Reggaeton is a modern style of popular and electronic music that originated in Panama during the late 1980s, and which rose to prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s through a plethora of Puerto Rican musicians. It has evolved from dancehall, with elements of hip hop, Latin American, and Caribbean music. Vocals include toasting/rapping and singing, typically in Spanish.
Viral videos are videos that become popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, primarily through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email. For a video to be shareable or spreadable, it must focus on the social logics and cultural practices that have enabled and popularized these new platforms.
YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform headquartered in San Bruno, California, founded by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, since which it operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.
Kim Hyun-ah, known professionally as Hyuna, is a South Korean singer-songwriter, rapper and model. She debuted as a member of the girl group Wonder Girls in February 2007. Upon leaving the ensemble shortly after, Hyuna subsequently left JYP Entertainment and joined the girl group 4Minute. The group debuted in June 2009 under Cube Entertainment. In 2010, Hyuna began a solo career with a style she described as "performance-oriented music". Her solo debut single "Change" charted at number-two on South Korea's Gaon Digital Chart.
Park Jae-sang, better known by his stage name Psy, is a South Korean rapper and singer-songwriter. Known domestically for his humorous music videos and performances and internationally for his hit single "Gangnam Style", he has received numerous accolades, including an American Music Award, ten MAMA Awards, and a World Music Award.
"Gangnam Style" is a K-pop song by South Korean singer and rapper Psy, released on July 15, 2012, by YG Entertainment as the lead single of his sixth studio album, Psy 6, Part 1. The term "Gangnam Style" is a neologism that refers to the nouveau riche lifestyles associated with the Gangnam region of Seoul.
"Gangnam Style" is a single released by South Korean singer Psy on July 15, 2012. It achieved widespread international recognition and became the most viewed YouTube video, becoming the first video to gain a billion views on December 21, 2012. "Gangnam Style"'s unprecedented worldwide popularity was acknowledged by YouTube, who called it a "massive" hit at a global level "unlike anything we've ever seen before" while Billboard noted that "Gangnam Style" was nothing short of a pop culture phenomenon. As a result, it has influenced worldwide popular culture in many aspects.
Jordan Maron, known online as CaptainSparklez, is an American YouTuber and Twitch streamer mainly known for his Minecraft videos. As of December 2024, his main YouTube channel has over 11.4 million subscribers.
Davin Tong, better known by his alias Peter Chao, is a Canadian actor, comedic vlogger, and YouTube personality known for his unconventional portrayals of Asian stereotypes, which alongside other comedic videos have amassed a following of over 1.2M followers on TikTok and almost 800,000 subscribers on YouTube. Born and raised in New Brunswick, Canada, Tong is the second son of "Chinese immigrants", while his character Chao was born and raised in Hong Kong. Tong is bilingual, speaking both fluent English and Cantonese.
"Gentleman" is a K-pop song by South Korean singer Psy released on April 12, 2013 (KST), serving as his 19th single. The song serves as the follow-up to his international hit single "Gangnam Style", which at the time of "Gentleman"'s release had been viewed on YouTube over 1.5 billion times. The first public performance of the song, with its associated dance, was unveiled at 6:30 pm on April 13 at Seoul World Cup Stadium in Seoul. A poster and Twitter message was released containing the main line of the song "I'm a mother f••••• gentleman", The obscured word was later revealed to be "father". In 2013, Psy stated that he had no plans to release an album including the song or a sequel to it.
"Gangnam Style" is the music video by South Korean singer Psy premiered on July 15, 2012, on the video-sharing website YouTube and was later made available to download digitally on October 19. It was directed by Cho Soo-hyun and was filmed in Seoul in July 2012 over the course of 48 hours. In the video, Psy "pokes fun at the style of Seoul's Gangnam District, a flashy district known for its affluence, high rents, high expectations and a focus on the high-status lifestyle". The video is currently the tenth most-viewed video and the eleventh most-liked video on YouTube, as well as the 19th most-disliked. On December 21, 2012, the music video set a record for the first video to surpass 1 billion views on the platform. It subsequently surpassed 2 billion, 3 billion, 4 billion, and 5 billion views in June 2014, November 2017 and March 2021, and December 2023, respectively.
The following is a list of notable events and releases that happened in 2012 in music in South Korea.
"See You Again" is a song by American rapper Wiz Khalifa featuring American singer-songwriter Charlie Puth. It was commissioned for the soundtrack of the 2015 film Furious 7 as a tribute to Fast & Furious actor Paul Walker, who died in a single-vehicle crash on November 30, 2013. The song was released on March 10, 2015, as the soundtrack's lead single in the United States. It was later included as a bonus track on the international release of Puth's debut album, Nine Track Mind.
"PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen)" is a single by Pikotaro, a fictional singer-songwriter created and portrayed by Japanese comedian Daimaou Kosaka. It was released as a music video on YouTube on 25 August 2016, and has since become a viral video. As of January 2024, the official video has been viewed more than 160 million times. PPAP spawned parodies, and was hailed as the new "Gangnam Style" by various newspapers and online media. The single itself reached number 1 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart. At the time of its release, it became the shortest single to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, a record that was later broken by Kid Cudi's "Beautiful Trip" (0:37). At the end of 2016, the song charted at number 6 on Japan Hot 100 Year-end Chart.
"Despacito" is a song by Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi, originally written in 2015. In 2016, Luis sent the song to Puerto Rican rapper and singer Daddy Yankee to give it an "urban injection", and released it as the lead single from Fonsi's 2017 studio album Vida.
The Instagram egg is a photo of an egg posted by the account @world_record_egg on the social media platform Instagram. It became a global phenomenon and an internet meme within days of its creation. It is the second most-liked Instagram post and was the most-liked Instagram post until it was overtaken on December 20, 2022, by Lionel Messi's post showing him and his teammates celebrating after Argentina won the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The owner of the account was revealed to be Chris Godfrey, a British advertising creative, who later worked with his two friends Alissa Khan-Whelan and CJ Brown on a Hulu commercial featuring the egg, intended to raise mental health awareness.
