Gangnam Style

2012

Date: 15 July 2012 · Place: YouTube, recorded in Seoul · Figures: Park Jae-sang aka PSY, performer · Yoo Gun-hyung, co-composer · YG Entertainment, label · Tags: K-Pop Crossover, Dance Meme, Billion-View Threshold 01. Seoul Saddles The Globe On 15 July 2012 the South Korean rapper Park Jae-sang releases the music video for Gangnam Style on YouTube. By 21 December it becomes the first video to surpass one billion views, exceeding YouTube's then thirty-two-bit view counter and forcing an engineering migration to a sixty-four-bit field. PSY performs the horse-riding dance with Britney Spears on Ellen, with Madonna in Madison Square Garden, and at the White House Christmas tree lighting. 02. The First K-Pop Crossover At Scale Gangnam Style is the first non-Anglophone music video to achieve durable global virality. It precedes BTS's American breakthrough by five years and BLACKPINK's by six, and it is the proof of concept on which the second-wave Korean Wave is built. It is also the canonical case study in dance-replication virality, the structural precursor to TikTok's choreographic economy. The horse-riding step is now a standard reference in pop choreography. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Gangnam Style' • YouTube engineering blog, '64-bit View Counter' (December 2014) • Billboard, 'PSY and the Korean Wave' (28 September 2012)