PSY, who came to fame from an absolutely absurd left-field hit, “Gangnam Style,” has officially released the follow-up, “Gentleman,” seen above. The song is more straight-ahead than the previous single, but has another catchy beat, easy-to-learn dance moves, some humor and some English lyrics for people to hook on as well.
When it was announced that he was releasing his follow-up, I saw comments springing up in various places saying his 15 minutes are over and he should just go away. I don’t think people understand how pop music works (although in their head, I’m sure that’s how they’d like it to work).
You come off a big hit? You take another swing and hope for a repeat. When you have a video that’s been watched a staggering 1.5 billion times on YouTube, would you give up?
For perspective, let’s look at another person with a major viral video hit, and how she fared post-hit.
After Rebecca Black’s “Friday” in the spotlight, she didn’t give up recording, with a handful of other singles released since then, each with various levels of success. The song above, which shows her evolution since her fateful time in the spotlight, still ended up with more than a million views, which while a mere fraction of Friday’s cumulative count of more than 100 million, is still nothing to sneeze at.
“Person of Interest,” the most upbeat track she’s released among the singles since “Friday,” and seen above, fared better, with close to 8 million plays as of this writing.
How PSY fares from here is up for speculation, but one can expect at least a few more attempts. Even if he doesn’t have the same level of success, most artists would kill for a fraction of that, and it stands to reason he’ll be able to at least continue on for awhile on mere momentum. He had a hell of a 2012, and given the level of quality on “Gentleman,” and more than 10 million views to accompany it as of this posting (along with a top 40 ranking on the iTunes songs chart), I wouldn’t count him out just yet.