Psy’s new single Gentleman has been viewed by more than 100 million people on YouTube in just four days.
Gentleman music video clip was published on YouTube on April 13 and has since broken the record for first day song views.
The follow-up track of Gangnam Style had around 20 million hits in the first 24 hours.
The previous record for first day views of 8 million was set by Justin Bieber’s Beauty and a Beat, which was viewed 10.6 million times in 24 hours.
Gentleman video features South Korean rapper Psy wearing his signature glasses and playing practical jokes on women such as pulling their chairs away as they are about to sit down and increasing the speed on a treadmill while it’s being used.
Psy’s new single Gentleman has been viewed by more than 100 million people on YouTube in just four days
The video also shows a new hip swivelling dance move. His previous horse riding move was copied by people all over the world including The Wanted, Britney Spears and President Barack Obama.
Psy has insisted that he’s not trying for another worldwide hit with Gentleman.
The singer said: “I’ve been doing this for 12 years. Would it be fair to call me a one-hit wonder just because my next song falls flat?”
Psy’s debut single Gangnam Style became the most-watched YouTube video of all time with more than 1.5 billion views since it was published in July 2012.
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PSY performed his new single Gentleman and its accompanying dance at a concert in Seoul on Saturday as he spoke about how he hopes North Koreans will enjoy his music even as tensions remain high on the Korean Peninsula.
PSY released Gentleman in 119 countries on Friday, hoping to replicate the success of Gangnam Style, the smash YouTube hit that made him an international star almost overnight last year.
The choreography for Gentleman – including the arrogant dance, as PSY called it – was unveiled at a Seoul concert in front of more than 50,000 fans. The music video has now been uploaded onto YouTube.
Wearing a black and white houndstooth blazer PSY took to the stage amid a frenzy of screams.
PSY’s concert, which was titled Happening, was sold out and the cool performer certainly put on a show for his loyal fans.
PSY, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, said on Saturday that he regretted the current tensions between South Korea and North Korea.
PSY performed his new single Gentleman and its accompanying dance at a concert in Seoul
The situation has been grabbing global headlines, with North Korea becoming increasingly belligerent with war rumblings, leaving its neighbors wary of a possible missile test by Pyongyang.
“It’s a tragedy. We are the only countries divided right now,” PSY said at a news conference ahead of the concert.
North Korea and South Korea, which are divided by heavily fortified borders, are technically still at war, with the 1950-53 Korean War ending with a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.
PSY said he hoped North Koreans would enjoy his new music. He said his job was to make all people, including North Koreans, laugh.
“Hopefully my Gangnam Style, my Gentleman, my music videos and my choreography… they might enjoy them too,” he said.
When the Gangnam Style video went viral last year, it spun legions of parodies.
Even North Korea’s government created a parody video of the hit, showing that the secretive country is well-versed in South Korean popular culture.
North Korea used its Gangnam Style parody to criticize Park Geun-hye, then the presidential candidate for South Korea’s ruling party. Park Geun-hye was inaugurated as South Korea’s new president in February.
PSY’s Gangnam Style video, featuring his much-mimicked horse-riding dance, made him one of the best-known Koreans in the world.
Gangnam Style is the most watched video of all time on YouTube, gathering more than 1.5 billion views since its release in July.
PSY acknowledged that the massive success of Gangnam Style added to the pressure as he worked on his latest single, but he said he tried to remain true to himself and his Korean roots.
“I tried to find Korean words that people from any country can easily sing along,” he said of Gentleman, which contains lyrics both in English and Korean.
PSY co-composed the music and wrote the lyrics, which poke fun at a self-claimed gentleman who enjoys his time at a dance club.
Audiences have questioned whether PSY will be a one-hit wonder known only for Gangnam Style.
The South Korean musician, whose humble
personality has endeared him to his fans at home since he made his debut more than a decade ago, shrugs off the skepticism.
“Whether or not a couple of my songs become a global hit, I’ve been doing this job for 12 years,” PSY said.
“I will bring more Korean dance moves and Korean songs overseas.”
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Psy is introducing his new single, Gentleman, after he sparked an international dance craze with the release of his hit Gangnam Style last year.
Gentleman, with a techno beat, was full of puns in Korean and contained the lines “I am a party mafia!” and the refrain, “I am a mother father gentleman”.
The 35-year-old South Korean rapper hinted in an interview last week that Gentleman also features a dance routine – hinting that it is based on traditional Korean moves.
Speaking on South Korean television last week, Psy said: “All Koreans know this dance but other countries haven’t seen it.”
Psy will perform Gentleman in public for the first time on Saturday at a concert at Seoul’s World Cup stadium.
Psy hinted in an interview last week that Gentleman also features a dance routine based on traditional Korean moves
The rapper has asked fans to wear white to Saturday’s event and his stylist told Reuters last month that the concept for the new song would again be a formal suit with “an unexpected twist of fun”.
In Gangnam Style, written as a commentary on materialism in the wealthy Seoul suburb of Gangnam, Psy was decked out in sunglasses, a white dress shirt, bow tie and tuxedo jackets.
Gangnam Style racked up 3.59 million digital sales last year in the US and Canada, according to Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BDS, putting it ninth in the best-selling list.
The video for Gangnam Style also became the most watched item on YouTube with more than 1.5 billion hits.
Gangnam Style catapulted Psy to global fame after a rocky career in the music business over the past decade.
Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, graduated from the Berklee College of Music in the US and made his debut in 2001 with the album PSY from the Psycho World.
The rapper ran into trouble with the authorities for “inappropriate” content in the lead song on that album, which was seen as sexually suggestive. He was also charged with possession of marijuana in 2002. Since then he has released five more albums.
Psy’s brash style – at a concert last year he parodied Lady Gaga, complete with fake breasts that he set on fire – stands in stark contrast to the squeaky clean singers that dominate K-pop which is finding an increasingly large international audience.
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