'Gangnam Style' impact endures a decade after it broke the internet

It most certainly did not "break the internet" in Japan. It was neither played or reported on at its height in this country.

@tamanegi - yes - at the time I was surprised at how many of my students - high school & university - didn't know of Gangnam Style or had little interest if they did.

I thought , well you don't have to love it, but you could acknowledge it as something different and refreshing.

But Media Inc never took it up here.

I can only assume it was in part, something to do with a sense of rivalry compounded by a notion of not wanting to be outdone by the up and coming local east asians.

I recall a couple of uni students saying the "horse riding" looked stupid. They didn't get it at all.

Wonder Girls ? Nobody outside Asia remembers them.

BTS ? American teenage girls scream and swoon as they are invited to the White House.

Psy certainly helped to open doors for the Korean music industry, in his own unique way, in the interim.

As a side note, I wonder what became of Pikotaro post Apple Pen ?

Whatever you say…J-POP , idols and animation songs rule here. And there’s a good reason for that, but if you don’t dive in you will highly probably disagree. Psy and his style and kind of music or performing has been refreshing different from other K-POP boy groups and K-idol groups who are basically all sound the same and are more influenced by and fitted for selling on the US market.

I was more surprised at how the country next door hardly even knew or played Gungnam Style. I found out about the vid and song through my friends in the US and UK. Japan was the outlier during this pretty big boom.

@lolo--two Pikotaro gigs cashing in on that song were a private performance for Donald Trump, and more bizarrely, a music video about SDGs that was shown in the lobby of Osaka city hall for awhile. I like to imagine that Pikotaro is a bureaucrat by day and a leopard skin wearing party boy at dusk, but getting married may have put the kibosh on his alter ego.