He’s done live performances on every continent, and even danced with MC Hammer (speaking of one-hit wonders) on New Year’s Eve. PSY himself probably knows that he is never, ever going to top this, so he’s doing the right thing and cashing in while he can. No, I don’t pretend to understand the phenomenon 🙂 And UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon even called it a “force for world peace”.

No less than British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama have admitted to dancing to it. Chalk it up to a catchy tune, an easy-to-learn dance, the power of social media, and a song (and performer) that manages to be so ridiculous that it’s somehow cool. Unlike previous one-hit wonders like the Macarena and Who Let the Dogs Out, for some reason Gangnam Style has captured the imagination of the world.

It’s a song that seems to know no boundaries. Their 3 year old daughter started jumping up and down when they played the song. Similarly, the other night we were at a friend’s house for a dinner party. But the second he started doing the Gangnam Style “horsey” dance, I joined in and we bonded instantly. She had a 8 year old cousin who didn’t speak English, and my Chinese is really bad. On my recent honeymoon to Taiwan, I met my wife’s uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces for the first time. By then, the whole crowd recognized the song and were clapping along. I rewarded him a few months later by making him, as my best man, walk into our wedding reception to the music. My friend Jack (who’s always on top of these things) actually tipped me off to this song when it still had only a couple hundred thousand views on YouTube. The video is so popular that even YouTube designed a special icon just for this song. The video is approaching 7 million “likes”. On YouTube, as of this writing the official music video has 1 billion, one hundred ninety three million, three hundred forty thousand, four hundred and ninety-four view. Gangnam Style by Korean rapper PSY is a, by all accounts, a phenomenon.

Download just dance 4