Gangnam Style: Horsing Around Pop Culture
Amy: The thing is… We are a hub. The Peruvian market is a hub reflecting what’s the US. If something is popular in the States, it usually tends to become popular here.
Rodrigo: Not always.
Amy: But that tends to happen to a lot of non-developed markets. That’s why people want to make it in the US, if they’re “Hollywood” famous, it somehow means they’re famous worldwide.
Rodrigo: We No Speak Americano is from Australia, but it got really huge here because people LOVED saying “Pa-Panamericano” a lot.
Amy: Sighs, I hate the freaking song so much since they were doing the commercials to get the ringtone. It drives me nuts.
Rodrigo: I thought people liking it for a stupid ass reason was bad enough, but the ringtone ads made it much worse. I think this was the first time that a song became annoying to me via internet ads, lol.
Amy: They even dared to use the song in animated ads online!!!!! Which made it 100 times worse!!! I know animated ads are still… somehow… popular, but using sound in an ad is crossing the line.
Rodrigo: Yeah.
Amy: Let’s take a look at Pink… from the beginning she wasn’t that popular, but she became huge here when Lady Marmalade happened. Her 2nd album was a big hit in Latin America and in Peru… But when the 3rd album only made a splash in Europe and Australia, not in the US, nothing happened here.
Rodrigo: Lady Marmalade had the Moulin Rouge movie backing it. Did Get This Party Started [MV] happened around that time?
Amy: Get the Party Started, Don’t Let Me Get Me [MV] and Family Portrait [MV] were on heavy rotation in MTVLA during those days…
Rodrigo: Lady Marmalade had plenty of airtime on MTV, back when it didn’t jump the shark in 2003.
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.