"Gangnam Style": The most popular video on YouTube

"Gangnam Style" is song in the genre K-Pop (Korean pop). The spoken expression "Gangnam Style" in Korean means a luxurious lifestyle, which is famous for the fashionable and rich (more simply, "majeure") area of ​​Seoul Gangnam-gu. If you draw parallels, then the closest Western analogy, according to the rapper himself, will be Beverly Hills.

The single was released on July 15, 2012. Soon the song was headed by one of the national South Korean charts, Gaon Chart, where for five weeks it was on the first place. The video was uploaded to YouTube and soon became most viewed in the genre K-Pop. Initially, PSY did not plan to untwist the single in foreign countries - the song was aimed exclusively at local K-Pop fans. However, fans of the genre had on this account other views.

Thanks to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube videos"Gangnam Style" began to gain popularity in various countries around the world, from the United States to Russia. Already in a month and a half after the download, on August 28, video topped by YouTube Top 100 Music Videos.

With more than 2 million "likes", on September 20, the video "Gangnam Style" was is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most popular video on YouTube by the number of "likes" (at the time of writing, the quantityusers who like the video, exceeded three million). The closest competitors were the LMFAO video "Party Rock Anthem", Justin Bieber's "Baby" and Adele "Rolling in the Deep".

By the way, among the viewers of the video users fromSouth Korea accounted for only 4%. Most spectators were from the USA (47%), followed by the United Kingdom (7%) and Canada (6.8%). Video literally exploded the American and world blogosphere. According to the Canadian daily "The Globe and Mail", the video became the fifth largest viral video in the history of the Internet, reaching numbers in more than 130 million views on YouTube.

This is not the only record set by the song "Gangnam Style": five days earlier, on September 15, it became the first single in the genre of K-Pop, which topped the iTunes Music Video Charts. The single "Gangnam Style" bypassed the song of Katy Perry"Wild Awake" and Justin Bieber's single "As Long as You Love Me" (probably for Justin Bieber it was a big blow to self-esteem - to be avoided by the same single twice!).

Also single ranked first in the charts Canadian Hot 100 (Canada), Tracklisten (Denmark),Suomen virallinen lista (Finland), RIANZ (New Zealand), Gaon Digital Singles and Billboard K-Pop Hot 100 (South Korea) and UK Singles Chart (UK) and was in the TOP-5 charts ARIA (Australia), Ö3 Austria Top 75 (Austria), Ultratop Flanders (Belgium), Dutch Top 40 (Holland), VG-lista (Norway), Media Control AG (Switzerland) and Billboard Hot 100 (USA).

Also in the list achievements of «Gangnam Style» - nomination in the "Best Video" category of the 2012 MTV Europe Music Awards and the victory in the Korean musical program Music Bank on the KBS 2TV channel.

The video clip, by the way, was originally conceived asparody. In the video PSY appears in unexpected places in Gangnamga and comically dances. Dance from the scene with horses, during which PSY took the position of a rider, thereby producing an inimitable comic effect, gained a special popularity and even got its own name - Horse Riding Dance. PSY even took part in the famous "Ellen ShowDegeneres, where he taught dance moves to the pop diva Britney Spears. And tennis player Novak Djokovic marked this victory at the China Open tournament, held in Beijing.