‘Gangnam Type’ introduced Ok-pop to the world, however haunted its cr…
However he doesn’t thoughts nursing this headache, at effectively previous 2pm on a Thursday in Seoul. A few of his greatest songwriting concepts come to him, he mentioned, within the malaise that follows an evening of onerous ingesting.
The person doing the artistic struggling is Psy, a onetime world web sensation whose 2012 viral music video and earworm of a tune, “Gangnam Type”, grew to become the primary YouTube providing to surpass 1 billion views and had the world galloping together with him.
The outlandish however irresistibly catchy tune and accompanying video — which has Psy doing the tune’s signature horseback dance transfer in and round Gangnam, an upscale Seoul neighborhood — achieved the breakthrough, worldwide success that had largely eluded Korean pop acts, or Ok-pop, earlier than then.
The video, which now has some 4.6 billion views, was so culturally pervasive in 2012 that Barack Obama was requested about it on Election Day. NASA astronauts recorded a parody, and a North Korean state propaganda website evoked the dance transfer to mock a South Korean politician.
However for a number of years within the aftermath of all his viral fame, Psy mentioned, the tune’s success haunted him. At the same time as he was thrust in a single day right into a Hollywood existence, getting chased round New York Metropolis by paparazzi, signing with Justin Bieber’s supervisor and releasing a single with Snoop Dogg, internally he felt the strain mounting for one more hit.
“Let’s make only one extra,” he mentioned he stored telling himself.
He moved to Los Angeles in an effort to get a worldwide profession entering into earnest, an ocean away from his native South Korea, the place he was each a fixture of the music charts and a supply of comedian reduction on foolish tv selection exhibits. However not one of the makes an attempt got here near replicating the formulation that made “Gangnam Type” a worldwide success.
Psy was not alone in making an attempt to determine how one can reproduce the phenomenon. In South Korea, not solely the music business however authorities officers and economists, too, had been finding out simply what it was about the tune, the lyrics, the video, the dancing, or the person that had vaulted the tune to such singular ranges of ubiquity.
And within the decade for the reason that tune and video first put South Korea’s pop music on the map for a lot of all over the world, Ok-pop has change into a cultural juggernaut, increasing out from markets in East and Southeast Asia to permeate all corners of the world.
Artists similar to BTS and Blackpink command devoted followers numbering within the tens of thousands and thousands, and the bands wield an financial influence that rivals a small nation’s gross home product. The fervor has spilled over past music into politics, schooling, and even Broadway.
Some say Psy deserves a lot of the credit score.
“Psy single-handedly positioned Ok-pop on a distinct degree,” mentioned Kim Younger-dae, a music critic who has written extensively about the business. The tune was a “sport changer” for the Korean music scene and paved the way in which for the groundswell of curiosity and business success that the South Korean stars who got here after him skilled, Kim mentioned.
Now, 10 years on from his lightning-in-a-bottle second, Psy, whose actual title is Park Jae-sang, is again residence in South Korea, the place he has began his personal music label and administration firm and is making an attempt to re-create the magic with the subsequent era of Ok-pop expertise as one of many business’s tastemakers.
For all of the years he has spent pondering and speaking about “Gangnam Type”, he stays simply as mystified as anybody by its success.
“The songs are written by the identical individual, the dance strikes are by the identical individual and so they’re carried out by the identical individual. Every thing’s the identical, however what was so particular about that one tune?” Psy mentioned. “I nonetheless don’t know, to at the present time.”
In world phrases, Psy and his “Gangnam Type” are the epitome of a one-hit marvel. However in South Korea, he had been well-known as a rapper and musician for a decade earlier than, carving out a path that differed from lots of his fellow performers, in that he didn’t rely on a lift from his bodily look or draw back from courting controversy.
He by no means had the chiseled look wanted in South Korea’s pop music business, and from the discharge of his first album in 2001, he grew to become infamous for his blunt, profane, and at instances ribald lyrics.
Regardless of — or maybe due to — his unapologetic, iconoclastic methods, over the previous 20 years at residence in South Korea, the school dropout has persistently logged chart toppers, bestselling albums, and sold-out concert events.
Initially focused for improvement within the Nineteen Seventies to develop Seoul south of the Han River, Gangnam has grew to become a coveted handle the place most of the capital’s rich congregate and one of the best faculties are concentrated, an academic disparity probably to make sure that the inequalities symbolized by the neighborhood proceed into the subsequent era.
Psy, raised within the larger Gangnam space in a household operating a semiconductor enterprise, now lives north of the river along with his spouse and twin daughters and mentioned he spends little time interested by the place.
As for the chase of worldwide fame that when drove him practically mad, he mentioned he’s made his peace with its absence.
“If one other good tune comes alongside and if that factor occurs once more, nice. If not, so be it,” he mentioned. “For now, I’ll do what I do in my rightful place.”
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