PSY

Wow, it's Oxford. Beautiful. All right, so when I was 15, I saw a video footage of Queen at the Wembley Stadium, and they sang Bohemian Rhapsody. It was literally shock.

First of all, the song itself, it was shock, because it was too long. And it has too many changes. So I was Korean, I didn't know what the lyrics is about, and I was not familiar with the opera thing.

So, like, slow things going on, and then suddenly changes to the opera, and it says something Galileo. And then rock goes on, and then slow goes on, and then song's done. I was like, "What is that?"

After I saw that, for one year I didn't listen to the music, because it was so shock, and little bit of scary. After graduating high school, I went to United States for college, and I spent four years at there. And at that time it was year of '96 to '99.

That was the first time I did my best in something, make a tracks. And when I was young, I really, I was really good at dancing. So. But not, like, good-looking dancing, but you know, the dancing.

So, and my only interest when I was young, my only interest and regarding was, to be attractive to the girls. That was the only interest. But you know, I know I'm not that good-looking, so I gotta, you know, try to invent things hard.

Like, you know, talking funny, dancing funny, singing funny, do some funny things. You know, I think laughing and smiling can beat handsome guys. That's what I thought.

So I tried that kind of thing, so for a long time. And in the college, I dreamed about to be a composer, and I wrote, like, 100 songs in a year. And so it's, it was just for me, because I want some beats so that me and my friend can dance by myself.

That was the first interest. So I was 23, and I gotta make a decision at that time. So what should I do next?

So go on to be a composer, or should I change? At that year, age of 23, I made my mind to sell my songs to myself. That was the only way.

That was the only way to be a composer. So I decide to sell the songs to myself. And you know, like British, United States, Europe, like all over the world, Korea also, singers, entertainers, they are skinny.

And they look good, handsome, and even they are guys, but they are pretty. Most of them. So when I made my debut in Korea, in Korea, it was, like, disaster. People were like. People didn't say, "Who is that?"

People said that, "What is that?" So it was year of 2000. So I made my debut, and you can consider it as, like, 12 years younger version of Gangnam Style, because it had, it used to have, like, such a dance move, such a video, and such a shape, whatever.

And people saw it, and what they thought was, "I think we can do it. We can do Psy's dance," just like you're doing horse dance these days. So that kind of thing.

So what I thought was, I can provide them participation instead of exhibition. So that kind of thing happened 12 years ago, and I did, kind of well in Korea. So Korea's really conservative and strict, and they have really highly, they have really high expectation, moral expectation to the artist.

I don't know why, but it's really highly required moral. But I'm not moral. So, I think that's not an artist.

So, last year, what I thought was, I gotta make this sixth album. I gotta go back to the first place when I debuted with funny move, funny song, funny dance, so that, you know, people can laugh. Because all over the world, its economics really horrible right now, and Korea as well was really horrible these days.

So what I thought was, as a 12-year-old artist, that was part of my job, to just make fun by music, by dance, by video. So I try to make a song. Honestly, I tried my best to be as ridiculous as possible.

And finally, I got the song, and it's song called Gangnam Style. So me and my choreographers in Korea, we spent, like, more than 30 nights to make the horse dance. It's kind of funny, but still

We were so serious to make that dance. So I released the song and video on 2012, July 15th, and I uploaded this music video on the YouTube just for Korean users. Some Koreans use the YouTube, too, so

I upload it for them. And after 10, 15 days later of uploading. I'm really huge fan of Robbie Williams, and but I don't know why, but Robbie Williams uploaded my video at his blog, and he said something, I cannot remember the details, but he said like, he said to his fans, like, when you get tired or something, watch this.

So, and that kind of things, like, happened again and again. So a lot of pop stars, a lot of celebrities all over the world, they started tweet my video on their Twitters. Each and every celebrity has huge followers, and the followers came to the video, and they started make a discussion about, what is this guy?

So I was like, honestly, what I said was, at the time, WTF, you know? What is going on here? What is going on here?

So, you know, funny thing is, if I perform this song, every time, when I saw the people, I feel happy and sorry. I feel happy because they look so happy. And I feel sorry because they don't have any idea about the lyrics.

So, isn't this great? They don't need to know what the lyric's about. I'm standing at the Oxford Union, and you guys are listening to me, so let me say, shit happens, right?