarly labelled it as "generic ravey Euro dance with guitars". Lester described the song as "Pump Up the Jam meets the Macarena with a dash of Cotton Eye Joe"[47] while Robert Myers of The Village Voice dismissed "Gangnam Style" as an "inspired piece of silliness".[48]   The video starts out with Psy, who is lounging at what looks like a sandy beach,[note 1] under a sun umbrella and holding a cold drink, but the camera zooms out to reveal he is actually at a playground.[62] The video then alternates between the playground, where a boy,Hwang Min-woo, dances next to him; and a row of horses in stalls, where Psy performs his signature "invisible horse dance".[63] As Psy (and two girls) walk through a parking garage, they are pelted by pieces of newspaper, trash, and snow.[64] At a sauna, he rests his head on a man's shoulder, dressed in blue, while another man covered in tattoos is stretching. He then sings in front of two men playing Janggi (Korean chess), dances with a woman at a tennis court, and bounces around on a tour bus of seniors. The scenes alternate quickly until there is an explosion near the chess players, causing them to dive off the bench. Psy immediately walks towards the camera, pointing and shouting "Oppan Gangnam Style". The chorus starts as he and some dancers perform at a horse stable. He dances as two women walk backwards. He dances at the tennis court, a carousel, and the tour bus. He shuffles into an outdoor yoga session and on a boat. The camera zooms in on a woman's butt, then shows Psy "yelling" at it.  The video starts out with Psy, who is lounging at what looks like a sandy beach,[note 1] under a sun umbrella and holding a cold drink, but the camera zooms out to reveal he is actually at a playground.[62] The video then alternates between the playground, where a boy,Hwang Min-woo, dances next to him; and a row of horses in stalls, where Psy performs his signature "invisible horse dance".[63] As Psy (and two girls) walk through a parking garage, they are pelted by pieces of newspaper, trash, and snow.[64] At a sauna, he rests his head on a man's shoulder, dressed in blue, while another man covered in tattoos is stretching. He then sings in front of two men playing Janggi (Korean chess), dances with a woman at a tennis court, and bounces around on a tour bus of seniors. The scenes alternate quickly until there is an explosion near the chess players, causing them to dive off the bench. Psy immediately walks towards the camera, pointing and shouting "Oppan Gangnam Style". The chorus starts as he and some dancers perform at a horse stable. He dances as two women walk backwards. He dances at the tennis court, a carousel, and the tour bus. He shuffles into an outdoor yoga session and on a boat. The camera zooms in on a woman's butt, then shows Psy "yelling" at it.Following its July 15 release, "Gangnam Style" overtook Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" to reach the number one position on theYouTube Top 100 Music Videos during the week of August 28, 2012


On September 1, it overtook Girls' Generation's "Gee" to become the most viewed K-pop video on YouTube.[79] Although "Call Me Maybe" has had unusually strong staying power, averaging over 1.5 million views each day, "Gangnam Style" increased to an average of over nine million views per day within just two months. This is mainly because "Call Me Maybe" remained largely a North American trend, whereas the popularity of "Gangnam Style" is not confined to the United States.[80] 61.6 percent of viewers were male, and those aged between 13 and 17 represented the biggest group.[81] According to The Wall Street Journal, T-Pain was among the first to have "sent [the video] to the stratosphere" when he tweeted about it on July 29.[82][83] It was then picked up by Neetzan Zimmerman from the social blog Gawker, who asked "Did this underground Hip Hop artist from South Korea just release the Best Music Video of the Year?"[84] on July 30. This was soon followed by Robbie Williams,[85] Britney Spears,[86] Katy Perry,[47] Tom Cruise,[87] Joseph Gordon-Levitt,[88] and William Gibson,[89] who have either commented about or shared the video with their fans via Twitter. The earliest video that caught the attention of media networks outside South Korea is "Psy Gangnam Style MV Reaction", which was uploaded by Katie and Mindy Anderson on July 18, 2012. The Andersons were subsequently interviewed by Evan Ramstad from The Wall Street Journal a few weeks later.[90] In his article published on August 6, 2012, Ramstad also included "Kpop Music Mondays : PSY Gangnam Style", a review and parody of "Gangnam Style" uploaded on July 23 by K-pop video bloggers Simon and Martina Stawski, a Canadian couple living in Seoul. This makes the Stawski's video the earliest parody featured in an American newspaper.[82]On August 8, 2012, Ramstad appeared on WSJ Live, and he mentioned the Andersons and the Stawskis again, before claiming that "a lot of Koreans are also making their own parodies of 'Gangnam Style'".[91] On September 3, 2012, the number of daily views generated by "Gangnam Style" went past the five-million mark.[92] By the end of September, it had topped the iTunes charts in 31 countries.[93] The Dong-a Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, quoted the following statement released by YouTube, "From July 15, when the music video was uploaded on the site, to September 28, the video was accessed by people in 222 countries, more than the 193 member countries of the U.N."[53 "Gangnam Style" reached the unprecedented milestone of one billion YouTube views on December 21, 2012. A spoof documentary by videographer Simon Gosselin[102] was posted on YouTube and had promoted 2012 doomsday rumors across social media services such as Facebook and Twitter that linked "Gangnam Style" to a fake Nostradamus prophecy.[103][dead link] On December 21, at around 15:50 UTC, the video's YouTube page updated with 1,000,382,639 views.[104] YouTube specially marked the video's accomplishments with a cartoon dancing Psy animated icon, added first by the site logo,[105] and later next to the video's view counter when it exceeded a billion views.[106] On April 6, 2013 the video on YouTube reached 1.5 billion views.[107] On July 5, 2013 the view counter updated with 1,710,619,528 views, which was 15 million higher than the previous day at the same time. This increased the average amount of views per day from 4,787,807 to 4,818,647 (views divided by the number of days since release). Review   "Gangnam Style" reached the unprecedented milestone of one billion YouTube views on December 21, 2012. A spoof documentary by videographer Simon Gosselin[102] was posted on YouTube and had promoted 2012 doomsday rumors across social media services such as Facebook and Twitter that linked "Gangnam Style" to a fake Nostradamus prophecy.[103][dead link] On December 21, at around 15:50 UTC, the video's YouTube page updated with 1,000,382,639 views.[104] YouTube specially marked the video's accomplishments with a cartoon dancing Psy animated icon, added first by the site logo,[105] and later next to the video's view counter when it exceeded a billion views.[106] On April 6, 2013 the video on YouTube reached 1.5 billion views.[107] On July 5, 2013 the view counter updated with 1,710,619,528 views, which was 15 million higher than the previous day at the same time. This increased the average amount of views per day from 4,787,807 to 4,818,647 (views divided by the number of days since release).

Review

 The music video of "Gangnam Style" has been met with positive responses from the music industry and commentators, who drew attention to its tone and dance moves, though some found them vulgar.[108] Another notable aspect that helped popularise the video was its comical dance moves that can be easily copied, such as the pelvic thrust during the elevator scene.[109] The United Nations hailed Psy as an "international sensation" because of the popularity of his "satirical" video clip and its "horse-riding-like dance moves".[110] As such, the music video has spawned a dance craze unseen since the Macarena of the mid-1990s.[111][112] The World Bank's lead economist David McKenzie remarked that some of Psy’s dance moves "kind of look like a regression discontinuity",[113] while the space agency NASA called "Gangnam Style" a dance-filled music video that has forever entered the hearts and minds of millions of people.[114] Melissa Locker of Time noted that "it's hard not to watch again ...and again ...and again", while CNN reporter Shanon Cook told the audience that she had watched "Gangnam Style" about 15 times. The German news magazine Der Spiegel attributed the popularity of "Gangnam Style" to its daring dance moves,[117 a sentiment similarly voiced by Maura Judkis of The Washington Post, who wrote, "'Gangnam Style' has made an extraordinarily stupid-looking dance move suddenly cool".[118] The video was also positively reviewed by Steve Knopper from Rolling Stone, who called "Gangnam Style" an astoundingly great K-pop video that has all the best elements of hypnotically weird one-hit wonders and hopes that "PSY gets filthy rich from this".] Mesfin Fekadu of the Associated Press wrote that Psy's dance moves are "somewhat bizarre" but the music video is full of colorful, lively outfits.[120] Matt Buchanan and Scott Ellis of The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that the video "makes no sense at all to most Western eyes" and it "makes you wonder if you have accidentally taken someone else's medication"[121] whereas Deborah Netburn of the Los Angeles Times called it "one of the greatest videos ever to be uploaded to YouTube."[122] Kim Alessi from Common Sense Media considered the music video for "Gangnam Style" worth seeing for its caricature of contemporary Asian and American urban lifestyles, but also warned that "Gangnam Style" contains sexually suggestive images and "degrading messages" which could beinappropriate for children and teenagers.