October 8 2012 One Aspect Of Life In Seoul That Causes My Mental Wheels To Spin

I have been living in Seoul for nearly a decade, but this year is the most interesting one. Psy, a Korean singer, rapper, songwriter, and record producer, has finally become famous worldwide after twelve years of hard work. His new song “Gangnam Style,” was the most “liked” video in YouTube history, attracting millions of fans worldwide. His song took first place in iTunes and may well do so on the Billboard Chart as well. However, I still don’t understand why he became famous worldwide twelve years after his debut.

Psy was twenty-four when he became a singer. Many people knew him from his appearances, amusing music videos, and his unique dance moves. His parents wanted him to have a stable and successful career in law, banking, or medicine but Psy knew that those jobs were not for him and decided to become a singer-songwriter. In 2001, his first song, “Bird,” became a big hit in Korea. He continued his life as a singer through funny music videos and lyrics. His sixth album, “Gangnam Style,” became so famous in Korea that eighteen days after his music video was released, a management agency from America offered Psy a contract. As the news spread, more and more people grew interested in Psy’s new song. Suddenly, the song started playing everywhere it eventually reached more than 400,000,000 views on Youtube. With everything so quickly, Psy decided to perform in America instead of Japan (where he had been planning to go).

After Psy became popular worldwide, I started to wonder why he had become popular, when all his songs and videos were so similar? If people liked his videos now, they would definitely have liked his old ones. Psy said that he had never thought that this song would be incredibly famous, but that its great popularity was probably due to the comic music video. Korean pop music is catching on everywhere, but Psy had never been mentioned in other countries before his new album came out.

There may be several answers to this question, but certainly no one can predict the future accurately and the music most humans enjoy may change in a hundred years.