Psy releases video for new song ‘Gentleman’

Hips swinging, South Korean rapper Psy launched the dance and video of his new song Gentleman at a packed Seoul concert on Saturday, with nearly 160,000 tuned in on the internet to see if he could carry off a repeat of his megahit Gangnam Style.

The video for Gangnam Style is the most watched ever on YouTube with more than 1.5 billion hits, and its horse-riding dance has been imitated by thousands around the world, from Eton schoolboys to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

But a recent challenge from the Harlem Shake global dance craze upped the ante for Gentleman, and the 35-year-old Psy has made it clear he was aware of the high expectations.

The video for Gentleman, whose refrain is “I’m a mother father gentleman,” features a fast, hip-swinging dance by Psy in his trademark sunglasses and a variety of jackets, from baby blue to hot pink and sparkly white.

Watch the video below.

Fans, many of them dressed in white as Psy had requested before the concert, packed the 50,000 seats at Seoul’s World Cup Stadium. The concert was also live streamed on the internet.

Gentleman,  released on Friday at midnight, had more than 1.2 million hits on YouTube for the song alone before the concert. It was 90th on the Apple iTunes store chart.

“It was really good and it was really funny,” said Mark McKeon, a 25-year-old English teacher at the concert, who said he thought the new song still would do well.

“It is hard to compare with classic though. I mean Gangnam Style is perfect. This one is really good. It is really funny and it is great experience being here at the concert for the release with the energy and the lights, and the noise, and it’s phenomenal.”

“[The  music video] is funny,” said 32-year-old South Korean fan Seo Seung-hee. “It was funny and easy to understand because it seems connected to [Gangnam Style].”

Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, graduated from the Berklee College of Music in the United States but had a rocky decade in show business before Gangnam Style rocketed him to global fame.

His debut 2001 album, Psy from the Psycho World, ran into trouble with the authorities for “inappropriate content” in the lead song, which was seen as sexually suggestive. He was also charged with possession of marijuana in 2002. He released five more albums.

Psy’s brash style — at Saturday’s concert he danced to a Beyonce song in a skimpy bodysuit — contrasts sharply with the polished stars that dominate K-pop, an increasing presence on the world stage.

A Music Industry White Paper published by the Korean Creative Content Agency found sales of K-pop outside Korea surged 135 per cent in 2011 from a year earlier to US$196 million. In 2006 overseas sales were worth US$16.7 million.

Gangnam Style racked up digital sales of 3.59 million in the United States and Canada last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BDS, ninth in the bestselling list. It was third on Amazon’s MP3 song bestseller list for 2012.

But it has been challenged by Harlem Shake, an electronic dance track by DJ Baauer released last year which went viral as a YouTube craze after Australian teenagers posted their version of the dance, sparking thousands of imitations.

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