CHAPTER 87

 

 

#14: PSY

“강남스타일 (Gangnam Style)”

from the album Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1

Released: July 2012

 

 

This is an update of the Dobie Gray song “The In Crowd,” the overlying confident swagger of which covers an element of uncertainty and vulnerability. If that crowd were really so cool, would they necessarily go around saying so, or are they just trying to convince themselves of their coolness?

 

The song does sneer at others who “try to imitate us” and “강남스타일” smiles sourly at these would-be weekend hipsters (which is almost certainly what The In Crowd were). Actually (keep Oxford commas in the Bodleian for now) it does a lot more than that. It bounces, sprints, doubles back on itself, recognises the absolute importance of silence to pop, elevates its Ricky Martin Picardy thirds to holiness and grinds its cherried teeth at the prospect of “HEY, SEXY LAY-DEE” (which may in itself exceed most of the work of the Rolling Stones undertaken after about 1984). These seeming hipsters are simply sweating, sad and not-so-young men. What does Psy care, though? He runs through the video’s multiple jungles as if commenting on Channel 4’s Eurotrash. He knows the whole thing is absurd, and that absurdity is what pop should in great part embrace and knead. With a couple of small edits to get it down to three minutes, this would have strolled Eurovision, never mind walked it. It’s fourteenth on my most played songs of 2022 list because it’s daft fun which makes me feel better about myself and the world. A lot of the time, that really is all you need.