Gangnam Style (music video)

Gangnam Style

Psy (below) and Noh Hong-chul (above) in the elevator scene in the music video of "Gangnam Style".
Directed by Cho Soo-hyun
Produced by Cho Soo-hyun and Park Jae-sang
Starring Psy
Hwang Min-woo
Yoo Jae-suk
Noh Hong-chul
Kim Hyuna
Release dates
  • July 15, 2012 (2012-07-15)

(premiere)

  • October 19, 2012 (2012-10-19)

(download)

Running time
 4:12
Language English
Korean

The music video of "Gangnam Style" by recording artist Psy, was directed by Cho Soo-hyun. The music video was filmed in Seoul for 48 straight hours. The video was premiered on July 15, 2012 and was later made available to download digitally on October 19.[1] In the music video Psy "pokes fun at the style of Seoul's Gangnam-gu, a flashy district with high rents, high expectations and a focus on the high-status lifestyle".[2] In December 2012, the music video was the first to hit 1 billion views on the video-sharing website YouTube and in June 2014 the video had surpassed 2 billion views.[3][4] By December 2016 the number of views has grown past 2.70 billion.

Production

The music video is directed by Cho Soo-hyun, who also directed the music video for Psy's follow-up single "Gentleman" and the music video for "This Love" by Shinhwa.[5] It shows Psy performing a comical horse-riding dance and appearing in unexpected locations around the Gangnam District, such as an outdoor yoga session and a hot tub. He wears several distinctive suits and black sunglasses with a mindset of "dress classy and dance cheesy". It features a "skewering [of] the Gangnam image" by the "non-Gangnam Psy"; this parody would be recognizable to viewers familiar with Korean culture.[6][7] Although there are more than ten different locations featured, only two of the scenes are actually filmed in the Gangnam district. The sauna scene, elevator scene and bathroom scene were filmed elsewhere in the greater Seoul region,[8] and some shots were filmed in World Trade Center Seoul and the Songdo International Business District, which includes Songdo Central Park and International Business District Station.[9] The video was shot over 48 hours in July 2012.[10][11]

In K-pop, it is routine to have cameos by celebrities in a music video, such as in the dance scenes in the elevator and the parking garage.[12] The guests in the music video include:

The music was composed by Psy and Yoo Gun-hyung, a producer in South Korea who has also collaborated with Psy in the past. Yoo also arranged the song while Psy was responsible for the lyrics.

Synopsis

The video starts out with Crazy dancer Won Ah-yeon, fanning Psy, who is lounging at what looks like a sandy beach, under a sun umbrella and holding a cold drink, but the camera zooms out to reveal he is actually at a playground.[12] 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".[15] As Psy (and two girls) walk through a parking garage, they are pelted by pieces of newspaper, trash, and snow.[10] At a sauna, he rests his head on a fat man's shoulder, dressed in a blue towel, 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 (portrayed by Big Bang members Seungri and Daesung), causing them to jump 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.[10][11]

The chorus ends and he is seen at a parking lot, 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. He 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 an attractive young woman (Hyuna) dancing. At one of the train stops, he approaches the girl in slow motion, and she does the same. They start to embrace. He then tells the girl "Oppan Gangnam Style", and they horse dance along with some others at the train station, commencing the second chorus. He also surfaces from a spa.[10][11][note 1]

Psy sings to the girl at a night club as people in various costumes walk behind them. He raps in a serious tone in an enclosed space, but when he says "You know what I'm saying" the camera zooms out, and it is revealed that he is actually sitting on a toilet with his pants down.[10] Psy and a large group of dancers do the horse dance and strike a final pose. After a brief reprise of the dance duel, Psy says, "Oppan Gangnam style", and the video finishes with a cartoon graphic.

Viral spread

Screenshot of a parody by students from the Colegio de la Preciosa Sangre (Pichilemu, Chile)

Following its July 15 release, "Gangnam Style" overtook Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" to reach the number one position on the YouTube Top 100 Music Videos during the week of August 28, 2012.[16] On September 1, it overtook Girls' Generation's "Gee" to become the most viewed K-pop video on YouTube.[17] 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.[18] 61.6 percent of viewers were male, and those aged between 13 and 17 represented the biggest group.[19]

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.[20][21] 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?"[22] on July 30. This was soon followed by Robbie Williams,[23] Britney Spears,[24] Katy Perry, Tom Cruise,[25] Joseph Gordon-Levitt,[26] and William Gibson,[27] who have either commented about or shared the video with their fans via Twitter.

The earliest video to catch the attention of media networks outside South Korea was "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.[28] 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.[20] 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'".[29]

On September 3, 2012, the number of daily views generated by "Gangnam Style" went past the five-million mark.[30] By the end of September, it had topped the iTunes charts in 31 countries.[31]

1 Earliest notable reaction video by K-pop fans Katie and Mindy Anderson, uploaded to YouTube on July 18, 2012[28]
2 Earliest notable parody by K-pop bloggers Simon and Martina Stawski, uploaded on July 23[20]
3a Shared on the social news website Reddit, July 28[32]
3b Earliest celebrity comment by Robbie Williams on his personal blog, July 28[23][33]
3c Featured in the foreign tabloid newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, in Finland, July 28[34]
4 First celebrity tweet by T-Pain, July 29[20][35]
5 Picked up by Neetzan Zimmerman from the social blog Gawker, July 30[22]
6 Picked up by the British political commentator Andrew Sullivan, who blogs about the video on The Daily Beast, August 1[36]
7 Featured in CNN International and The Wall Street Journal, August 3[7][37]
8 Nelly Furtado performs "Gangnam Style" at her concert in the Philippines, August 16
9 Psy performs "Gangnam Style" at Dodger Stadium, August 20. This marks his first public appearance in the United States
10 Katy Perry shares the "Gangnam Style" music video with her 25 million followers on Twitter, August 21[38]
11 Psy appears on VH1 with Carrie Keagan and Jason Dundas, August 22. This marks his first appearance in a US television show

"Gangnam Style" reached the unprecedented milestone of one billion YouTube views on December 21, 2012. A spoof documentary by videographer Simon Gosselin[39] 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.[40] On December 21, at around 15:50 UTC, the video's YouTube page updated with 1,000,382,639 views.[41] YouTube specially marked the video's accomplishments with a cartoon dancing Psy animated icon, added first by the site logo,[42] and later next to the video's view counter when it exceeded a billion views.[43] On April 6, 2013 the video on YouTube reached 1.5 billion views.[44] On June 1, 2014, the music video reached two billion views.[45]

On December 3, 2014, the video reached 2.1 billion views (close to the largest representable number in a 32-bit binary number), and YouTube had to change the view counting system to prevent an Integer overflow.[46][47] On January 19, 2016, the video reached 2.5 billion views.

Records

The video has held 6 records in YouTube history - most viewed video (current), most subscribed video (current), most rated video (current), most discussed video (current), most liked video (held for 1,444 days; surpassed in August 2016 by Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again"), and fastest video to reach 1 billion views (surpassed twice: by Adele's "Hello" and Justin Bieber's "Sorry").

Reception

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.[48] 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.[49] 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".[50] As such, the music video spawned a dance craze unseen since the Macarena of the mid-1990s.[51][52]

The World Bank's lead economist David McKenzie remarked that some of Psy’s dance moves "kind of look like a regression discontinuity",[53] 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.[54] Melissa Locker of Time noted that "it's hard not to watch again ...and again ...and again",[55] while CNN reporter Shanon Cook told the audience that she had watched "Gangnam Style" about 15 times.[56]

The German news magazine Der Spiegel attributed the popularity of "Gangnam Style" to its daring dance moves,[57] 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".[58] 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".[59]

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.[60] 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"[61] whereas Deborah Netburn of the Los Angeles Times called it "one of the greatest videos ever to be uploaded to YouTube."[62] 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.

As of January 2015, Billboard named the video as one of the 20 best music videos of the 2010s (so far).[63]

Notes

  1. ↑ In the Rolling Stone interview, Psy says he copied the spa surfacing scene from the music video for Lady Gaga's "Poker Face".

References

  1. ↑ "Gangnam Style". iTunes. Psy. 19 October 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  2. ↑ "Pinpointing Five Locations in Seoul from the Music Video, 'Gangnam Style'". Jaunted.com. JetSetCD. 29 August 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  3. ↑ "Exclusive: Psy 'Can't Believe' 'Gangnam Style' Broke 1 Billion Views". MTV. James Montgomery. 21 December 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  4. ↑ "At 2 Billion Views, 'Gangnam Style' Has Made Psy A Very Rich Man". Forbes. Hugh McIntyre. 16 June 2014. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  5. ↑ Hong, Grace Danbi (8 May 2013). "Fujii Mina to be Shinhwa's Lady in 'This Love' music video". enewsWorld. CJ E&M. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  6. ↑ Surh, Jung-min (August 8, 2012). "'Gangnam style' goes viral". The Hankyoreh. Hankyoreh Newspaper Corp. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Ramstad, Evan (August 3, 2012). "What's Up with the 'Gangnam Style' Video?". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  8. ↑ "There's No 'Gangnam' Seen in Psy's 'Gangnam Style' MV?!". KpopStarz. September 12, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  9. ↑ 안종훈 (23 August 2012). 싸이 '강남스타일' 뮤직비디오 촬영지 인기. Nocutnews (in Korean). Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 Garibaldi, Christina (September 17, 2012). "Psy Breaks Down Greatest Assets of 'Gangnam Style'". MTV News. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Knopper, Steve (September 14, 2012). "Breaking down Psy's 'Gangnam Style'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  12. 1 2 Fisher, Max (August 23, 2012). "Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea's Music Video Sensation". The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  13. ↑ "Who's the dancing kid in Psy's 'Gangnam Style' MV?". AllKpop.com. August 29, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  14. ↑ Lee, Sungeun. "'Little Psy', 7, Grabs 'Gangnam Style' Spotlight". ABC News. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  15. ↑ "Invisible Horse Dance: The Business of 'Gangnam Style'". Knowledge@Wharton High School. University of Pennsylvania. September 27, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014. The signature move of the video has been called the 'invisible horse dance' because it mimics a bouncing/riding movement with hand gestures of alternating holding reigns and lassoing.
  16. ↑ "Charts – Music – YouTube, Most viewed videos, week of August 28, 2012". YouTube. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  17. ↑ "Popularity of Psy's 'Gangnam Style' Analyzed Realistically". KpopStarz. September 2, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  18. ↑ Allocca, Kevin (21 August 2014). "YouTube Trends: Gangnam Style vs Call Me Maybe: A Popularity Comparison". YouTube Trends. YouTube. Retrieved 2012-09-14.
  19. ↑ "Psy's 'Gangnam Style' most-viewed video on YouTube". Yonhap News Agency. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  20. 1 2 3 4 Ramstad, Evan (September 7, 2012). "Canadians in South Korea fund expansion of popular website". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  21. ↑ T-Pain. "Words cannot even describe how amazing this video is". Twitter. Retrieved November 12, 2012.
  22. 1 2 Zimmerman, Neetzan (July 30, 2012). "Did This Underground Hip Hop Artist from South Korea Just Release the Best Music Video of the Year?". Gawker. Gawker Media. Archived from the original on November 26, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  23. 1 2 "T-Pain, Robbie Williams, Josh Groban, and Gawker Show Love for Psy's "Gangnam Style"". Soompi.com. August 1, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  24. ↑ Day, Lara (September 12, 2012). "'Gangnam Style's Psy Appears on 'Ellen', Schools Britney Spears". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  25. ↑ "Tom Cruise Considering Psy as a Future Co-Star?". Mnet. CJ E&M Corporation. September 5, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  26. ↑ Joseph Gordon-Levitt [hitRECordJoe] (September 12, 2012). "#EndlessGangamStyle #Again #AndAgain" (Tweet). Retrieved 21 August 2014 – via Twitter.
  27. ↑ Dayal, Geeta (December 15, 2012). "William Gibson on Punk Rock, Internet Memes, and 'Gangnam Style'". Wired. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  28. 1 2 Ramstad, Evan (August 6, 2012). "'Gangnam Style' Video Brings Attention to Fan Reaction Videos Too". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  29. ↑ "How 'Gangnam Style' Went Viral". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company. August 8, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  30. ↑ Jurgensen, John. "'Gangnam' Mania". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  31. ↑ Hicap, Jonathan M. (September 24, 2012). "Guinness World Records Declares 'Gangnam Style' as 'Most Liked' Video in YouTube History". Manila Bulletin. Manila Bulletin Publishing. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  32. ↑ "Words cannot even describe how amazing this video is...". Reddit. Archived from the original on 21 August 2014. Retrieved November 26, 2012.
  33. ↑ "Trying to Figure out which Tracks Stay on the Album". RobbieWilliams.com. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  34. ↑ "Unohtakaa Macarena, tässä tulee hevostanssi!". Iltasanomat (in Finnish). Sanoma News. July 28, 2012. Archived from the original on November 26, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  35. ↑ T-Pain. "Words cannot even describe how amazing this video is...". Twitter. Archived from the original on November 26, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  36. ↑ Sullivan, Andrew (August 1, 2012). "Mental Health Break". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on 21 August 2014. Retrieved 2012-10-01.
  37. ↑ "Rapper living 'Gangnam Style' goes viral". CNN. August 3, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  38. ↑ Katy Perry [katyperry] (August 21, 2012). "Help, I'm in a gangnam style k hole" (Tweet). Retrieved 21 August 2014 – via Twitter.
  39. ↑ "End of the world: Gangnam Style?". Agence France-Presse. Retrieved 21 August 2014. The only hiccup is this so-called thesis writer is actually Simon Gosselin, a blogger and videographer who invented everything for fun.
  40. ↑ "Psy's Gangnam Style indicating Dec 21 doomsday?". India Times. Agence France-Presse. December 5, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014. An obvious fake, the quote has its origins in a spoof five-minute "documentary" posted on YouTube that has garnered up 1.5 million views and ties Nostradamus and Psy to the December 21 apocalypse prophesied by the Mayans.
  41. ↑ Gruger, William. "PSY's 'Gangnam Style' Hits 1 Billion Views on YouTube". Retrieved 2012-12-21. The video's YouTube page updated with 1,000,382,639 at 10:50 am
  42. ↑ Gruger, William (December 18, 2012). "'Gangnam Style' Leads YouTube's Top Trending Videos of 2012". Billboard. Retrieved 21 August 2014. While browsing videos on YouTube the past day you may have noticed that the site's icon in the upper lefthand corner has been taken over by a .gif of PSY and his all too familiar dance.
  43. ↑ "Gangnam Style hits one billion views on YouTube". BBC. December 21, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014. The video's YouTube hit counter added a dancing Psy animation after it hit the one billion milestone
  44. ↑ Choi Ji-Ye (2013-04-06). "싸이 '강남스타일', 유튜브 15억뷰…27일만에 1억 추가". mydaily. Retrieved 2013-04-06.
  45. ↑ Conlon, Kevin (June 1, 2014). "Modern milestone: 'Gangnam' hits 2 billion". CNN.com. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  46. ↑ Lee, Timothy B. (2014-12-03). "Gangnam Style got so many views that it nearly broke YouTube". Vox. Retrieved 2016-05-28.
  47. ↑ "'Gangnam Style' breaks YouTube with 2.1 billion views". Kicker. 2014-12-03. Retrieved 2016-05-28.
  48. ↑ "Justin Bieber to record US version of Psy's 'Gangnam Style'?". MediaCorp Interactive. August 14, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014. While the music video has been viewed over 28 million times on video sharing site YouTube, and has been praised for its catchy rhythm as well as its wacky 'horse dance', not everyone is impressed – his detractors have labelled his music vulgar.
  49. ↑ Mahdawi, Arwa (September 24, 2012). "What's so funny about Gangnam Style?". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  50. ↑ "From Korean pop music to skydiving to Earth – not-your-typical diplomatic meetings for UN Secretary-General". United Nations. October 24, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  51. ↑ Bellini, Jerrett (October 15, 2012). "Apparently This Matters: R.I.P., 'Gangnam Style'". CNN. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  52. ↑ "Gangnam Style is the latest craze to sweep across dancefloors". News.com.au. September 22, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  53. ↑ McKenzie, David. "Gangnam Migration: Regression-Discontinuity Impacts of Migrating to Korea". World Bank. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  54. ↑ "Johnson Space Center Pathways Interns Create 'Gangnam Style' Parody". NASA. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  55. ↑ Locker, Melissa (August 22, 2012). "WATCH: Psy Brings 'Gangnam Style' to Dodger Stadium". Time. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  56. ↑ "Rapper living 'Gangnam Style' goes viral". CNN. August 3, 2012.
  57. ↑ "Dank Katy Perry: US-Erfolg für koreanischen Sänger Psy". Der Spiegel (in German). Spiegel Verlag. August 24, 2012. Retrieved 2012-09-26.
  58. ↑ Judkis, Marua (August 23, 2012). "'Gangnam Style's invisible horse dance craze: Giddyup". The Washington Post. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  59. ↑ Knopper, Steve (21 August 2014). "On the Charts: 'Gangnam Style' Is All the Rage". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2012-10-13.
  60. ↑ Fekadu, Mesfin (August 23, 2012). "Viral clip gives Korea's PSY a pop culture moment". Huffington Post. AOL. Associated Press. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  61. ↑ Buchanan, Matt; Ellis, Scott (August 28, 2012). "Hit video may have a subversive message". The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media. Retrieved 21 August 2014. This is an almost Dada-esque series of vignettes that make no sense at all to most Western eyes. Psy spits in the air while a child breakdances, sings to horses, strolls through a hurricane that shoots whipped cream in his face, there's [sic] explosions, a disco bus, he rides a merry-go-round, dances on boats, beaches, in car parks and in elevators and generally makes you wonder if you have accidentally taken someone else's medication.
  62. ↑ Netburn, Deborah (August 28, 2012). "'Gangnam Style' live: New Psy video blows up on YouTube". Los Angeles Times. Tribune Co. Retrieved 21 August 2014. I think we can all agree that K-Pop singer Psy's music video 'Gangnam Style' is one of the greatest videos ever to be uploaded to YouTube.
  63. ↑ "The 20 Best Music Videos of the 2010s (So Far)". Retrieved January 15, 2015.
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