The man behind the “Gangnam Style” juggernaut is back.
However, he’s been “back” before — there was 2013’s “Gentleman” and 2014’s Snoop Dogg-featuring “Hangover,” which have netted roughly 900 and 230-million and YouTube views. And that’s nothing compared to “Gangnam”’s 2.5 billion, but, as of writing, “Daddy” is at about 25 million (the video is only four days old). It could very well match Adele’s melodramatic piano ballad “Hello,” which is at 580 million over two months.
PSY’s wheelhouse of viral superstardom is measured in these views. Of course he can’t match his world-record “Gangnam” numbers that put him on the map, but he’s holding court with the Biebers and Adele’s of the world. So we must care at least somewhat. Cynics might say but why?, ‘Gangnam Style’ is over, there’s no need to listen to this silly man’s music.
There are reasons, though.
Despite the beaten-to-death formulas employed by all pop music, somehow it all manages to take itself way too seriously. Back on the Adele thing: true, she has a phenomenal voice, but there is absolutely nothing unique about “Hello,” except for the fact that its singer isn’t look like an overly-objectified, anorexic sex puppet. Lyrical clichés pile on the single most tired chord progression of all time in an even-more exhausted piano-ballad formula, but it’s ‘new’ to us because we haven’t forced her to develop an eating disorder. That’s progress for pop music.
So the white-whine crew eat it up like their last breakup was the single worst thing to happen to anyone. Ever. Hell even our club bangers try desperately to make mild millennial relationship drama and the quest for hookups sound like an existential matter of life and death.
Enter PSY.
Without going full Weird Al, he injects comedy into already silly EDM, like a walking modern, Asian Night at the Roxbury. Is it dumb? Of course. But it’s self-aware, which already makes it far more worthwhile than many EDM heavy-hitters.
As long as it’s chuckle-worthy, and appeals to base booty-shaking desires, then it’s worthwhile. That’s why, as a viral star, Psy’s lasted a few years. “Daddy” achieves that with a beat half-LMFAO, half Usher, boasting a bod that he got from his “Daddy.” It’s a K-Pop Dad-bod anthem using its lost-in-translation lyrical nuances for added dumb yuks. The punchlines let you know he knows exactly what he’s doing:
Should we care about it? Eh, maybe not. Should we care about it any less than, say, the latest hit from the aforementioned pop powerhouses? Definitely not. And, those types certainly have no excuse to throw shade at PSY, like Michael Buble did.
Seriously, dude — your entire career is just the same Christmas covers and specials every single year, and you’re playing the “artistic integrity” card? Much less on a super-trashy daytime talk show? I mean, what better place could to wax holier-than-thou on your soapbox than while day-drinking with Kathie Lee Gifford on the Today Show.
But I digress. Like all lowest-common-denominator music (except for Buble-esque Christmas crap), it’s easy to avoid. If you hate it, just don’t listen to it. It’s not rocket science.
