Stickiness and Spreadability Gangnam Style
Posted by ardrey821 on February 5, 2013
After our class discussion on stickiness and spreadability, numerous media examples overwhelmed my mind. The one that stuck to my mind the most would have to be the oh so popular Gangnam Style song and dance. This new gangnam style trend has been out since July of last year and has gained the attention of over 50 billion viewers nation wide. The reason why I think this song is so sticky is the fact that Psy has introduced a new way of dancing, in which he is pretending to ride an invisible horse.
Many people are intrigued by this because its not normally what is expected within the music industry nowadays. This also feeds into the spreadability factor as well, in the sense that this guy from South Korea could influence many peoples way of singing and dancing here in the United States. The first time I heard this song and saw the dance I was almost instantly hooked on looking up the lyrics and also determined to learn the dance. In the end, im glad the south korean guy Psy has introduced this unique gangnam style song to american culture. Now when I go to a party or social gathering with friends, and Gangnam Style starts to play, I all of a sudden become an expert at dancing to Gangnam Style.
samford said
One of the many interesting things about Gangnam Style is that it wouldn’t have been easily predicted to be “a hit,” which is of course part of its charm. Later this semester, we will talk about Soulja Boy, which has many parallels in terms of the participatory nature of the response it inspired…I made a comment on someone’s post earlier about how many mourn the loss of “consensus narratives” in our culture. Gangnam Style is a great example of how we sometimes, through the spread of something that seems to be gaining widespread attention, we try to re-create that moment of a common media text everyone feels they need to see in order to participate in a conversation about it.
colleencourtney said
My sister is a fan of k-pop and we both found it interesting and hilarious that Gangnam Style became so well known here in the United States. I’ve even heard comparisons saying it’s the modern day “Macarena”. K-pop is not well known here so it was cool to see everyone discussing the video and then the song eventually making its way on the radio.
iamchipcore said
Working at Revolution 91.7, i was in dead center of Gangam Style’s spreadability and stickiness.
Last September our station manager had snuck the song into our system as a joke. When the staff found out we made it sort of an inside “gag” to play it at least once during our broadcast day. ….little did we know it was more than just a light fad, people began to request the song. Eventually we had to stop taking requests for it (people were asking for it every hour and it began to disrupt our own rotation)
Last weekend the station hosted the Lego Robotics tournament at Diddle Arena, we allowed it to be played that once….we had all of the arena dancing.
exileontaytayst said
Chipcore beat me to it with my comment!
As a deejay at the WKU campus radio station “Gangnam Style” was not lost upon the mounds of other music piled up in the studio. As Chipcore said, the song was put into our system as a joke but it received a very serious reaction. There’s no escaping fads.. we got a ton of calls requesting “Gangnam Style”. While the song does not fall into the category of music we normally broadcast, it has certainly brought a new outlook to our station in terms of fads and the “avoid ability” of social trend and interest.
Yes.. I’ve learned the dance too.
andyarnoldpopculture said
Gangnam Style seems almost a fluke. K-Pop is mostly a very narrow niche in the Western world. How did this random, silly song get big? I believe it’s a combination of a few factors:
1) Simple, technical-sounding beat – I can think of no other way that awful, awful, awful “band” LMFAO got to the tops of the charts, except that their “songs” are simple mechanic-sounding hooks – barbed hooks. Gangnam Style has one as well, with the “HEY…SEXY LADY” chant.
2) You can turn your mind off – in today’s culture, being able to not think is a commodity. People love reading trashy Wal-Mart novels, watching morally reprehensible people square off in petty feuds on TV, and laughing at simple memes. What do the lyrics to this song mean? Fuck if I know, this is funny, lookit that dancing! Oh, he’s in an elevator now.
3) Asian stereotypes. See William Hung. People love to imagine Asians as socially awkward geniuses who do calculus in their spare time and dream of equations. On a song that might seem “so bad it’s good” or “over-the-top,” a South Korean man performing a silly, silly song contrasts with the racist attitude of what Asians should be – very prevalent among the youth of today. I was talking to a Singaporean friend who disliked the song for this reason and it all clicked.
This article may be of interest: http://www.cracked.com/blog/why-gangnam-style-actually-study-in-mind-control/