It’s always difficult to watch artists struggle to hang onto whatever strands of their careers remain intact. Though we use the term ‘career’ loosely, such is the current state of K-Pop ambassador PSY. Having tolerated the Gangnam Style craze, we must now endure his follow-up single Gentleman and, judging by mainstream media’s penchant of flogging anything they feel is contemporary and youthful, Round II is going to be just as painful.
So once again, PSY has released an electro song with a “catchy” dance in the clip that’s void of any real integrity. Sure, music isn’t all about hard-hitting lyrics and intricate musicianship but at least most artists attempt to cover up the fact that they are desperately seeking their next pay cheque. With Gentleman, PSY almost revels in the sell-out. This is made all the worse by the fact that the man was once regarded as a respected musician, oozing integrity.
But, hey, we know everyone has their price. Gentleman is PSY’s.
We’re not so naive to think that most pop music isn’t contrived, but this whole thing feels forced and reeks of corporate intervention. Gangnam Style may have hit the western world out of nowhere but Big Music execs were always relying on PSY to release another mega hit so they themselves could eat as well, a fact we are all now keenly aware of. It’s too hard to ignore the fact that Gentleman sounds so familiar, like a career chart map was handed to the performer at some point in the past 6 months – “You have to make another song by this date and it has to include this, this and this and if it doesn’t we’ll rework it until it does.”
Already the video has hit multi-millions of views as people head to YouTube in droves to see how PSY plans on picking up where Gangnam Style left off. His downfall will no doubt be the fact that Gentleman is essentially Gangnam Style Pt 2…
The idea is all well and good in theory, but Gangnam Style is a lot like Polio. It happened, we can’t change that it happened but, now that it’s gone, it’s probably best we don’t bring it back.
Watch: PSY – Gentleman
