Gangnam Style

About

Gangman Style (강남 스타일) is a 2012 dance pop single written and performed by Korean pop singer PSY. Since the release of the song and its highly entertaining music video in mid-July 2012, the video has gained more than 8 million views in the span of two weeks and spawned numerous parodies and copycat dance videos on YouTube.

Origin

The song “Gangnam Style” was written and recorded as the title single of the sixth studio album Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1 by Korean singer PSY, who is best known for his quick-witted sense of humor and comical dance moves. The song was released on July 15th, 2012, along with the music video which made its online debut via PSY’s official YouTube channel on the same day.

Upon its release, the song took off on virtually all Korean billboard charts, portal search sites and online music stores, but it began garnering international attention after the video went viral on YouTube during the third week of July 2012. its signature dance move known as “the horse-riding dance” which combines the stylistic elements of shuffle dancing and hand movements resembling the posture of a horseback rider. The dance was previously introduced through the debut single of another Korean K-pop girl group Girl’s Day in 2010.

PSY Doing the “Horse Riding Dance” in “Gangnam Style” M/V

Terminology

“Gangnam Style” is a Korean neologism mainly associated with upscale fashion and lavish lifestyle associated with trendsetters in Seoul’s Gangnam district, which is considered the most affluent part of the metropolitan area. In colloquial usage, it is comparable to the English slang terms “swag” or “yolo”.

Spread

The video earned the coveted title of “viral video” within days after its release and received intensive coverage from various English-language K-POP blogs and news sites like AllKPop^[8], KPopStars^[3] and KoreaBoo^[16] among others, as well as other regional Asian news sites including Yahoo! Philippines News^[17] and New Zealand music sites Mai FM^[9] and Geroge FM.^[10]

In the following week, the music video began picking up notable mentions from a number of internet humor and pop music sites, such as BuzzFeed^[11], FunnyJunk^[12], Metafilter^[13] and PopDust^[14] among others. On July 27th, the song even picked up a celebrity endorsement from the British pop singer Count Robbie Williams^[15], who posted a link to PSY’s music video with the description “P.S Try watching this and not smiling I dare you… (Not even a lip curl)." In addition, the song’s chorus line “Oppa Gangnam Style” became notable among the English-speaking audiences for its misheard lyrics erroneously referred to as “Open Condom Style” or “Open Gundam Style,” which also went onto inspire several image macros and top-voted comments on the YouTube video page.

Reaction Videos

Meanwhile on YouTube^[6], some viewers began uploading their reaction videos to the bizarre music video, praising it as a prime example of “Asian WTF humor” that has proven to fare well in the Western blogosphere. The YouTube community’s reaction to the music video in turn led to extensive coverage and analysis of its international popularity in the Korean news media, bringing hundreds of thousands of views to some of the most notable response videos. All three videos shown below received over 40,000 views within the first week of upload.

Notable Examples

Parodies

GIF Images

The video also caught on with Tumblr’s K-pop fanbase, spawning numerous reaction GIFs and image macros depicting PSY’s horse dance or other memorable scenes from the music video under the tag “Gangnam Style.”^[7]

Search Interest

External References