Psy, Return to Gangnam Style

The Billboard poll on Psy’s three songs.

Every day on our way to my two daughters’ school, I am asked by both of them to play a selection of songs in the car CD player; the Egyptian version of “Gangnam Style” is one of those songs. It is no surprise to have an Egyptian touch of the worldwide hit of singer Psy. With more than two billion music video views, there are almost as many versions as countries in the world.

The fast tempo of “Gangnam Style” with the spread of iconic Psy as a representative of the modern Korean cultural wave, known as Hallyu, helped me to hear the song everywhere – at birthday parties, sport events and daily life celebrations – and to see Psy posing for photographs with VIPs, including his fellow countryman Mr. Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General.

Such success was not reached by Psy’s second song “Gentleman,” as the music video was not appropriate for beyond being socially accepted by young kids. So, if Gangnam Style’s worldwide success was built on having a video that millions of kids copied worldwide, this was not the case for “Gentleman” and it will not be the case either for his new video “Hangover,” featuring singer Snoop Dogg, as they share scenes suitable only for adults; the clip features, more or less, nothing but the pair dealing with a hangover. Full of alcoholic scenes, it is said this song drives you to give up alcohol forever!

The South Korean superstar told Billboard how the bizarre collaboration came about: “One day I wrote a hip-hop track and I thought about one catchy word. I was hungover and I thought about hangover, so I just recorded it right away. As soon as I got that hook part I thought about Snoop Dogg, because we all know he’s hanging over every day.”

Bizarre collaboration with Snoop Dogg

For those who check Billboard’s poll, they will discover that “Gangnam Style” is still preferred over the other two songs that followed.

Psy also outs himself as a realist. “I cannot beat that song forever,” he says of “Gangnam Style.” “How can I beat a song that has 2 billion views?”

Actually, it needed the South Korean K-pop artist Psy to team up with the king of hip hop Snoop Dogg to produce one of the oddest collaborations known to pop music. Critics have doubted the “art” description given to the new song by Time magazine. They have called it a “terrible disaster,” according to euronews.com, and this is the reason for the spread of news for Psy to return to the roots of his electronic dance music, as we listened to in “Gangnam Style.”

I think that westernization of the Korean Wave, Hallyu, is no longer suitable for Korean culture. The West will absorb the many talents and trends, digest them and produce a second-ranked art, while there is a unique chance for Psy and other K-pop music stars and bands to introduce Korea in its dynamic way of life that is not just a replica of the Western one.

From an artistic point of view, the new clip is not more than a reproduction of modern life chaos, where houses are not tidy, eating is only seen in fast food restaurants, clothes are not attached to a certain culture, and the stomach of the human being, similar to the womb of the word, is pouring mixed rubbish.

Repeating shots in a rhythmic way of musical relevance is a poor repetition of what has been done before by Psy and many others. The misuse of women to just be models with sleek bodies and empty brains, a feature that is very present in American and European video clips, was also criticized.

For Psy, the return to Gangnam Style is a kind of solution for success, but that touch of Hallyu is still far away.