From Gangnam Style to ...

Psy’s “Gangnam Style” song had put the Asian pop music culture back on to the international entertainment radar.  At the moment there seems to be no stop to how far this song could go. A lot of people found the “horse riding” dance steps very funny and entertaining. Gangnam Flash Mobs popped up all over the place. In Australia, this song is still occupying the top spot of the single chart after 4 weeks. Because of this Psy has been tracking around the globe doing his “signature dance”. Everywhere he goes, people just couldn’t seem to have enough of him.

However, for me, what I am interested in is what happens after the Gangnam phenomenon? At the moment, Psy, himself a very accomplished artist in Korea, is just performing this one song because this is what the audience want. For me, I think it is extremely dangerous because people like this song simply because it is funny. The tunes are catchy that is no doubt but it was because of the funny dance steps that attracted millions and millions of people’s attention. As good as this sounds, I do worry that this song might unconsciously further pigeon hole Asian pop music culture around the world in all the wrong ways.

I cannot remember when was last time another Asian singer made it that big internationally.  Coco Lee is one of the few artists that made it internationally, thanks to her theme song in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”.  However, I did not remember that she had ever reached the “International acclaim” as Psy did. Faye Wong was huge in the Asia Pacific region but she never really did make it into the western market even with the success of the Final Fantasy XIII theme song “Eyes on Me”. Please note that both artists are not well known for singing catchy pop songs complete with funny dance steps. In fact both of them were very influenced by the western music culture. Coco herself being American Chinese was heavily westernised in style and the European music scene heavily influenced Faye Wong. Also from Korea, Wonder Girls’ “Nobody” made some ripples across the music scene but still nowhere near what Gangnam Style has achieved.

Psy said he was surprised and got caught off guard by the popularity of the song as the music video was made for fan service. What interests me is that would the “Gangnam Style” song help Psy selling more albums internationally? Or it would remain as a one hit wonder for him internationally? When you look at the charts, the song is topping all single charts but the album that holds this single is nowhere to be seen. This means that while people are interested in the “Gangnam Style” song, they were not interested in his music as a whole. This saddens me in a way that this means Psy’s popularity in the international music scene is still pretty much compartmentalised. It is a pity that this song did not take his music as a whole further. Some people might argue that this could be because of the language barrier. That could be a factor but then Edith Piaf sang in French most of her career and that didn’t stop her from being treated as an internationally acclaimed artist.

What I hope to see is that “Gangnam Style” helps to open up people’s curiosity about the Asian pop music culture and thus helps evolving the music industry as a whole. What I do not want to see is that “Gangnam Style” just went down in history as a “once funny Asian pop song with funny dance steps”. And at the moment it seems to me it is more of the latter than the former.