"Gangnam Style" is a South Korean neologism that refers to a lifestyle associated with the Gangnam District[13] of Seoul,[14] 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.[15] Psy likened the Gangnam District to Beverly Hills, California, and said in an interview that he intended in a twisted sense of humor 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:[16]
During an interview with Reuters, Psy said that "Gangnam Style" was originally produced only for local K-pop fans.[25] On July 11, 2012, Psy and his music label YG Entertainment started releasing several promotional teasers for "Gangnam Style" to their subscribers on YouTube.[26][27][28] 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.[29] However, at the time of its release in Germany, a dispute between YouTube and the GEMA (the country's performance rights organization) regarding copyright issues led to thousands of music videos including "Gangnam Style"[30] being blocked in the country.[31] 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.[32]
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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.[57] 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.[58] 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."[59] As such, the music video has spawned a dance craze unseen since the Macarena of the mid-1990s.[60][61]
The chorus ends and he is seen in a parking garage, where Psy is approached by a man (Yoo Jae-suk) in a yellow suit who steps out of a red Mercedes-Benz SLK 200; they have a dance duel. Psy then appears in an elevator underneath a man (Noh Hong-Chul) who is straddling him and thrusting his pelvis. The man in the yellow suit then gets in his car and leaves. The camera pans and it shows Psy in the subway station, where he boards the train and notices Hyuna (who would have her own version of the song) dancing. At one of the train stops, he approaches the girl in slow motion, and she approaches him. They start to embrace. He then tells the girl "Oppa Gangnam Style," and they horse dance along with some other dancers at the train stop, commencing the second chorus. He also surfaces from a spa hot tub.[74] In the Rolling Stone interview, Psy says he copied the spa surfacing scene from Lady Gaga's video ("Poker Face").[75]
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, 2012.[85][100] 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?"[91] on July 30. This was soon followed by Robbie Williams,[87] Britney Spears,[101] Katy Perry,[43] Tom Cruise,[102] Joseph Gordon-Levitt,[103] and William Gibson,[104] who either commented about or shared the video with their fans via Twitter.
"Gangnam Style" reached the unprecedented milestone of 1 billion YouTube views on December 21, 2012. YouTube specially marked the video's accomplishments with a cartoon dancing Psy animated icon, added first by the site logo,[108] and later next to the video's view counter when it exceeded 1 billion views.[109] On April 6, 2013, the video on YouTube reached 1.5 billion views.[110] On July 5, 2013, the view counter updated with 1,710,619,528 views, which was 15 million higher than same time the previous day. This increased the average number of views per day from 4,787,807 to 4,818,647 (views divided by the number of days since release).
On September 18, 2012, the North Korean government became the first to use "Gangnam Style" for political activism when it uploaded a parody with the title "I'm Yushin style!" onto the government website Uriminzokkiri.[150] The parody mocks the South Korean ruling conservative party president-elect Park Geun-hye. It shows a Photoshopped image of the presidential candidate performing the dance moves of "Gangnam Style" and labels her as a devoted admirer of the Yushin system of autocratic rule set up by her father, Park Chung-hee.[151][152] A few weeks later, "草泥马 style" (literally, "Grass Mud Horse Style": The Chinese characters are a homonym for a vulgar slur[153]) was uploaded onto YouTube and other Chinese websites by the political activist and dissident Ai Weiwei. In his parody, Ai Weiwei dances "Gangnam Style" with a pair of handcuffs as a symbol of his arrest by Chinese authorities in 2011. According to the Associated Press, government authorities had removed the video from almost all Chinese websites the next day.[153]
In order to show his solidarity with Ai Weiwei and to advocate the freedom of expression, the British sculptor Anish Kapoor produced the video Gangnam for Freedom, which features other prominent British artists as well as human rights activists from various international organisations including Index on Censorship and Amnesty International.[155] A few days before, the global grassroots network Students for a Free Tibet had uploaded a parody of "Gangnam Style" to show its support for the Tibetan independence movement. According to Max Fisher from The Washington Post, this parody of "Gangnam Style" was likely to be filmed in Dharamshala, the home of Tibet's government-in-exile in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.[156]
Songdo, a ubiquitous city 40 miles (65 km) west of Gangnam, was among five cities vying for the right to host the Green Climate Fund (GCF), a project developed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to channel $100 billion a year from developed countries to help developing countries combat climate change.[158] During its campaign to win the right to host the GCF, the country's Presidential Committee on Green Growth produced a promotional video entitled "GCF Songdo Style by Psy" in which Psy recommends Songdo as the host city for the GCF. He announces that a "new paradigm" will begin at Songdo with the GCF and the video heralds "The beginning of Songdo Style" while "Gangnam Style" plays in the background.[159][160] On October 20, 2012, the board of the GCF announced that Songdo had won the right to host the fund.[161]
The song was also parodied by cadets from the United States Military Academy,[191][192] United States Merchant Marine Academy,[193] United States Naval Academy,[194][195] United States Air Force Academy,[196] and the Royal Military College of Canada;[197] soldiers from the 210th Fires Brigade, the 2nd Infantry Division, service members from an undisclosed unit and location in Afghanistan,[198] and service members from the China Coast Guard's Jiangsu division,[199] as well as high-ranking officers from the Royal Thai Navy.[200] CollegeHumor uploaded "Mitt Romney Style," while What's Trending uploaded "Obama Style."[201] During the two weeks before August 7, 2012, nearly 1,000 videos with the word "Gangnam" in the title were uploaded onto YouTube.[29]
On September 6, Psy appeared at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards performing his "Gangnam Style" dance alongside comedian Kevin Hart.[225] After the event, he made several more appearances on US TV programs. On September 10, he appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in Burbank, California, introducing himself as "Psy from Korea" before teaching Britney Spears the dance. He described the dance as "pretending to bounce like riding on an invisible horse"[77][226][227] and when DeGeneres told Spears she would have to remove her high-heeled shoes to perform the dance, Psy protested that no, the point was "to dress classy, and dance cheesy." On September 14, he appeared on NBC's morning program Today in New York City for its Toyota Concert Series, where he performed the song and also taught the anchors the dance.[228][229] The September 15, 2012, season premiere episode of Saturday Night Live featured a sketch based on the song and its video. Bobby Moynihan portrayed Psy, but was joined mid-sketch by Psy himself.[230] He also made his second appearance on The Ellen Show's September 19 episode to perform the song along with his backup dancers.[231] On September 22, Psy made an appearance at the iHeartRadio Music Festival to perform "Gangnam Style."[232] Psy, dressed in a black jacket, blue pants, two-tone shoes, and his signature shades, appeared on the US national TV show The View on October 25 and performed the song for Barbara Walters and the women of the show who donned sunglasses and got out of their seats.
Record executives in the music industry believe that music charts will increasingly be filled with YouTube-driven globalised acts from foreign countries. Sean Carey, a research fellow in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Roehampton, wrote that the flow of popular music will no longer be a single traffic route from North America and Europe to other parts of the globe, but will also move the other way as well.[254] According to Adam Sherwin from The Independent, the global web demand for Gangnam Style had short-circuited the "traditional reluctance" of radio stations to play foreign-language songs.[255] The song is also underlining a shift in how money is being made in the music business.[256] Although Psy earned more than US$60,000 from music sales of "Gangnam Style" in South Korea alone, he and his music label YG Entertainment have raked in almost US$1 million from advertisements which appear on YouTube videos identified for using "Gangnam Style" in its content. The Harvard Business Review published an article written by Kevin Evers, who explained how "Gangnam Style" had changed Billboard's ranking methodology of its music charts. Instead of relying solely on radio plays and paid purchases, Billboard started to place a heavier emphasis on digital sales and YouTube views.[257] As a result of the change, Gangnam Style moved up to the top position of Billboard's Hot Rap Songs music chart.[258] According to the British Phonographic Industry's report based on Official Charts Company sales data, thanks to Psy's song and Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe", pop had become the UK's favourite musical genre of the year, taking the lion's share of the singles market (38.5%) in 2012.[259] 2ff7e9595c
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