Gangnam Style: Horsing Around Pop Culture
Amy: Kpop has been wanting to breakthrough for a while. Psy might be the one who wants to pull back so people don’t get sick of it. I don’t see any company wanting to pull back, instead exchange exposure for music placement. But maybe I’m being toooooo negative on YG, maybe they’re not like that. Who knows…
Rodrigo: Just read the translated lyrics for Gangman Style. Seems like a nuanced version of a Flo-Rida song in lyrics.
Amy: Korean music’s biggest chance to break non-viral music market is one of its girl groups because boybands are really tricky, but since One Direction seems to be popular now… maybe the market’s changed.
Rodrigo: One Direction could take over Bieber’s spot… in popularity and hatred.
Amy: It should… at least they can handle vocals better.
Rodrigo: I agree. One Direction are not great by any means, but they’re definitely better than Bieber.
Amy: But Kpop boybands can handle vocals and dance better than all of them.
Rodrigo: From the little I have heard, I agree. Anyways, One Direction is a UK act. UK acts have it easier to get huge in USA, but remaining popular is another story for UK acts.
Amy: What irks me about pop fans that complain about Bieber and some of the negative comments on One Direction is that they say there’s nothing like BackStreet Boys or NSYNC…. or even 98 Degrees. But in truth, if they only dared to look beyond “it not in english song” they would find that there’s a lot of quailty boyband music that train hard to keep their vocals and tight dance. And because they work so damn hard, like OVERWORK, they deserve any bit of respect they could get from its audience.
Rodrigo: It’ll take more than just a documentary with PSY-style popularity to show how hard they work.
Considering I must be one of annoying friends that share all the Gangnam in facebook, yes I did like the song. It was catchy and funny, and that’s how I like my music lately (besides the music I already like or anime songs).
I think all the social commentary people talk about, it’s mostly for its title, what with Gangnam being the most wealthy district in South Korea. But the lyrics of the song itself is about this (upper-class) guy who tells all what he wants in a (upper-class) woman, and then describes himself as a match for said woman?
@Mirella, hahaha and that’s in contrast to Rap and Hip Hop saying that they drink the most expensive booze, drive the coolest cars, but want them hos ? xD
@Mirella, The difference between you and the other friend that posts Gangman Style non-stop is that the other person I know is more of an “Asian pride” type of person and would probably like Gangman Style almost by default. You like it because it’s catchy and funny.
Checking Facebook at the moment, now there’s like 6 persons that I know who like the GS song.
I forgot to mention that some of the videos that turned “viral” lately have been Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s PONPONPON [MV] as well as Hyuna’s Bubble Pop [MV], but they never made it past the 50M views or never reached the status of “people that don’t listen to it have watched it”
I remember that “Asereje” got quite a bit of airplay on the Latino outlets here in the US, but it never got as big as I heard it got in Europe. I think I saw something about it on the German news (Deutsche Welle)…
anyways, Gangnam Style is fun and I hope that since it’s intentionally funny, that it doesn’t come across the same mean “make fun of the Asian guy” way as the William Hung business sort of turned out in the USA…
@chrryblssmninja, Aserejé got pretty popular among hispanic countries and Europe, yes. I remember one of my university teachers briefly singing a bit of the song and it was lulzy.
I have no idea how long Gangman Style’s staying power will last in the States, but it’s catchy right now. Even members of my family talked about it briefly (they know it as “El Baile del Caballo”), and they know jackshit about Kpop (in my case, I am aware of Kpop thanks to YAM’s shoving promotion and talks about it).
William Hung… lol, I forgot he existed until Amy and I chatted about GS.
With the 2012 Emmy Awards airing tonight, does anyone thinks that the song will be used somehow and/or the song being danced by anyone? I guess Psy himself could do a cameo and teach it to Jimmy Fallon in the intro segment… or maybe Rex Lee or Ken Jeong imitate Psy.
@Rodrigo, did they? I didn’t watch the show. xD
@amy, Nope. 0 GS references. Opening segment was Jimmy Kimmel (who fucking sucked as a host) inside the women’s bathroom getting punched by a good amount of female Emmy nominees including a naked Lena Dunham.