#FlashbackFriday Psy releases Gangnam Style, spawning a worldwide craze

WHERE were you when South Korean rapper Psy released the music video for Gangnam Style? It probably didn’t matter, because there was no way you could have avoided hearing the song after it was released on July 15 in 2012.

Gangnam Style was Psy’s 18th single and it was featured on his album Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1. The catchy song pokes fun at people or posers who aspire to live a high-end lifestyle.

Gangnam in the song refers to an area in the city where its mostly occupied by the affluent. Later, a four-minute long music video for the single was uploaded and it introduced a horse-galloping dance move that would spawn countless memes and parodies. In just three days, Gangnam Style was getting an average one million views per day. In two months, it increased to nine million views per day. Then on Dec 21 in 2012, it was certified as the first video to reach one billion views on YouTube. To date, the Gangnam Style music video has over three billion views. Psy became an unlikely pop music superstar, making appearances on shows like Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel Live, the American Music Award and MTV Europe Music Award. But the media frenzy would eventually take a toll on the artiste.

In March 2013, Psy was part of the Future Music Festival Asia event held in Sepang, Selangor. There, he announced that he was tired of Gangnam Style.

“I don’t feel like a human anymore, I’m a horse. Look out for my new single on April 13. It’s an honour to finish off nine months of Gangnam Style in Malaysia,” he said. That new single, Gentleman, didn’t quite live up to madness that was Gangnam Style.

In a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone, Psy said that to this day, he doesn’t understand how Gangnam Style became such a hit. “I still don’t know why it was so special. If I knew why, I could make it again and again.”