MUMBAI: Gangnam Style won over Ivy Leaguers as South Korea’s global pop icon Psy gave a talk on modern digital culture phenomenon to about 1,000 students of Harvard University.
Sharing his reaction to an audience of around 1,000, Psy said he partied hard when Gangnam Style hit the 10 million mark on YouTube.
Noting that being in Harvard "is so weird" he recalled spending four years studying management at Boston University while marveling at Harvard from afar. He joked about his academic performance while at school in Boston, saying he was known by a nickname of WWF — which, he said, stands for withdrawal, withdrawal, failure.
The pop star, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, also joked that he's heard that he is the first person to make a speech at Harvard without a written script.
Cracking jokes during his speech, Psy said he was very shocked, overwhelmed as ‘Gangnam Style’ video went viral (with more than 1.5 billion views) and realistically didn’t expect to replicate the feat with his new single, Gentleman’ which has logged more than 300 million views.
"Gangnam style was not normal. Gangnam was not standard ... that was an accident and accidents don't happen often," he said.
"I gotta be humble, I gotta be humble, I know I gotta be humble because this does not happen to everybody — especially for Asian artists. They tried a lot knocking the door to the US market, but it didn't happen," Psy said.
"I dreamed about it, but I didn't dream that was me because, as you see, I have a very special body shape," he said as his apparent reference to his stocky figure drew laughter from students and faculty.
Psy said he's tried to figure out why he was able to break into coveted global markets after other Asian artists failed to gain traction.
"There should be a specific reason why people chose me," Psy said. "They didn't choose me because I'm handsome, they didn't choose me because I'm muscular ... the reason why they chose me (is) because I have fun with the music, with the dance, with the video."