On October 23, 2012, Psy met UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations Headquarters where Ban expressed his desire to work with the singer because of his "unlimited global reach". On December 21, 2012, at around 15:50 UTC, his music video for "Gangnam Style" exceeded 1 billion views on YouTube, becoming the first and currently only video to do so in the website's history. Psy was subsequently recognized by the media as the "King of YouTube". In December 2012, MTV noted Psy's rise from little-known to "global superstar", and, for being first in the YouTube-era to secure a place in pop culture history, hailed the singer as the "Viral Star of 2012". On December 31, 2012, Psy performed in a globally televised New Year's Eve celebration with American rap-artist MC Hammer on-stage in front of a live audience of over 1 million people in Times Square, New York City.
Early life
Park Jae-sang was born on December 31, 1977 to an affluent family in the Gangnam District of Seoul, South Korea. His father, Park Won-Ho, is the executive chairman of DI Corporation, a manufacturer of semiconductors listed on the Korea Exchange.
Park attended Banpo (??) Elementary and Middle Schools and Sehwa (??) High School. He disliked school and bothered some of his classmates, although he also sometimes made them laugh. In an interview on South Korea's Seoul Broadcasting System, a former teacher of Park said "I remember PSY making a lot of sexual jokes during class. He had such a big influence that he would cull the attention of the entire class to his jokes. I disliked him at the time, but looking back, I see that he added a great energy to the class."
Park told CNN's Alina Cho that when he was 15 years old, he watched a Korean TV programme that introduced foreign pop music. One particular episode showed a concert at Wembley Stadium held by the British rock band Queen where they performed their 1975 hit single "Bohemian Rhapsody". Park said it was this concert footage that sparked his love for music.
"Gangnam Style" and unexpected international breakthrough
In July 2012, Psy released his sixth album PSY 6 (Six Rules), Part 1 and the song "Gangnam Style" appeared in broadcasting networks and newspapers outside Asia.On August 14, "Gangnam Style" ranked first on YouTube's 'Most Viewed Videos' monthly chart; On August 21, 2012, "Gangnam Style" officially charted No. 1 on the iTunes Music Video Charts, overtaking Justin Bieber's "As Long as You Love Me" and Katy Perry's "Wide Awake"; this feat is the first for any South Korean artist. After the video went viral, celebrities quickly jumped on board with Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Tom Cruise taking to Twitter to share their delight.The Gangnam Style phenomenon has also popularized his older music videos, such as "Right Now." On September 14, 2012, he appeared on The Today Show on NBC in New York City, performing the song live and teaching dance moves to the anchors. The following day, he also made a cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live during a skit featuring "Gangnam Style."
“ "When I realized that some top stars like have imagined or tweeted about me, I thought, 'That’s joking. That’s not gonna happen...' I never expect things like this, not because they are top stars, but because this is the biggest market in the universe for pop music, right, so everybody’s dreaming about having appearance in the U.S. so I’m still saying, 'What going on here? This is beautiful.'" ”
Riding high on the success of Gangnam Style, Psy was signed by Scooter Braun to Braun's Schoolboy Records, a label distributed by Republic Records. In early September, the Gangnam district awarded Psy with a plaque and named him an honorary ambassador. On October 24, 2012, Psy was recognized by the United Nations as an "International sensation." According to Reuters, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon scheduled a meeting with Psy in the belief that music has great power to overcome intolerance. On October 23, 2012, they met at the United Nations Headquarters where Ban expressed his desire to work with Psy. He remarked that Psy has an "unlimited global reach" and said, "I hope that we can work together using your global reach."
According to Korean newspaper The Dong-a Ilbo, Psy was appointed as a goodwill ambassador of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
On November 7, Psy held a speech in England at the Oxford Union to discuss the inspiration behind Gangnam Style and his next album. He told the audience that due to the success of Gangnam Style he is now living in both a dream and a nightmare, as it will be difficult for his next song to equal Gangnam Style's success. He also talked about his early life and the moment he realized Gangnam Style became famous. According to The Independent, tickets for his speech were "in such demand they had to be assigned by ballot – a method not required when former presidential candidate John McCain spoke earlier that year, nor when Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama nor Michael Jackson spoke."
On November 12, Psy became the second South Korean music artist to appear at the MTV Europe Music Awards where he performed Gangnam Style and held off competition from Rihanna, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga to win the "Best Video" award. The event was broadcast worldwide and hosted by the German model and actress Heidi Klum, who introduced Psy to the audience as the "undisputed King of Pop". A few days later, American singer-songwriter Madonna performed a mashup of "Gangnam Style" and "Give It 2 Me" alongside Psy and her backup dancers during a concert in New York City at Madison Square Garden during her MDNA Tour. Psy later told reporters that his gig with Madonna had "topped his list of accomplishments."
In November 2012, Psy's success via the Internet was honoured with the New Media award at the American Music Awards.
On November 24, "Gangnam Style" became the most viewed video in YouTube history, surpassing the previous most watched video, Justin Bieber's "Baby". The number of views were achieved about eleven times faster than Bieber's.
On November 30, Psy won four awards at the 2012 Mnet Asian Music Awards in Hong Kong. He met actor and stunt performer Jackie Chan, who called him a role model that proved that "dreams do come true".
On December 21, "Gangnam Style" reached 1 billion views on YouTube, becoming the first video to do so.
In 2013, Psy made his debut on South American television by giving an interview on the Brazillian news programme Fantástico.
Influences
According to TIME, Freddie Mercury of the British rock band Queen inspired Psy to start his music career. Psy also revealed that the one celebrity he wants to meet most is the American actor Tom Cruise, who helped popularize "Gangnam style" on Twitter and recently tweeted whether Psy would "make a good future co-star Gangnam Style?"
Public image
Psy is known for his sense of humor in his concerts, where he imitates female singers such as Park Ji-yoon, Lee Hyori, Lady Gaga and Beyonce. Although his music is part of the K-pop (Korean popular music) genre, Beth Hong from The Vancouver Observer noted that Psy doesn't fit the standard K-pop idol image of being incredibly young, good-looking, and able to carry a melodramatic note."
Lucy Williamson from the BBC recognized Psy as South Korea's "newest and biggest music star", but also described him as "unpolished, unpredictable and he doesn't look like your typical Korean idol". Sarah Charlton from Reuters called him a "chubby South Korean pop singer" that has found fame and popularity in a "sea of pretty K-pop stars". In South Korea, some have called him the "Bizarre Singer" while others consider him to be "the antithesis of what is popular in Korean pop music". Chelsea Handler from Chelsea Lately described Psy as "Korea's Ricky Martin, as well as a sex symbol" during his introduction on the show while Gil Kaufman from MTV described the singer as one of the "biggest pop sensations in the world."
Personal life
In 2001, Psy was arrested for the possession of marijuana and as a result, was unable to attend his grandfather's funeral. During an interview, Psy revealed "I was very close to him. I was not there at the funeral: I will regret this for the rest of my life, because my grandpa loved me so much, and I couldn't be there for him on his deathbed."
On October 14, 2006, Psy married Yoo Hye-yeon, a cello major at Yonsei University and his girlfriend of three and a half years. According to the Korean Broadcasting System, the couple were introduced by a mutual acquaintance. They have twin daughters.
Psy considers "Gangnam Style" to be the greatest achievement of his life.
PSY from the Psycho World!, controversy, and domestic success
In January 2001, PSY debuted his full-length album Psy from the PSYcho World!, for which he was fined by South Korean government authorities due to his album's "inappropriate content". PSY was a rookie hip hop singer that stirred up the Korean pop music scene with very blunt lyrics", peculiar dance moves and an unconventional appearance"that earned him the nickname "The Bizarre Singer".
His second album Sa 2 also created controversy upon its release in 2002, earning complaints from civil groups due to the potentially negative influence his album would have on children and teenagers. Since then, Psy has been thought of as a controversial artist, and Sa 2 was banned in 2002 from being sold to the under-19 set. In September of the same year, Psy released his third album 3 PSY. The album's title song, "Champion", saw great success partly due to the hype from the World Cup games held in Seoul. Despite the significant amount of controversy surrounding his music, Psy was awarded songwriting accolades at the annually held Seoul Music Awards, marking his breakthrough in the South Korean music industry.
Reported earnings
The American news agency Associated Press reported that Psy is set to "become a millionaire" from YouTube advertisements and iTunes downloads, which underlines a shift in how money is being made in the music business. According to the AP analysis, he is expected to make only $60,000 from downloads and streams of "Gangnam Style" in South Korea, due to the fact that many South Koreans use a music streaming service that costs less than $10 a month, and results in the cost of a downloaded song being about $0.10 and a streamed song being $0.02. The bulk of Psy's earnings, however, originate from other sources such as TV commercials and YouTube revenue, the latter generating almost US $1 million for 33,000 parodies and related videos identified in September 2012 by YouTube's automatic identification system. In total, AP estimated that Psy ill rake in at least US $8.1 million in 2012.
Anti-American performances and subsequent apology
In 2002, Psy participated in an anti-American concert after a U.S. military convoy accidentally struck and killed two 14-year-old South Korean schoolgirls in the Yangju highway incident. The soldiers involved in the incident were acquitted by U.S. military courts, which fueled a significant amount of anti-American sentiment in South Korea. Inspired by that incident, Psy lifted up a miniature of an 'American tank' and smashed it against the stage.
In 2004, the South Korean translator and Christian missionary Kim Sun-il was kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq after the South Korean government refused to reconsider sending its armed forces to support the Iraq War. Although initial protests were only directed towards the South Korean government and towards extremists in Iraq, anti-U.S. military protesters decided to seize the moment to trigger a much larger wave of anti-Americanism. During a concert, Psy admonished the Iraqi kidnappers, condemned South Korea's former president Roh Mu-hyun, and also sang along to lyrics of the song "Dear American" by South Korean rock band N.EX.T, who composed it to condemn the United States and its military for its role in the Iraq war. An initial translation of the lyrics was posted by an iReporter unto CNN's iReport site. Some of the lyrics sung by Psy have been translated by CNN as follows: "Kill those fucking Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives and those who ordered them to torture," and "Kill [the Yankees'] daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers / Kill them all slowly and painfully." A few days later The Washington Post raised questions about the accuracy of the translation of the lyrics into English, which originated from CNN's citizen journalism initiative iReport. Max Fisher of the The Washington Post foreign staff reported that he solicited native Korean and English speakers, academics accustomed to the sensitivity of word-for-word translations, young Koreans familiar with the cultural connotations of Psy’s lyrics, and a professional interpreter to offer their translation of Psy's lyrics, and found out that the lyrics may have actually slurred the American servicemen rather than calling for their deaths, although he did also go on to opine that, "using a racial slur to accuse Americans of killing Iraqis’ family members is still pretty serious". Fisher also states that the word translated 'Yankee' in the CNN iReport was underplayed, with one Korean American describing the slur as an “nearly untranslatable” racist “epithet,” perhaps best approximated as “foreign barbarian.” "
Although Psy's actions did not receive any significant international media coverage at that time, this changed after the media reported about it in early December 2012. On December 7, 2012, Psy issued an apology directed towards members of the U.S. military and to the American people for his "inflammatory and inappropriate" language, and expressed hope that the American public will accept his apology.
Despite initial public outrage, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told the media that U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will attend Psy's performance at the Christmas in Washington charity concert as planned. As a result of Psy's controversial lyrics, a petition circulated on the website of the White House demanding that he be dropped from the concert, although the petition was deleted later in the day because the White House website claimed that the petition violated the website's terms of participation. Time magazine's Nick Carbone asserted that it is "unlikely that these newly dug-up anecdotes will depose Psy from his king-like level of stardom" although Carbone did go on to write that the atmosphere at the White House concert would be "somewhat subdued."
from various sources
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