Following its July 15 release, "Gangnam Style" overtook Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" to reach the
number one position on the YouTube Top 100 Music Videos during the week of
August 28, 2012. Although "Call Me Maybe" has had unusually
strong staying power, averaging over 1.5 million views each day, "Gangnam
Style" increased to an average of over 9 million views per day within just
2 months. This is mainly because "Call Me Maybe" remained largely a
North American trend, whereas the popularity of "Gangnam Style" is
not confined to the United States. About 47% of the views came from the
United States, 7% from the United Kingdom, 6.8% from Canada and
4% from South Korea.
According to The Wall Street Journal, T-Pain was
among the first to have "sent [the video] to the stratosphere" when
he tweeted about it on July 29. It was then picked up by Neetzan Zimmerman
from the social blog Gawker, who asked "Did this underground Hip Hop
artist from South Korea just release the Best Music Video of the
Year?" on July 30. This was soon followed by Robbie
Williams, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Tom Cruise, Joseph
Gordon-Levitt, William Gibson, and the United Nations, who
have either commented about or shared the video with their fans via Twitter.
The song received mostly positive to mixed ratings from
music critics. Music journalist Bill Lamb from About.com gave
the song 5 stars, praising it for "spreading smiles and pure fun around
the world in record time". He compared it to Ricky
Martin's Latin dance music (i.e. The Cup of Life)
and LMFAO songs, saying, "take one part LMFAO's synth-based
party music, another part Ricky Martin's Latin dance party and the rest a
powerfully charismatic South Korean showman and you have the first worldwide
K-Pop smash hit". On about the similarities with Ricky Martin's music he
remarked that "...40 seconds into the song, the massive buildup to the
chorus is more reminiscent of Ricky Martin stirring a crowd into a Latin
frenzy".
Deborah Netburn of the Los Angeles Times called it
"one of the greatest videos ever to be uploaded to YouTube",while
Matt Miller, a host from the business and financial news
broadcaster Bloomberg Television, played "Gangnam Style" during
his show, because "it's just a super hot video that has gone
astronomically viral." He also said that PSY did say on CNN that he
wants to make people laugh even in the midst of all these global economic
slowdowns, so that is the "Wall Street tie-in" he
needed. The song was positively reviewed by Steve Knopper from Rolling
Stone, who called it an astoundingly great K-pop video that has all the best
elements of hypnotically weird one-hit wonders.
Although "Gangnam Style" received largely positive
reactions, some have found it wacky or even vulgar. Kim Alessi from Common
Sense Media considered the music video for "Gangnam Style" worth
seeing for its caricature of contemporary Asian and American urban lifestyles,
but also warned that "Gangnam Style" contains sexually suggestive
images and "degrading messages" which could be inappropriate for children
and teenagers.
Mesfin Fekadu of the Associated Press wrote that
PSY is "currently having a pop culture moment." PSY's dance moves are
"somewhat bizarre" but the music video is full of colorful, lively
outfits. He also remarked that the singer is excited that his colorful style is
being celebrated in the United States, and around the world. Scott Adams,
the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, claims that the seemingly bad
elements of "Gangnam Style" all come together to create an awesome
whole. Maura Judkis from The Washington Postwrote, "'Gangnam
Style' has made an extraordinarily stupid-looking dance move suddenly
cool".
Matt Buchanan and Scott Ellis of The Sydney Morning
Herald gave it a negative review, writing that the video "makes no
sense at all to most Western eyes" and it "makes you wonder if you
have accidentally taken someone else's medication". Paul Lester
of The Guardian labelled it as "generic ravey Euro dance with
guitars". and Robert Myers of The Village Voice called it
"an inspired piece of silliness". Robert Copsey
from Digital Spy also gave it a negative review, saying that,
"you could slap an LMFAO tag on the cover and few would know the
difference".
