Gangnam star Psy launches new dance craze

It is too early to say whether Psy’s new single, Gentleman, will have the explosive impact of his global hit Gangnam Style – the most viewed YouTube video ever, registering more than 1.5 billion hits. But immediate responses were generally positive.

His new single was released on Friday, but fans were kept waiting until a concert in Seoul’s World Cup stadium yesterday to see the moves he has created to go with it.

“Hiiiit! Hiiiit! Hiiiit!” wrote one of the 160,000 fans watching the live-streaming of the concert on YouTube which climaxed with the singer broadcasting the Gentleman video then performing a live version.

Another YouTube fan responded to Psy’s onstage antics: “Can’t wait to bust these new moves on the dance floor”.

And while there was no evidence of the Gangnam Style horse riding theme, Psy’s ungentlemanly Gentleman preferring a simpler hip swinging, side-stepping, choreography, the new video did feature nods to his previous mega-hit including a scene shot in a lift.

However some fans branded the satire as “misogynistic”. It shows Psy dancing at various locations around Seoul and playing a series of practical jokes on women.

Gentleman went straight into the iTunes top 5 in South Korea. In Britain, it rose quickly to number 25.

At a press conference before the show, the 35-year-old singer described the division of the Korean peninsula as a “tragedy” and said he wanted North Korean people to share his music’s “fun and happiness”.