"Gangnam Style", a South Korean pop song is taking the world by storm. After an appearance on the MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 6, the South Korean, Psy (Park Jae Sung), appeared last week with Britney Spears on Ellen DeGeneres' show to offer the two women a dance lesson.
On Friday, he appeared on The Today Show, and then Saturday night he showed up on NBC's Saturday Night Live premiere. The singer became a viral sensation when his "Gangnam Style" video garnered phenomenal attention within two short months. It has now well over 194 million views and counting.
In the skit, SNL cast members Kenan Thompson, Bill Hader and Taran Killam play employees at baseball-cap retailer Lids. Annoyed at their manager, they cheer themselves up by pressing a button that unleashes Bobby Moynihan dressed as Psy in "Gangnam Style," complete with sunglasses and baby-blue tux. Moynihan does the song's now-infamous horse dance and later reappears with female dancers, a pair of horse heads and then Psy bursts in wearing a black tux and does the dance.
"Gangnam Style" is about people pursuing this luxurious lifestyle as the scenes in the video suggest. It shows Psy as a hotshot in a number of seemingly exuberant and luxurious settings only to find out that the scene is pretty mundane when the camera pans out.
The video is a parody of life in 21st century South Korea where people are in love with beautiful material things and status. Park's satirical song points at these features and uses the Gangnam area as the pinnacle of Korea's current trends.
Park refers to this in his song when he says "A classy girl who know how to enjoy the freedom of a cup of coffee" (Translated) He pokes fun at the women who would rather pay a couple bucks for a cheap meal in order to enjoy the conspicuous luxuries available such as Starbucks coffees. These women are known as "doenjangnyeo" a term used to describe people blindly pursuing brand names and luxuries.
YouTube's most watch music video is Justin Bieber's "Baby" which has been viewed over 778 million times.
