Fame is like a swift tornado. It comes with sudden force, fiercely shaking and rattling the windows and doors, renders a few dent marks and scratches, only to disappear as quickly as it arrived.Psy is a South Korean pop star who's too old and unconventional looking to make it as a global pop phenomenon, yet that's exactly what's happened. His music video for Gangnam Style is racking up a billion Youtube hits every hour and is playing, at this very moment, on every radio station, in every continent, on planet Earth.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, has declared their love for Gangnam Style. Tom Cruise, Katy Perry, Nelly Furtado, Jay Leno, Simon Pegg, LMFAO and everybody and their mother has come out this week to venerate Psy's genius, announcing we should all worship him as our new God.
In true US style, media personalities immediately shipped Psy onto American shores so that he can do his gimmicky dance routine with both Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears, showing them that the emotional toils of messy breakups and tabloid scandals can easily be remedied by a bit of Gangnam. (The Americans pulled a similar stunt with the Slumdog Millionaire kids a few years back before jettisoning them back to their ramshackle existences when the whole act got boring and stopped being cute.)
Music novelty acts during a global recession are, it seems, a necessary evil, designed to distract us from the bigger problems in life. They are a reminder that when all seems lost, happiness can easily be gleaned by watching an awkward looking Korean guy dancing like a madman. What's more, personal joy can be brought by joining in and imitating the crazy dance moves. It seems to have done the trick for Mitt Romney.
