God bless the internet (and Gangnam Style)

Korean internet sensation PSY has just reached 1 billion views on his YouTube channel.

This is pretty astonishing, especially when you consider that neither One Direction, Nicki Minaj nor Adele have yet reached this milestone. Here you have a man who, until last summer, was known only in his native South Korea – a country hardly renowned for its pop exports – and recorded his global smash hit Gangnam Style as a bit of a joke for inclusion on his sixth studio album.

Gangnam Style is now the second most viewed video IN HISTORY – behind (you guessed it) Justin Bieber’s Baby. In honour of this, Bieber and PSY have now confirmed they will be working together on a single sometime in the future.

How wonderfully, gloriously silly.

This, I believe, is what the internet was invented for. To make ridiculous things like this happen, things that could never have occurred without our new-found global connectivity (not to mention propensity for deifying pointless weirdness on the web).

The Lightyears have played in South Korea a number of times, and we’ve developed a strange fondness for the place. To be honest I can’t remember whether or not we’ve ever been to the Gangnam district upon which the song is based, but a quick Wikipedia search tells me it has both a Kimchi and a Handbag Museum. So there you go. We’ll have to go hang out there if we ever return.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and perfect the horse-riding dance for our next gig.

Click here to see The Lightyears’ South Korean tour photos

ps. Type the letter ‘g’ into Google – you’ll find that the sixth most popular suggestion for any search beginning with this letter is ‘gangnam style’. WOW.

pps. If you’re not familiar with Gangnam Style yet, then I’d suggest you keep it that way, if only because it’ll give you something to talk about at parties when you become the last human alive who hasn’t seen it (probably sometime tomorrow).