At the time of writing this Gangnam Style is at number 26 on the UK iTunes singles chart and number 1 in the music videos chart. It has been played on two of the UK biggest chart music radio stations: BBC Radio 1 and Capital FM; has been seen on several Digital TV music channels; has had several articles written about it in the online and paper versions of some of the UK’s biggest newspapers (including the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Metro) and has featured in a segment on Sky News.
And this is just in the UK. Globally, the song has had even more success currently having almost 170 million views on Youtube and having taken over LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem to become the “most liked” video in the history of the site. In the States, he has made appearances on VH1, the MTV Video Music Awards and The Ellen Show, where he taught Britney Spears how to do the infamous horse dance while an amused Simon Cowell looked on and has become only the second Korean artist to have a single in the Billboard Hot 100 (after the Wonder Girls did so a couple of years ago with Nobody). He looks poised to achieve even more success having signed a worldwide management deal with Scooter Braun (Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen’s manager) and Island Records.
So the question is will PSY make it into the UK chart? As of the midweek chart published on Wednesday, the answer would be no but as the song has been placed consistently in the iTunes Top 30 this week and it seems to be getting more and more conventional media airtime both on TV and radio it seems more than likely that it will make it to the charts within the next few weeks. Whether this will have any positive impact on PSY’s career or the success of K-pop in general in the UK is yet unclear but in the short term this can only be a good thing for PSY and with hopefully let more people all over the world learn more about Korean culture. And who knows if he got a high place in the UK charts maybe he’d even come here!
We want to know your opinions on this! Will PSY get to the charts? Do you know people who didn’t know about K-pop before who love this song? Do you hope PSY will make a UK appearance? Do you think this will have a positive impact on K-pop in the UK in general? Please let us know in the comments below.
