{"id":475532,"date":"2026-05-31T02:28:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T02:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/475532\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T02:28:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T02:28:17","slug":"12-years-since-gangnam-style-became-youtubes-first-video-to-reach-2-billion-views","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/475532\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Years Since ‘Gangnam Style’ Became YouTube’s First Video to Reach 2 Billion Views"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twelve years ago, a simple music<\/a> video quietly uploaded to YouTube would go on to change the platform forever. At the time, few could have predicted just how massive it would become\u2014but in the years that followed, it set a record no other video had ever reached.<\/p>\n

The video was Psy\u2019s “Gangnam Style,” released in 2012, which exploded into a global cultural moment thanks to its catchy hook\u2014and who could forget those dance moves? What started as a quirky K-pop track quickly crossed borders, languages, and platforms\u2014becoming one of the first true viral sensations of the social media era.<\/p>\n

The video for “Gangnam Style” was released on July 15, 2012, and hit the one billion mark five months later. According to Billboard<\/a>, the video received 14.9 million views per day in its prime. By May 2014, “Gangnam Style\u201d broke another record, becoming the first-ever video to pass two billion views on YouTube\u201412 years ago this weekend.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ve only done this for 12 years, only for Korea, not for overseas at all,” Psy told The New York Times<\/a> after “Gangnam Style” blew up. \u201cI didn\u2019t expect anything like this. So what can I say? Everything moves way too fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about the signature dance moves he displayed in the video, Psy said he “studied hard to find something new.”<\/p>\n

“I spent like a month to find the horse dance. We are just at the studio, me and my choreographers, we are spending like 30 nights and we are thinking, what is my next dance move? Because in Korea there are huge expectations about my dancing. So it was a lot of pressure,” he told The New York Times.<\/p>\n

Fast forward 12 years and the “Gangnam Style” music video now has 5.9 billion views.<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Parade<\/a> on May 30, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment<\/a> section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twelve years ago, a simple music video quietly uploaded to YouTube would go on to change the platform…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[205066,17394,61,60,17396,80,4621],"class_list":["post-475532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-dance-moves","tag-gangnam-style","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music-video","tag-technology","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}