Gangnam Style
"Gangnam Style" is a K-pop song by South Korean singer Psy, released on July 15, 2012, by YG Entertainment as the lead single of his sixth studio album, Psy 6, Part 1. The term "Gangnam Style" is a neologism that refers to the nouveau riche lifestyles associated with the Gangnam region of Seoul.
"Gangnam Style" was released on to Psy's YouTube channel and debuted at number one on South Korea's Gaon Chart, receiving generally positive reviews, with praise for its catchy beat and Psy's amusing dancing during live performances and in various locations around the world in its music video. The song and its music video went viral in August 2012 and have influenced popular culture worldwide. In the United States, "Gangnam Style" peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, which at the time, was the highest charting song by a South Korean artist. By the end of 2012, "Gangnam Style" had topped the music charts of more than 30 countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Psy's dance in the music video itself became a cultural phenomenon.
The song subsequently won Best Video at the MTV Europe Music Awards held that year. It became a source of parodies and reaction videos by many different individuals, groups, and organizations. On December 21, 2012, "Gangnam Style" became the first YouTube video to reach a billion views. The song's music video was the most viewed video on YouTube from November 24, 2012, when it surpassed the music video for "Baby" by Justin Bieber featuring Ludacris, to July 10, 2017, when it was itself surpassed by the music video for "See You Again" by Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth.
The song's dance was attempted by political leaders such as British Prime Minister David Cameron and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who hailed it as "a force for world peace". 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.
Background and release
"Gangnam Style" is a South Korean neologism that refers to a lifestyle associated with the Gangnam region of Seoul, where people are trendy, hip, and exude a certain supposed class. The term was defined in Times weekly vocabulary list as "a manner associated with lavish lifestyles in Seoul's Gangnam district". Psy likened Gangnam to Beverly Hills, California, and said in an interview that he intended the title as a joke, claiming that he has "Gangnam Style" when everything about the song, dance, looks, and music video is far from high class:The song talks about "the perfect girlfriend who knows when to be refined and when to get wild." The song's refrain "오빤 강남 스타일 " has been translated as "Big brother is Gangnam style," with Psy referring to himself. During an interview with The New York Times, Psy revealed that South Korean fans have high expectations about his dancing, so he felt a lot of pressure. In order to keep up with those expectations, he studied hard to find something new and stayed up late for about 30 nights to come up with the "Gangnam Style" dance. Along the way, he had tested various "cheesy" animal-inspired dance moves with his choreographer Lee Ju-sun, including panda and kangaroo moves, 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.
During an interview with Reuters, Psy said that "Gangnam Style" was originally produced only for local K-pop fans. On July 11, 2012, Psy and his music label YG Entertainment started releasing several promotional teasers for "Gangnam Style" to their subscribers on YouTube. Four days later, 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. However, at the time of its release in Germany, a dispute between YouTube and the GEMA regarding copyright issues led to thousands of music videos including "Gangnam Style" being blocked in the country. The music video, along with other music videos from GEMA-protected artists released on YouTube, were unblocked in Germany on October 31, 2016, after YouTube reached an agreement with GEMA on copyrights and royalties.
According to the news agency Agence France-Presse, the success of "Gangnam Style" could be considered as part of the Korean Wave, a term coined by Chinese journalists to refer to the significant increase in the popularity of South Korean entertainment and culture since the late 1990s.
Korean popular music, considered by some to be the most important aspect of the Korean Wave, is a music genre that relies on cultural technology to adapt to the tastes of foreign audiences and has now grown into a popular subculture among teenagers and young adults in many places around the world. Although it has spread to the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and parts of South America, its reception in the Western world was initially lukewarm. However, booming social media networks such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter made it easier for K-pop musicians to reach a wider audience in the West, and the song and video soon became a global phenomenon.
Reception
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." Billboard K-Town columnist Jeff Benjamin 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."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." Then London's mayor Boris Johnson considered the song to be the greatest cultural masterpiece of 2012.
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", and Paul Lester of The Guardian similarly labeled 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," while Robert Myers of The Village Voice dismissed "Gangnam Style" as an "inspired piece of silliness."
Cha Woo-jin, a South Korean music critic, told The Chosun Ilbo that "Gangnam Style"'s sophisticated rendering and arrangement has made it very appealing to the general public. Choe Kwang-shik, the South Korean Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, told reporters that "Gangnam Style" had played an important role in introducing the Korean culture, language, and lifestyle to the rest of the world. However, some have criticized the song for failing to accurately represent South Korean culture. Oh Young-Jin, managing editor of The Korea Times, wrote that the dance has more to do with Americans than Koreans.
In Japan, the song was met with considerable criticism. When "Gangnam Style" first appeared in Japanese TV shows in July, the reaction from viewers was negative. As a result, Psy's Japanese record label YGEX canceled a previously planned Japanese-language re-release of "Gangnam Style." According to The Dong-A Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, the song's lukewarm reception in Japan could have been caused by a diplomatic conflict between the two countries, and the newspaper accused the Japanese media of keeping its people "in the dark." However, Jun Takaku of the Japanese daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun explained that "Gangnam Style" had caused "barely a ripple in Japan" because Psy does not conform to the image of other "traditionally polished" K-pop acts popular in Japan such as Girls' Generation and TVXQ. Erica Ho from Time magazine similarly noted that, despite the K-pop musical genre being very popular in Japan, the country seemed to be "immune to PSY Mania", and she advised her readers who dislike the song to "pack your bags for Japan."
Immediately after its release, "Gangnam Style" was mentioned by various English-language websites providing coverage of Korean pop culture for international fans, including Allkpop and Soompi. Simon Stawski and Martina Sazunic, a Canadian couple living in Seoul who were among the first to parody "Gangnam Style" in late July, wrote that the song has the potential to become "one of the biggest songs of the year." However, during an interview with Al Jazeera a few weeks later, Martina Sazunic claimed that the worldwide popularity of "Gangnam Style" has been viewed negatively by some K-pop fans, because "they didn't want K-pop being liked by other people who don't understand K-Pop."
Music video
The music video of "Gangnam Style" has been met with positive responses and praises from the music industry and the commentators, who drew attention to its tone and dance moves, though some found them vulgar. 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. 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." As such, the music video spawned a dance craze unseen since the Macarena of the mid-1990s.The World Bank's lead economist David McKenzie remarked that some of Psy's dance moves "kind of look like a regression discontinuity," 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. 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, 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." 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. 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" whereas Deborah Netburn of the Los Angeles Times called it "one of the greatest videos ever to be uploaded to YouTube." 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 be inappropriate for children and teenagers.