Not since “Macarena” soundtracked a billion drunken nights has the world seen its like. “Gangnam Style”, by the South Korean rapper Psy, has notched up more than 400m YouTube views and topped charts from Austria to Australia. It adds a bold new entry to the lexicon of dance moves – a crossed-hands horse-riding pose in which the dancer hops around as though on a frisky steed and makes lassoing motions in time to a ridiculously catchy chorus. All together now: “Eh sexy lady/Op op op op/Oppan Gangnam Style!”
Pop historians will detect close similarities with “Macarena”, the 1996 hit by Spain’s Los Del Río that came with its own dance move – a complicated semaphore routine ending with three hip rolls, a pivot and the cry, “Eh Macarena!”, which inspired 50,000 baseball fans to set a world record for group dancing at the Yankee Stadium in New York. Is “Gangnam Style” merely the “Macarena” of today? Or does the first South Korean star to top European and US charts signal something different – the emergence of a genuinely global pop market?
“Gangnam Style” creator Psy, aka Park Jae-sang, is a leading star of South Korea’s K-pop scene. Based on western pop genres – dance music, electropop, hip-hop – K-pop has established South Korea as an Asian pop hub, pumping out hits to a young generation enjoying the fruits of the country’s economic transformation, like American teenagers in the 1950s. In less than five years South Korea has gone from the 23rd largest music market in the world to the 11th.