There isn’t really such a thing as a Gangnam accent. Koreans girls in general will do a squeaky girly voice if they are trying to be cute, but speaking like that wouldn’t have people thinking you’re from Gangnam. 
Shrug it’s what an acquaintance living in Korea said, they probably were simplifying it for me. I do get the impression, at least, that the stereotype is that girls from Gangnam are stereotypically rich and ditzy so they speak like that, even if it’s not the stereotype that ONLY Gangnam girls talk like that (i.e. most Gangnam girls talk like that but not all girls that talk like that are from Gangnam).
Is there a way I can remove the vocals (which I admit do contribute to the surreal awesomeness of the song)? The beat all by itself would be really good for jamming out to if for some reason I’m not in the mood for Korean lyrics.
Moved MPSIMS --> Cafe Society. (Apparently the vid has a beat you can move to …)
It’s been interesting to me, seeing him being put out there as a huge pop artist from Korea, when the reality is he’s a comedian from Korea. Apparently he does sketch comedy, and this grew from that.
Either way, he’s awesome. And EVERYWHERE right now. He was on SNL last weekend, for crying out loud.
Um, ok, a techno disco type beat? Don’t know the lingo. Anyway it’s got a good beat, I could dance to it, if I could dance. The video is amusing. Apparently it’s social commentary. Anyone know what the words are (the ones that aren’t in English) (but in English, I don’t speak Korean)?
Really? I read that this is his 6th album.
I too can’t stop watching it. Apparently the dancing kid was on Korea’s Got Talent and most of the others are stars in Korea. The two old guys playing chess, the guy in the dance duel and the guy in the elevator are all Korean stars.
God damn, here’s his Wikipedia article.
Inner Stickler: Thank you for that linkage. Got me some jams for the day!
Psy is, in fact, a huge pop star, not a comedian. His first album came out over 11 years ago. He has a history of satirizing and skewering the culture around him, which has caused some controversy (he paid fines for his first two albums lyrical content and saw their sales restricted to adults only, for instance). He has won numerous SBS awards (Seoul Broadcasting System) even tho none of his songs charted until 2010. He’s been on numerous Korean game shows and was a judge on the talent show Superstar K. Psy’s actually quite a brilliant and revolutionary force in Korea, as he uses his Berklee education to shatter quite a few stereotypes and conventions that are ingrained in his home country; as he puts it, he is not following the K-pop mold.
ETA: Oh yeah, Gangnam Style totally fucking rocks. The whole album is actually very good, and has some pretty cool packaging. No word yet on when part 2 of Psy 6 is due tho.
I just heard this last week from my son. I can’t decide what I love more, the dancing or the locations. I love the MC Hammer shorts!
Yeah my 13yo son always shows me his new music as he did with this, Skrillex, LMFAO etc etc I return the favor by making him listen to a bit of Iron Maiden, Elvis or Metallica…Gotta say I do like this song, very funny
It’s not really social commentary, despite what that Atlantic article says. It’s just a song about a guy who wants to date a Gangnam girl because she’s classy during the day but a party girl at night (like the Gangnam area itself, according to the song). I suppose you could take that as commentary about the hypocrisy of Korean society in general. The music video itself parodies typical Korean music videos that like to make Seoul look like some glamorous and opulent city.
I dunno, I think that if you read between the lines and look at it in the context of the video, there’s a bit of social commentary in there. Korean culture is pretty notoriously obsessed with image, and much of the video and lyrics focus, as you say, on the sort of hypocrisy of respectable image vs Westernized go crazy and party image. Whatever it is, it’s interesting to see so many people in America going nuts over this song. It’s like every day I open my Facebook, there are 10 new parody videos posted on the feed.
Oh, there’s social commentary, alright.
Just look at the catchy chorus: “Oppa is Gangnam style”. Oppa is a pretty loaded word. In particular, it’s what a woman calls an older man that she has no romantic interest in: “older brother”. It is friendly but places a clear demarcation that there is a line that will not be crossed; i.e. she is unattainable to him. Korean culture has a social structure that includes being heavily restricted by age/peer groups from what I’ve read and ISTM that’s a large part of what this song is poking at.
Whoa. Oppa is what ALL girls call ALL older men, regardless of whether she is interested in them or not. It can have clearly sexual connotations, depending on how you say it.
ETA: okay, not all older men, but oppa hints at a pretty close relationship. At this age (30) I would not call any new male acquaintances oppa, but when I was in university, I called all my older male friends oppa including - actually, ESPECIALLY - my boyfriends. Guys in Korea LOVE to be called oppa by a girl they like.
My boyfriend’s contribution: “I’ve seen a lot of Korean porn where the girl is getting pounded while calling the dude oppa.” 
I like the dancing. Ride the horse, rope the cow…my problem is I ride the cow and try to rope the horse…
I wonder if Sun on ‘Lost’ was from the Gangnam district, her father was quite wealthy.
(some years ago before the cable company moved it to another tier on TV, they used to show quite a few Korean music videos, and we just grew addicted. They had a whole slew of performers singing in Korean, and some of them were based on Western boy bands, female Shakira and Sheryl Crow types, moody balladeers, and so on. I especially enjoyed the hip-hop Koreans and the bad-ass ‘gangsta rappers’ strutting down the mean streets dressed in the latest fashions, with cute styled hair.)
I used to stay up late to catch the Korean music video countdown on the international channel when I was in high school. Sucks that we don’t get cable now and that the international channel doesn’t show that anymore as far as I know. But I could be wrong. Anyone know or remember what that countdown show was called, because I could always search for it is I know the name of it.
Gangnam is for the nouveau riche; I imagine Sun was from old money. Most of the old money families actually live north of the river. Gangnam literally means south of the river, but it can also be used to a specific area around Gangnam Station, which ironically is nowhere close to being classy, day or night.