Psy’s Gentleman

The follow up to Gangnam Style has received more than 87 million views in just five days since its release

South Korean pop star Psy released Gentleman, his new single, on 12 April. The music video shows Psy and his dancers wearing an array of colourful jackets and sunglasses and performing a hip-swinging dance. The video has broken many records. Within the first 24 hours of its release, it became the video most viewed in a single day on YouTube, getting a total of 22 million hits. By Tuesday, at least 87 million had viewed the video. Gangnam Style is still the most viewed video on YouTube, with more than 1.5 billion views. Gentleman is now placed second, having edged out Justin Bieber’s Baby and its 849 million views.

According to reports, Psy was under pressure to achieve the same success with Gentleman as Gangnam Style. He says he went two days without sleep while filming the video. According to the CEO of YG Entertainment, Psy was so stressed during the production of the video that he fell ill and had to receive IV treatment.

Earlier, Psy had planned a song titled ‘Assarabia’, meaning ‘oh yeah’. However, he dropped the idea because he felt the title could sound offensive to Arab listeners.

Before the release of the video, the Korean pop star had dropped hints of what the song was going to be like. He had claimed that the choreography would be a new version of a classic Korean dance, calling it a dance all Koreans know but others don’t. The hip-swinging jig, presumably aimed to replicate the success of Gangnam Style’s pony boogie, is a new take on a dance popularised in the song Abracadabra by another K-Pop act, Brown Eyed Girls.

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