The basic premise of the song is about a self-proclaimed hotshot looking for "the perfect girlfriend who knows when to be refined and when to get wild." The refrain of the song, "Oppan Gangnam Style," can be translated as "Your Boy's Gangnam Style" with PSY referring to himself as such. However, PSY later revealed in interviews that he came up with the dance during a talent contest at a post-concert event in August 2011. PSY Doing the "Horse Riding Dance" in "Gangnam Style" M/Vĭuring its onset, speculations arose in Korean Internet communities that the dance may have been pioneered a year earlier by a Korean pop group Girls' Day in their 2011 debut single Tilting Head. The mass appeal of the music video has been attributed to its signature dance move known as "the horse-riding dance," which combines the stylistic elements of shuffle dancing and hand movements resembling the posture of a horseback rider. By mid-September, PSY's "Gangnam Style" overtook LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" as the most liked video on the site with more than 1.6 million likes. The video continued gaining viral momentum at an average rate of more than nine million views per day in the span of two months, surpassing Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" to reach the number one position on the YouTube Top 100 Music Videos chart during the last week of August. Upon its release, the song took off on virtually all Korean billboard charts, portal search sites and online music stores, but it began garnering international attention after the music video went viral on YouTube during the third week of July 2012. The song was released on July 15th, 2012 along with the music video via PSY's official YouTube channel. Not that these no translations take away any of the damage done to PSY's reputation or minimize that much of what he said, but still: there's your clarification for you.The song "Gangnam Style" was written, produced, and recorded as the lead single of PSY 6 (Six Rules), Part 1 the sixth studio album of South Korean singer and rapper PSY, who is best known for his quick-witted sense of humor and comical dance moves.
PSY said the song "was part of a deeply emotional reaction to the war in Iraq and the killing of two Korean schoolgirls that was part of the overall anti-war sentiment shared by others around the world at that time," reported CNN, which also may have started this whole thing. "I understand the sacrifices American servicemen and women have made to protect freedom and democracy in my country and around the world," PSY said in a statement picked up by CNN.
That changes the narrative from something that's very anti-American to anti-American torture.Īnd that seems to fit into his Friday apology. You could see how PSY could be calling - and, no, this isn't okay - for violence against the Americans who tortured Iraqis and the authorities who ordered the torture of Iraqis, as opposed to violence directed toward every American.
And not having "Kill" in those first lines obviously changes the way you interpret the lyrics. "One thing you'll notice is that none of these translations begin the first two lines with the word 'kill,' as the original did," Fisher writes. The - despicable Western women and men who tortured Iraqi war prisoners and Dog - despicable Western women and men who gave orders to torture Their daughter, mother, daughter-in-law, father the big-nose, kill all Very slowly kill, painfully kill.