Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 07/25/2012 at 6:09 PM Videos

The Popdust Files: gangnam style, K-pop, PSY

In the K-pop world, Psy’s “Gangnam Style” is already a smash. It debuted at No. 5 on Billboard’s chart and has accumulated more than 2 million hits in just 5 days. Why? Let’s let Eat Your Kimchi explain.

Kpop artists are very often in a state of endless arousal or unendurable pain, and so seeing watching a video where someone is – in a British phrase that I’ve always wanted to use – taking the piss, is extremely refreshing.

Yes. The video. It is refreshing. It is many other adjectives besides. The song is simple–it’s like “Starships” if it sounded even more like a Jock Jam, or like LMFAO (who fit the previous description nicely.) But the video! In lieu of producing any kind of spoilers or hilariously inadequate descriptions (or, for that matter, anything like the viral-baiting “crazy K-pop” designation that HyunA’s “Bubble Pop” got last year and that this is starting to get overseas” and present some photographic evidence. But really, you should watch it. If you need convincing, there are sauna shenanigans, dancing hourses and an explosion that kills two people–all during the first half.

(“Gangnam” is a wealthy district of Seoul, in case you were wondering.)